Cities Skylines: What I think so far

What's going on guys, Jb3ast here! I'm really sorry that I haven't posted in almost a month, but I spilled some water on my keyboard and it doesn't work properly, so I'm typing this with a wireless keyboard hooked up to my laptop. I was also on vacation and away from Wi-Fi, so I couldn't post. To make up to you guys, I'll be putting extra effort into this post, so enjoy! :D

But before you get into it, I'd love it if you guys could give me some feedback on my posts and tell me if you still enjoy these types of posts or if they're getting old and worn out. This ensures that I'll be able to provide the most interesting and awesome content possible, thanks so much!

I'll also be using some of my own screenshots from the game, so you'll get to see firsthand how the game looks on my computer.


So let's discuss the game. Cities Skylines came out on March 10 this year, and it was well received by players because of it's crisp graphics, great single player mode and steam workshop modding community, none of which Simcity 2013 had. But you're probably wondering where I stand with my thoughts on Cities Skylines (CS from here on). Well, you're about to find out!

Cities Skylines is a city-building game (duh) where you have to get your city from a tiny village to a bustling metropolis. Of course, you also have to manage your money earned from tax income and spend it on roads and services like hospitals, schools, fire stations, and police stations. You also need to build working power and water grids, and to do so you will need to build power plants and water and sewer pumping stations as well. There are policies that can be put in place, like bans on heavy vehicles to reduce traffic and pollution, or smoking bans that increase your citizens' health but lower their happiness (I think). Basically, if you've played Simcity 4 or any of the ones before it, you'll have no problem figuring out how Cities Skylines is played.

One of the areas where CS sets itself apart from Simcity is the slower pace. It's common to just watch your city grow slowly in this game, rather than slapping zone after zone together in SC4 and making your tax income skyrocket. That kind of thing just won't happen in this game, everything happens very gradually so the fast-forward is really handy.

Planning is also really important. You need to have some idea of how various things will be arranged or your city will be a total mess. Since roads are also much more expensive than in Simcity, you've got to decide whether you want to make low-capacity roads near the highway to save money and rip them up later or spend a lot more and get your traffic situation in order before it begins. Like I said before, planning is key to success in this game! Find what layouts work the best and stick with whatever's the most efficient for your needs.

Another one of the unique features of the game is the steam workshop, which lets players create and publish new content ranging from buildings to parks to even UI improvements! I'm really impressed by this and it will surely extend the game's lifespan significantly to say the least. I just wish I knew how to make custom content for the game, but I'm sure someone has written a guide on the game's steam page to show you how!

As you can see from the picture on the right, graphics are pretty impressive. Everything from the mountains in the distance, to the little details on the buildings, to the way the wind turbines spin is really pretty to look at. Unfortunately, my laptop doesn't run this game well so I need to turn down the graphics all the way and disable shadows for it to work smoothly and without stutter, so this screenshot was taken from my home computer which has a much more powerful processor for gaming. The only thing that I wish was improved in the visual department is the way the ground looks. Just the solid green ground seems pretty boring without any grass or small hills and pits to decorate the landscape. Although this is kinda disappointing, there's another much bigger problem with Cities Skylines that takes some fun out of the game...

Community-made building honoring the developers of
Cities: Skylines!

...The fact that there's no way to change the terrain or even trigger disasters! One of my favorite parts of Simcity 4 was shaping the map exactly to my liking by adding forests, mountains, and rivers to make the game more interesting. That's not here at all, and what we got instead was about 10 different maps with slightly different terrain and looks. Unless there's some way to create your own maps in the steam workshop, this is a huge issue that I just had to bring to light. It also doesn't make sense that the game doesn't allow the player to trigger disasters and annihilate their cities at the push of a button. I can't really express how much fun it was to zap my city with vicious bolts of lightning, bombard it with showers of house-sized meteorites and send 10-story tall death robots to blow up everything in sight. These are things that detract from the experience, although the game is still fun without them.

Cities Skylines goes for $29.99 on steam. It's the only thing I've ever bought on steam for full price, but I can say with certainty that it was worth it!

Final Verdict/TLDR...

I give Cities Skylines an 8 out of 10.

Pros: Good graphics, classic city-building gameplay, steam workshop support, cheap at $30 instead of $60 like simcity 2013, deep strategy and urban planning

Cons: No disasters or map editing

Thanks so much for reading guys, and I'll catch you in my next post! I don't know what that'll be yet but whatever it is it's gonna be epic!

If you want to buy the game after reading my review, you can get it here:


See you later, keep on gaming and stay awesome!

+David Houlding +Jordan A