Saturday Morning Gaming: Cities Skylines

I played Sim City back when I was still in high school. The Social Studies teacher talked about it (he couldn’t show it to us, yet, as computers that were cheap enough to be in any non-Lab were not yet a thing) and he gushed about how it was not only educational about the nitty gritty of what makes a city run, but it was actually *FUN*. I went over to a friend’s house who had it and…

Well, “fun” may have been an overstatement. But it was a computer game that was obviously not merely kid stuff. It didn’t reach Flight Simulator levels of dull, but it struck me as a game that was closer to Chartered Accountancy than it was to Moon Patrol in the fun department. In 1995, they released Sim City 2000 which managed to achieve “actually being fun”. This was the one that not only introduced water and sewer and libraries and hospitals and scenarios like floods and recessions.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t *FUN* fun, but it was challenging in a new and interesting way that was completely different from games like Dark Forces or Mechwarrior 2. This was a game in which explosions were *BAD*. And Sim City 2000 was so very competent at the citysim thing that it set the template for about a decade. Afterlife, Pharoah, Tropico… From the games that were basically reskins with new and fun themes to actual variations on the game, Sim City was the standard until about 2013 when Sim City was released with amazing reviews and an absolute disaster of a launch. Server problems coupled with an inability to play offline pretty much ruined the launch and Maxis Emeryville closed its doors about two years later.

We’ve talked about Paradox games before and Paradox games said “you know… maybe we could do Sim City *RIGHT*. And they came out with Cities: Skylines. And reviews said that Cities: Skylines didn’t suck. They pulled it off. I never got around to playing it, though. I mean, hey. It’s a sim, right? There’s other stuff I’d want to shell out money for.

Well, from now until March 17th, Epic Game Store has Cities: Skylines as its free game. I’ve never played… so let’s check it out.

Uh-oh. First thing it asks you to do is register and log in. I hate it when games make me log in… maybe I already have an account with them? As it turns out, I do. Yeah, that sounds like me. Reset password.

Okay. Logging in. Let’s boot ‘er up.

Agree to privacy policy… agree to terms of service… okay Let’s start a new game. Oh, jeez. I keep forgetting that these games are “give away the razor, sell the blades!” kinda games where they sell you the razor too. DLC, DLC, and more DLC. As of this moment, 38 pieces of DLC. 3 of them are free, though. So 35 pieces of DLC. Some (okay, many) are on sale and so if you picked up all of them right now, the “free” game would cost you about $125.

I admit: that irritates me. But, hey. When the base game came out it got good reviews right out of the box without stuff like airports, mass transit, or zoos. (And it looks like there are a handful of DLCs (8, by my count) that do nothing but offer additional music options… so not all of the DLC is “THIS GAME ISN’T COMPLETE!” DLC but some of it is flavor stuff. That’s not so bad.)

Let’s just do the Black Woods map. Trees, some water, a lot of buildable land, and nothing too goofy. And, yes, let’s keep right-hand traffic.

Huh. That’s kind of pretty. I wonder if we can zoom in…

Okay. I’m already resenting the game less than I was 5 minutes ago.

Okay. Build roads, huh? What’s that little bird up at the top?

Okay. I’m resenting the game a little more now.

Okay, we’ve got small roads, medium roads, large roads, highways, roundabouts, and tollbooths. Huh. And next to the roads, there are zones and you can assign what zones they are. I’ve got low density residential, low density commercial, and industrial.

And so let’s make some roads and set some zones…

And we need both power and water/sewage.

Holy cow, this game is complicated.

Well, those are the basics to the game (hoo, boy… yeah, this feels far too educational for me) but if you’re into the whole Sim City thing and are looking for something that costs somewhere around “free”, then Epic Game Store has the game for you this week (and there are three free DLCs available on top of that).

The stuff I did not like was how I had to set up online to play it even after I downloaded it… but, hey. It’s no longer 2013, it’s 2022.

So… what are you playing?