Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Cities: Skylines: Impressions (2 hours)

Well, this is ironic.

Last week, Electronic Arts closed Maxis, beloved developer of the Sim City series (and others, but Sim City was always their signature). Presumably, a large part of the "consolidation" of the studio was due to the reception given the last Sim City game.

Sim City's problem was pretty simple: instead of making the city-builder that people wanted, EA wanted the game to be a Trojan horse for all kinds of things that annoyed the hell out of a large segment of their customer base.

Here's the irony: if Maxis had made Cities: Skylines instead, it would have been hugely successful, and Maxis would still be here.

Cities: Skylines is the game that people wanted.

Here's what I want in a city builder. It's simple.
1. I want to understand how to do things.
2. I want to see things happen based on what I've done.
3. I want to be able to easily access specific information.

Cities: Skylines fulfills all those requirements for me, and it does one more thing that I didn't even know I wanted: it looks magical. The tilt-shift graphics style is unbelievably charming, and everything is vibrantly colored and bursting with life.

Watching my city feels like looking at a tiny, real word.

It's all quite fantastic, and it's going to be very, very successful. If you have any interest in city builders, you need to play this immediately.

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