There’s no higher feeling when a sport is at preview than the limited-time session merely melting away. I imply, it additionally type of sucks when a developer chaperone steps in to inform you that your time is up – however when it feels such as you blink and a complete hour goes by, that’s how you’re enjoying some actual good things. Such was the case for my first hands-on with Cities Skylines 2.
Now, I do know what you’re considering: crikey, that headline is a giant sturdy. Game of the Year? In a Zelda yr? Against Baldur’s Gate?! And, yeah – it’s most likely a bit hyperbolic. But if we may hop into the longer term and ask future Alex precisely which of 2023’s video games he’s performed essentially the most of and had essentially the most pleasure from, it’s most likely going to be Cities Skylines 2 or Street Fighter 6. How many play-throughs of BG3 I do, or what number of extra a whole lot of hours I sink into Starfield or Cyberpunk are irrelevant – I do know this sport goes to eat my life.
Full disclosure: I do know this partly as a result of I’ve a whole lot upon a whole lot of hours logged on the unique Cities Skylines. But that’s no assure {that a} sequel goes to be good – particularly when a sequel entails wiping away years of enhancements delivered through growth packs and mods. Things can go badly fallacious. But after twiddling with it for barely over an hour, I’m satisfied Cities Skylines 2 is on the best path. The finest path.
It’s a dangerous equation with a sport like this. The unique Skylines has principally turn out to be a service sport, getting a relentless move of fully-fledged growth packs but additionally smaller add-ons. Steam flags up 62 DLCs for the sport, and I personal ‘em all, the mug that I’m. Even the music add-ons. Saying goodbye to all of that’s no small factor – and so developer Colossal Order has to supply one thing important for followers to be keen to simply accept a reset.
What they’re providing, principally, is scale. On each a macro and micro stage. Its maps are big; round 5 occasions larger than the primary sport. You’ll be capable of create larger cities with extra stuff, and a extra dense simulation – positive factor. But truly, the micro stuff is maybe the extra attention-grabbing factor.
Everything has been broadly re-thought. Even putting roads is each simplified with new instruments and choices for robotically creating US model grid setups in only a few clicks and complex by much more detailed ranges of adjustment potential for individuals who actually wish to get into the weeds. Utilities (like electrical energy) now move up and down roads beneath the bottom, which suggests there’s much less must mess about with particular electrical cabling, however there’s way more granularity in how these utilities operate and are sourced.
Even the simulation of particular person residents is extra in-depth, the place you’ll be stunned at how a lot element there’s in the event you click on on a particular individual and observe them on their day by day routine. You’ve bought extra management on what sort of buildings seem in your metropolis’s residential, industrial, and industrial zones – each when it comes to their performance and their look. You can create neighborhoods with a particular visible aptitude. In this demo, I used to be ready to decide on between North American or European stylings, and you may see the place this can go together with mods and the like sooner or later. You’ll truly be capable of designate and zone a particular ‘Chinatown’ district, as an illustration – and have it look genuine.
The sense of scale has been adjusted as effectively, and a few additions are simply… plain good. Take landfill, or cemeteries. In the primary sport, you’d place a landfill or cemetery with a set capability, and as soon as it was filled with trash or the lifeless, you’d must construct one other or discover a solution to release some room, like by firing up a polluting furnace. In Skylines 2, these kinds of utility buildings may be expanded. So, moderately than must construct one other, you may simply designate more room across the constructing to that goal, that means you simply have one larger model moderately than a number of unfold throughout your metropolis and ruining its look.
Plenty of buildings are upgradable on this means, from sprawling buying malls to police and fireplace stations, or colleges. The scale of those buildings is way improved, too – the place a college that teaches hundreds of pupils in Cities Skylines might need the footprint of three or 4 massive residential homes, in Skylines 2 they will now be completely monumental. It provides to the ‘wow issue’ of including these kinds of buildings to your fledgling cities, which is simply bloody satisfying.
Ultimately, that is nonetheless a metropolis simulation. A simmed metropolis. You know. Cities Skylines 2 isn’t going to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t must. But what it seems to be doing is delicately and cooly iterating on what got here earlier than, enhancing it, and doing so with a fulsome information that they’re not simply constructing a sport – they’re constructing a platform.
My blink-and-it’s-over hands-on with Cities Skylines 2 proved to me that it’s going to have greater than sufficient about it at launch to maintain me occupied for a lot of, many hours. But I’d be mendacity if I stated that a large a part of my anticipation for it wasn’t excited about the place it’d go.
I take a look at the primary sport and see a title totally reworked over time by followers and builders alike – and in its sequel, I see a sport constructed to ask the identical type of expansionism. Better nonetheless, I see a sport with systemic hooks that ought to imply that these expansions are even higher this time round. I can’t wait to play the complete factor in October.
Cities: Skylines 2 launches on October 24, 2023 on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC.
