Full Circle Magazine FR

It’s been described as the game that SimCity 4 should have been. I can neither confirm nor deny that statement, as I’ve never played SimCity 4 since Maxis didn’t have the decency to make a native Linux version. Colossal Order (a small Finnish team) did have the decency and foresight to make a Linux version of Cities: Skylines. And I’m so glad they did. In The Beginning On first starting the game you’re given a choice of maps to choose from. They’re different, but each contain some body of water (which you’ll initially use to generate power), and mostly land to build upon. You’re given hints and tips along the way telling you to place roads, zones, electricity, water, and so on. If you’ve ever played the original SimCity, or SimCity 2000, then you’ll instinctively know what to do.

The Basics Your map has two roads leading into it. These connect your future city to the highway which has vehicles coming/going to your city. You need to connect to these highways to allow your city to expand. Once you have some roads in place, you can place zones beside the roads. You have three choices (initially); residential, commercial, or industrial. Obviously you need to keep your (noisy, smelly) industrial zones away from your housing and put your commercial zones somewhere in the middle. This is where the detail in CS shines through. Bad planning means that your residents will complain about noise pollution from the factories. Yes, you need to take into account noise when building your town. Even small things such as wind turbines to initially give you electricity need to be kept away from residents. Details such as planting trees to block noise are here too. All zones need two basic commodities; electricity and water lines. You’ll need to connect pumps to the water areas to pump clean water in. But watch out. You also need to connect pumps to dump your sewage. Dump your sewage upstream from your intake pump and, well, you can imagine the results. Wind turbines supply your power at the start, but, as you establish your city, you can use water/solar power or just good old fashioned coal. Even placing roads has its good and bad points – placing the wrong road in a busy area means massive traffic jams and pollution. A planners life is not an easy one.

Stats There’s a ton of statistics and management in the game too. Top left of the screen gives you quick access to information regarding who has/hasn’t got electricity, water, etc. The range the police/fire services cover. The aforementioned noise pollution. You name it, it’s all here. Even down to how much electricity you’re generating and how much your citizens are using. This is also shown when you click the building options at the bottom of the screen. Here you place roads, zones, buildings, etc. Another really nice feature, and really well implemented, is the use of districts. You can choose an area of the city and give it a name. You can select it by using a box tool or by literally painting over the town. This means you can apply certain rules/policies to certain districts within the city. Again, details such as forcing industrial districts to install fire alarms can reduce the strain on your fire department. Districts can also be given an industry. So, for example, you can select an area of nice countryside, give it a name, and use it only for farming. Oh, and everything – and I mean everything – has a name/title in CS, and you can change them all. There is much fun to be had renaming people, animals, and zones. Speaking of people, everything in CS has a purpose. You can select any person and it will tell you who the person is, where they work, and/or where they are going. Same with vehicles. I’ve only scratched the surface of the detail in CS. There’s so much more such as buying adjacent land to expand your city, mining, and tweaking budgets.

Mods As if all that goodness wasn’t enough, the entire game is mod friendly. There are already hundreds of mods that will give new maps. One awesome mod I have installed is one that gives you the ability to choose any citizen and look through their eyes. No, the graphics won’t look hugely impressive (as you were really never meant to get in that close), but it’s great that the developers allow such mods. Conclusion If you hadn’t already guessed: I love CS. CS uses the Unity engine, and it really is nice. Graphics settings are highly adjustable to allow play even on lower-end machines. My machine has a lowly GeForce GT640, and it runs the game great even with tilt-shift, medium shadows, medium detail, and filtering on. My city isn’t a sprawling metropolis, but there’s a lot going on in there for my little graphics card. Pointing out every feature of CS would fill a large book, so if you loved SimCity 2000, or hated SimCity 4 (for various reasons), then give Cities: Skylines a look. Cities: Skylines is available through Steam for USD $29.99.

System Requirements Minimum: Operating System: Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit, Ubuntu 14.10 64-bit, Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit) Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ 3.2GHz RAM: 4GB Graphics Card: nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260, 512 MB / ATI Radeon HD 5670 (Does not support Intel Integrated Graphics Card), 512 MB Hard Drive: 4GB Recommended: Operating System: Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit, Ubuntu 14.10 64-bit, Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit) Processor: Intel Core i5-3470 3.20GHz / AMD FX-6300 3.5Ghz RAM: 6GB Graphics Card: nVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (Does not support Intel Integrated Graphics Card), 2GB / AMD Radeon HD 7870, 2 GB Hard Drive: 4GB