By the end, I was unlocking things like airports-and then putting two into my city because why the hell not? I just kept thinking back longingly on those earlier, hardscrabble years where unlocking a new set of buildings meant choosing between a hospital and a fire department. And I did! I kept building and building and building long past the point where it’d become rote. It’s really fun getting a city started, putting those first few districts in place, trying to balance your budget against your urgent need for a fire department, or even just expanding your borders.īut there comes a point where your city is basically a perpetual motion machine-all the parts are in place, and there’s nothing for you to do except keep expanding. Yes, Cities: Skylines has the same problem as practically every city builder: The first few hours are the most entertaining. I’ve got millions of dollars, my budget is stable, my support buildings (fire departments, police, hospitals, etc.) are all in place, and I’m adding entire districts onto my city. It took me about eight hours to get to what I’d call the “end game,” a.k.a. Which I guess brings us to the biggest problem with Cities: Skylines-it’s pretty easy. I’d love to see the feature expanded to introduce droughts or floods, for instance-ones that aren’t necessarily made just by your own stupidity.
![simcity 2000 windows yellow black simcity 2000 windows yellow black](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d0tuoMlTMts/maxresdefault.jpg)
The water physics are excellent, but I never really had a moment of “Oh damn” while playing either. All I had to do was remember to set my water pumps upstream from my sewage outlets, and I was golden. Perhaps it’s more of an issue if there’s less water on a map, but my city had more than enough water to draw on. In fact, the water/wind simulation as a whole seems less important than Colossal Order made it out to be ahead of release. You can somewhat affect the course of rivers by building a hydroelectric dam, but you’re not going to just fill that river in or stand up next to a mountain and chop it down with the edge of your hand. Or, at least, it can be-provided you take over that grid square. So that highway funneling civilians into your city? It might look like background decoration when you start, but it’s a fully functioning piece of your city.
#Simcity 2000 windows yellow black mod
(Of course, there’s already a mod on Steam Workshop that unlocks all 25 tiles for your use.)
![simcity 2000 windows yellow black simcity 2000 windows yellow black](https://abload.de/img/screenshot500g6uyc.png)
You’re allowed to take over nine squares total, with the only requirement being that they connect in some way. You start with a single grid of 2 kilometers by 2 kilometers, and the map as a whole is a 5×5 grid of these squares (so 10 kilometers by 10 kilometers total). As mentioned, you’ll gradually expand not just your city but the available map space for your city. And nobody picked it up for days.īut you can do it! And even more fascinating, you can affect what’s already on the map. That awkward time there was a dead body (red skull)…on the playground. Trying to figure out what to demolish so you can run a highway down the center of the city can be a frustrating and tedious experience.
![simcity 2000 windows yellow black simcity 2000 windows yellow black](https://www.old-games.com/screenshot/4407-12-simcity-classic.jpg)
While they’re available pretty much from the beginning, they’re priced out of your budget.
![simcity 2000 windows yellow black simcity 2000 windows yellow black](https://gamefabrique.com/screenshots2/pc/simcity-2000-10.small.jpg)
The most disruptive additions are public transit-related, as you demolish buildings to make space for metro stations. The one downside is having to re-plan your city every few hours. Want to make your entire population live next door to garbage incinerators and heavy industry? Mmm, poison those citizens. Want to create the Judge Dredd-esque all high-rise buildings nightmare dystopia of your dreams? Yeah, you can do that too. Want to make rolling suburbs with nice curved streets for wealthy families? Sure, you can do that. You can basically do anything you want with your city. Seriously, Cities: Skylines is one of the best city builders I’ve played in years. In essence, Cities: Skylines goes “Hey, you didn’t like that new SimCity? What if I told you I could give you SimCity 2000, but bigger?” And to that I say…well, I’ve played until four in the morning multiple nights this week. Zoning colors, for instance: Blue for commercial, yellow for industry, green for residential. To say Cities: Skylines is “in the SimCity vein” is a polite way of saying “ Cities: Skylines straight up rips off a lot of traditional SimCity ideas.” Maybe that’s why I like it so much. Here’s my city of Springwood at its humble beginnings: A few strips of asphalt, a coal power station, water, and sewage.