The most you’ll have to contend with here is contaminated water or citizens bitching about your policy decisions on social media. The old SimCity games had their share of systems to juggle, but they were always balanced out by the looming silliness of an alien invasion or a rampaging Godzilla (or should that be Koopa?) to remind you simulation shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Cities will ebb and flow with citizens, exports and taxes but there’s very little seismic change to force you to react on the fly. The problem Cities: Skylines has in the lack of systemic action. You’ll need to connect up every home to an electrical grid, but you'll also need to make sure there’s space for your roads to fit between the pylons. You’ll need to define what kind of area you want to build (such as residential or industrial), but you don’t want factories pumping out goods too close to your homes or your citizens will start to complain about the noise. If you’re coming from the more relaxed and less rule-driven world of Rollercoaster Tycoon, the sheer amount of logistical planning required to build and maintain even the simplest of hamlets can really boggle the mind. You can cycle between a basic list of facilities (including roads, zones, water and electrical construction) by using the D-Pad, while holding ‘Y’ in the main view or in any sub-menu will bring up all the main parts of that sub-menu on a handy (and often contextual) radial wheel.

Much like the PS4 and Xbox One editions, Cities: Skylines’ menus are easy to flit through with the D-pad, although those menus can get a little difficult to distinguish when playing in handheld mode.Īnd while actively moving around the map to place wind turbines, define zones and place water pumping stations is a little awkward - especially when laying elements that require a little more precision, such as roads and underground pipes - we’re pleasantly surprised to find how easy it is to access the many sub-menus the game has to offer. And the Finnish developer has done an admirable job of remapping a UI previously designed for mouse and keyboards to a controller. Your city - however small or large - is a living machine that needs constant tinkering in order to keep it running.

It sounds like a chore, but that’s the strength of Colossal Order’s city-building simulator - it’s the busywork of maintaining infrastructure, improving transportation and utilising sanitation that makes its virtual civilisations so authentic. Even when your burgeoning settlement is little more than a few residential areas, it’s soon demanding round-the-clock maintenance. Have you ever aspired to a seat of mayoral power? Fancy yourself as the next Mayor Quimby? Okay, perhaps he’s not the best example of how to run a town, but spend a few hours with the power Cities: Skylines bestows upon you and you’ll begin to understand why Diamond Joe so often ran away from his duties.

Cities skylines review