General Gameplay

Cities Skylines is a sim city builder in which you build the perfect city from the roads, water ways, buildings, policies and even parks, to the infrastructure of the inner working of a city. The Game Visuals are very detailed as you can zoom in and out of the city that you are creating. This is important as you must see what you are placing and where, size it, and have room to have it grow. The graphics must be very sharp, and they are in the game. You can see every detail from people walking and doing their daily routine, to the buildings and area around the object as if it has a life of its own. Also, as the game does not support a colorblind mode it is not needed as the colors and visuals are very sharp and easy to see. In our play testing we did meet some issues with gamers not able to see the green color in the game but this was very minor with some zooming into the game. Audio in Cities Skylines is very basic, with just a calming background music that is used for the game and most of the audio is the sounds that you would hear in a city from birds chirping, to traffic and other audio ques that would be going with a growing city. As the game does not have any spoken dialog, there is nothing offensive with the in-game audio. The game does support 5.1 surround sound and it sounds fantastic in 5.1. You can also play the game using a headset, however we would recommend if you can play it from the either the Smart TV speakers or even a surround sound. The Controls for Cities Skylines are very detailed. As the game is a port from the PC version there are a lot of button commands that you will have to learn. There is the command to lay down where you want your buildings to be placed, as well as the left/right trigger to be used to zoom in and out of the city itself. However, as the controls allow you to create the city that you want, there is a lot of commands that you will have to learn when playing the game (more of this in our Family Friendly section) The commands are not hard to learn, but a lot to understand so you can better enjoy the game itself. If anything, if you are playing on the PC, you will have an easier time controlling the game. As the game does not need a special controller, we highly recommend any gamers to get fully used to the game controls itself in the “Unlimited Money” mode before going onto the regular mode of the game.

“With a steep learning curve, Cities Skylines may look like a beast but once you get used to the controls you will have your city running in no time!”

Family Friendly

With sim-city style of games there are a lot of working parts to the game that make it all come alive. As with most games there are very detail tutorials that explain everything, so a new gamer can get up to speed and better understand what each function does and how they work both in the game and with other components. In Cities Skylines it throws you into the deep end and you are expected to learn how to swim, well in most cases this can be bad, but here it is a good thing. The game is like a living, breathing being, and you must as you go along learn everything from how water treatment cannot be in the same water path of fresh water, or how to manage traffic and other things that go with a growing city. One of the best things that we saw that there is something to do, improve or fix as your city is growing and this is what keeps the game fresh. As we did our playtesting, we notice that even non-sims style of gamers in our gaming testing group really enjoyed the game. This was even more so when parents and children play the game with each other. This game created a bond in which both parent and child are working together to achieve the same goal. This is a great bonding game for both families and couples that are looking for a game in which they can both play and still have fun. Now as we mention before in the review that the controls do take time to get use to, but this is a normal process in any game like this. We did notice in our play testing that the game is real detailed about the mouse pointer, so it is best recommended to zoom in to see where you are placing objects in the game. Also, We Highly Recommend To Play The Game In Unlimited Money First! As the game is very detail, this mode will allow you to see how the game works and get used to how the game flows. We do recommend that you take your time and play the game as this is a game that does not have a start point or even an ending but grows as you go style of game. In our special needs gaming testing, we did not run into any issues with the game graphics, audio or even content. The only thing that we saw that may be a concern is the controls as it does have a steep learning curve for new gamers, but this is something that becomes easier once playing the game. Cities Skylines is a great game for all family members and we highly recommend this title to everyone. Keep in mind that it may be easier to find a copy of the game via digital stores vs. physical copies as we went to our local game stores and they did not have any copies, used or new available for us to purchase.

Closing

Cities Skylines is a well-developed sim game that will be enjoyed by all! Be sure to go through all tutorials before playing the game to best enjoy it.

Be sure to listen to our podcast about our real thoughts on Cities Skylines!