Paula’s Game Ramblings: Cities Skylines

Welcome to Paula’s Game Ramblings. This time I’m going to be rambling about visiting old favourites…older games that are long time favourites.

We all have games that we really enjoyed playing, games that stand out from other games as being the best or a firm favourite. Games that you return to often, such as Animal Crossing New Horizons or Mario Kart or Witcher 3. For example, I play Animal Crossing now and then, but there can also be long periods when I don’t play it at all.

Cities: Skylines

Another game that I return to every so often is Cities: Skylines. When the game was originally released on PC my laptop wasn’t up to much at the time; it couldn’t run the game at all. It’s the kind of game that’s really suited to PC gaming, it also requires a high spec PC to run it. However, that’s not to say the Switch version isn’t good too. But there is much more freedom for the player with the PC version of the game and heaps of DLC to add to the game.

Anyway, to get to the point, when I bought my new laptop last year, Cities: Skylines was one of the first games I bought for it. The game has been installed on my laptop for a good while, and I hadn’t played it as I was busy playing review games; they come first in my mind and get the most playtime devoted to them.

Building Cities

Originally, I played Cities on the Nintendo Switch and reviewed it in 2018, and I loved it. A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Cities: Skyline Airport DLC on the PC which of course gave me the perfect opportunity to play the game again. That’s exactly what I did and I’m still hooked on the game at the moment. 

Now I’ve bought most of the DLC’s for it or at least the DLC’s I’m most interested in. However, since there are thirty-eight individual pieces of extra content, I was picky on what DLC’s I wanted the most. In the end, I chose the Industry DLC and Parklife DLC and a few content creator packs.

Over 100 hours

Since then, I’ve been playing a lot of Cities: Skylines. In fact, I’ve over 100 hours in the game in the space of a few weeks, I think I might be addicted. Yvonne has had to listen to my adventures in the game when we chat daily. Adventures of city-building and complaining citizens who want more education, running drinkable water and the like. I’d forgotten how much fun the game can be. With the addition of a few mods for the game from the Steam workshop, it is even more enjoyable.

One mod I’m using, in particular, changes the look of the residential buildings. The vanilla houses in the game are American designed houses, but I wanted to change them to English designed houses. It makes the game seem more lifelike when the house in the game looks similar to the ones across the street when I look out the window from our living room.

Airport Hiccup

I’ve been using unlimited money from the game’s settings. Using it means I can go nuts and build the city of my dreams without waiting for the money to build up. Meanwhile, I’ve been watching the city grow, trying out different road layouts, and solving traffic problems. In addition, there are different maps available with the DLC’s, so I’ve also been trying those out.

One of my cities has a slight hiccup at the moment, which I’m in the process of trying to fix. The planes in the cargo airport are backed up along the taxiway. So that needs to be sorted as the goods my industry area is making can’t get out of the city.

Challenges

Cities: Skylines is full of challenges as the game likes to throw unexpected things your way. Such as the fire in the picture above. I sat watching the fire rage through those houses. Eventually, the fire service did turn up and put the fire out, only for it to start again five minutes later in the same house. In the end, being the kind city developer I am, I demolished their house and re-built it.

So tell me, have you any old favourite games that you return to every so often?