My reaction to the various parts of this movie:
Start of the video: 'Looks like a city simulator.'
Moment the video moves over the hill and hows off a big ass city: 'Oh, f___!'
When they showed the crazy bridge: 'Hahaha, no f______ way!'
In summary: I'm excited.
Recently I've been playing city building games and I've yet to have my hunger satiated completely. SimCity 2000 has the great terrain generation tools but is too mired in controlling everything, SimCity 4 is too clunky UI wise and to grid-like, SimCity 2013's are too small and CitiesXL lacks the charm of the Maxis products. There have been some city building games that are great, but there hasn't really yet been any one that's set the bar to unreachable heights. I hope Cities can be that one.
In my opinion a city building game needs to take place on a macro level. Too many of these games feature on too small stuff. Just like the mayor or city manager of New York often doesn't get into the nitty gritty of a single school or single house, the player of a city building game shouldn't have to deal with that either. Instead the focus should be on expanding or improving the city and the subject of your attention shouldn't be individuals but collectives (neighborhoods, etc.). The Cities franchise has a great advantage with that, since it's always been about groups. Working people needed a fast connection to the financial district, seniors needed plentiful public transport to get them from their neighborhood to the center, etc. That made things approachable. One area needs this, another area needs that. While in reality everyone is a snowflake, you don't have countless staff to show you this. Instead you just have an hour to build a basic city.
I've only played Cities in Motion 2 for a little bit, but I noticed a lot of, in my eyes, unnecessary complexity. When I'm designing a big city I want to just plop down a bus terminal and have that alleviate my infrastructure problems. I don't want to have to set up every single bus route. There's games like Cities in Motion for that. More complexity can be hidden behind the basics, but it shouldn't be a requisite when the game is about a larger thing such as city building. What I'm trying to say is: it should be quick and intuitive to build a city that works. More complex systems should be left for those who want to turn that city into an intricate piece of clockwork.
Start of the video: 'Looks like a city simulator.'
Moment the video moves over the hill and hows off a big ass city: 'Oh, f___!'
When they showed the crazy bridge: 'Hahaha, no f______ way!'
In summary: I'm excited.
Recently I've been playing city building games and I've yet to have my hunger satiated completely. SimCity 2000 has the great terrain generation tools but is too mired in controlling everything, SimCity 4 is too clunky UI wise and to grid-like, SimCity 2013's are too small and CitiesXL lacks the charm of the Maxis products. There have been some city building games that are great, but there hasn't really yet been any one that's set the bar to unreachable heights. I hope Cities can be that one.
In my opinion a city building game needs to take place on a macro level. Too many of these games feature on too small stuff. Just like the mayor or city manager of New York often doesn't get into the nitty gritty of a single school or single house, the player of a city building game shouldn't have to deal with that either. Instead the focus should be on expanding or improving the city and the subject of your attention shouldn't be individuals but collectives (neighborhoods, etc.). The Cities franchise has a great advantage with that, since it's always been about groups. Working people needed a fast connection to the financial district, seniors needed plentiful public transport to get them from their neighborhood to the center, etc. That made things approachable. One area needs this, another area needs that. While in reality everyone is a snowflake, you don't have countless staff to show you this. Instead you just have an hour to build a basic city.
I've only played Cities in Motion 2 for a little bit, but I noticed a lot of, in my eyes, unnecessary complexity. When I'm designing a big city I want to just plop down a bus terminal and have that alleviate my infrastructure problems. I don't want to have to set up every single bus route. There's games like Cities in Motion for that. More complexity can be hidden behind the basics, but it shouldn't be a requisite when the game is about a larger thing such as city building. What I'm trying to say is: it should be quick and intuitive to build a city that works. More complex systems should be left for those who want to turn that city into an intricate piece of clockwork.
