[Review] – Cities In Motion

[Gamercide]

Developed by: Colossal Order

Published by: Paradox Interactive

Platforms: PC

Players: 1

Rated E (Everyone) by the ESRB

Throughout my many years playing games on the PC I’ve played quite a lot of titles. I love a game that makes you think and so much of my PC experience has leaned towards titles that fall within the strategy genre, which to me includes city-building, real time strategy, turn based war games and quite a few other “sims”. However let me be frank with you all. I’ve never in my life played a “transportation sim” so keep that in mind while you digest my take on Paradox & Colossal’s new title Cities in Motion. You won’t find any comparisons to Sid Meier’s Railroad games. You won’t find me talking about similarities to any of the Tycoon games.

What I will be telling you though is just how much fun and engrossing this game can be!

Cities in Motion is part of the business simulation genre. To be more accurate it falls into the realm of what is generally described as a transportation sim. At the onset of the game you’re presented with a bustling city. A metropolis of residents who independently are going about their daily lives. Like any large city it’s immediately apparent that there is a need for a public transportation system. If everyone relied on their own cars there would be traffic jams and immense congestion. This is where your job lies. Create a system of travel for your digital civilization to use to ease their commute and make their busy lives easier!

Unlike many strategy games I have played in the past Cities in Motion’s campaign does not really allow you to build these cities yourself (except using the map editor). While you have no direct control over individual people or the various buildings within the game that they must travel to and from, what you do have is the power to help everyone get from point A to point B in the most efficient way you can come up with. Do you build bus lines? Maybe an underground subway system? Boats to cross river channels? Why not even fly in style by constructing a fleet of helicopters to ferry the denizens of your digital world through the skies? Cities in Motion offers all these opportunities in spades with what can seem like a dizzying array of options, boasting more than thirty vehicles of various methods of travel which you must use to construct your transportation empire.

One of the very first things that struck me about this game is how great it looks. Before I even took the task of beginning my business venture I just sat and watched the people move around the city, looking at the great detail and care that was given to rendering the buildings and environment while listening to the serenely peaceful soundtrack. Each of the four cities available in the game, which include Vienna, Helsinki, Berlin and Amsterdam, are wonderfully presented. The game and each of its twelve scenarios spans about a hundred years of transportation so it’s really amazing to see how things progress and the new options in transportation as time goes on.

Now it may be my lack of experience, or it may be a steep learning curve, but as I found out while playing you won’t get very far building a single massive bus line throughout your city. Even the tutorial took me a few restarts to figure out what was going on (specifically I kept running out of money!) but I attribute that to my own newness to transportation sims. It took me a few hours of playing and experimenting with the toys that were given to me to realize that not everyone in my city wants to ride a bus for hours on end around a huge circle. This is most likely an obvious thing to some people who live in a larger city unlike my own, but it was a mistake that became obvious fairly quickly when people started refusing to use the “Bus Line of the Gods” I was so proud of constructing. My ticket sales plummeted. Faith in my company fell drastically. My bank account bled dry. I feared a massive revolt of my employees as I tried to lower their wages to compensate poor company performance. It was clear that I needed to expand my empire and meet the needs of the social masses instead of throwing fleets of buses on a single pathway around my city. Suddenly the game got a whole lot deeper.

The Bus Line of the Gods didn't work out so well for me!

What I failed to observe in my original few hours of gameplay is that there are seven separate “social groups” spread throughout the metropolis I was staring at. These social groups all have different needs, desires and incomes, so learning how to tweak your company’s offerings to tailor to their wants is important. Not everyone wants to sit on a bus all day and most certainly not everyone wants to spend $20 on a ticket to ride them as it makes a hundred stops around town. Meeting the needs of these distinct groups adds a whole layer of gameplay to Cities in Motion. Combine this with a flowing economy system that changes throughout the game which forces you to keep a close eye on your ticket prices. High ticket prices make it so customers can’t afford to use the transportation you’ve spent hours laying out for them. Ticket prices too good to be true? Then you will find your company’s coffers dwindling and become unable to expand. Instead of just trying to build the perfect routes, known as “lines”, throughout the city I now became focused on satisfying everyone rather than simply creating my super bus line.

So I built trains. I tunneled out metro systems (which I must admit is very fun to plan these out underneath the cities!). I let the citizens take to the skies in my shining fleet of helicopters. Suddenly people were a lot happier, my company flourished, and of course I still had my epic bus lines to connect them all. Transportation moguls, and even transportation morons like myself, are sure to agree that Cities in Motion is one train that you definitely don’t want to miss.

Cities in Motion will release this February 25th, 2011. Your purchase guarantees you a great collection of 12 scenarios, over 30 vehicles, 4 expansive towns to play in, a complete sandbox mode, an in depth map editor and many, many hours of fun!

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[ThermoNukePanda]

Would someone mind fixing and editing the above post to get rid of all the screens and link to the Gamercide front page?

Thanks.

[Siren]

Done

This review turned out really nice Chris. While this isn't my kind of sim game (I prefer ones that you build from the ground up) there seems like there is plenty to do and from the screens the graphics look great for this type of game.

[ThermoNukePanda]

Well one thing to keep in mind is that it does have a map editor. The map editor allows you to create a whole city basically and then run with it.

[ThermoNukePanda]

PK if you wouldn't mind, please send the Gamercide link to your contact in Paradox so they know we published the review for them.

[PeeKnuckle]

I did yesterday. Review turned out great, Chris.

[ThermoNukePanda]

Good. I'm glad that I didn't let Gamercide down then. I hope this helps to build bettercontacts at Paradox you you/us. I didn't fluff the review either. The game was pretty fun. I like not having to give a game a "score" anymore too. It helps to just write a review rather than worry about the "end result"/score you're going to give it.