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New buildings have been added to the core stock, including the aforementioned zoo and a prison for all the criminals generated by the new night life. This is an authentic view of what happens in a typical low-crime city when the sun goes down, not a GTA-style caricature of hookers and guns. The staid nature of everything fits in perfectly with the orderly towns created here. Cities here are still the same well-mannered, easy-to-govern burgs that they were when the game first launched in the spring. The whole concept for life after dark is a little buttoned-down, so don’t expect any wild red-light districts to grow up in the midst of your predictable old cities. Plop down a cop shop in the new districts, tweak the sliders a bit, and you’re covered.Ĭities: Skylines is now a much more well-rounded depiction of city life in comparison with the original game, which in retrospect is more of a 9-to-5 business simulation. Nothing here requires more than minor adjustments in city planning, however. The budget screen is now split into day and night with separate sliders, so you can do things such as crank up the police budget to deal with the added crime that comes after sunset. Overnight considerations must be taken into account across the city now, most notably when it comes to after-hours expenses. Tourism lets you create tourist traps that soon wind up dotted with attractions like hotels, seaside restaurants on piers, marinas, and docks for fishing tours, along with bigger unique amenities such as a zoo and a casino that are unlocked after dedicating fairly large city sections to this new industry. The leisure sector ties into the “sun going down” theme of the expansion by allowing you to establish what amounts to entertainment districts where your citizens can dance all night, go to movies, torture the lyrics of old songs in karaoke bars, work out in all-night gyms, and so on. The most noteworthy new option the expansion brings is the ability to designate commercial zones as specialized leisure and tourism districts, just as you could mark off industrial districts for specific purposes in the original game. I plowed power lines right through a row of buildings on a couple of occasions, so you have to be careful at night here. The one drawback is that night is a bit too black, obscuring fine terrain details that you need to see while dropping down roads, pipes, and electrical lines.
CITIES SKYLINES AFTER DARK REVIEW WINDOWS
This reveals a beautiful skyline with lights sparkling from building windows and new nighttime accoutrements such as neon signs and video screens. While the original's in-game time was stuck pretty much at high noon, the sun now goes up and down just like it does in the real world.
CITIES SKYLINES AFTER DARK REVIEW FULL
As the name indicates, the hook for this expansion is the addition of a full day-night cycle. Carve out a Tourism district in a commercial zone in After Dark and these areas almost immediately take on new life after the sun goes down.Īfter Dark doubles down on all of the above. But it worked, and it was so true to life that it still draws me in for occasional sessions of pretending to be a mayor, when I generally like playing games specifically to forget that I actually am one. Sure, it was a little bit on the dry side, especially with no fanciful SimCity concepts like giant monster attacks and superheroes. It included policies that let you set something of a big picture for your administration, as well as lots of little touches like being able to name and create boroughs with distinct identities. Even with real-world irate midnight calls from residents (fortunately) removed from the picture in Cities: Skyline, the original was a thorough simulation of what it takes to build and run a city, complete with proper zoning for residential, commercial, and industrial development. My review of Cities: Skylines played up my real-world role as the mayor of a Canadian town, and I have to fall back on that again to reiterate just how much this game captures the experience of leading an actual municipality. Even though this add-on only subtly adjusts the focus of the original game, it broadens the scope in such a way that I have to recommend it as an essential purchase for any and all virtual mayors.
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The experience is further boosted with more subtle gameplay tweaks, including new commercial districts for leisure and tourism, extended budgetary demands-keeping those streetlights on isn’t free-and a number of new buildings and policies. After Dark adds a day-night cycle to the Cities experience, expanding the realism of the original game by giving you a glimpse into what city life is like after the sun goes down. As the old song says, “At night, it’s a different world.” That old Lovin’ Spoonful lyric holds true in After Dark, the first expansion for Colossal Order’s Cities: Skylines.