Cities In Motion is the latest transport simulation from Paradox Interactive, developed by Colossal Order. As it turned out, the hardest part of writing this review was two-fold—one, getting far enough in the game to get a good picture of it; two, pulling myself away from my repeated failures within the game to actually write.
Is this game addictively fun? In my opinion, absolutely. The ultimate metric of any game in my eyes is whether or not you’re having fun despite losing. This game definitely delivers that in spades. After I installed the game, I sat down to play the first scenario, and four hours later still hadn’t beaten it—though let’s be honest: that’s entirely my fault.
Your objective is deceptively simple: build profitable mass-transit networks using buses, trams, metro trains, ferries, and helicopters. Sounds easy, right? Not so much. You’ll often find yourself taking control of a company which hasn’t maintained their lines, or is operating at a huge loss, or simply set things up in a way that makes no sense to you. It’s your job to fix it. While you’re at it, semi-random tasks will pop up asking you to build lines to specific locations, or to build more lines, and so on. Some of these tasks can be extremely profitable, while others serve as distractions that will waste your company’s funds.
One of the reasons I personally jumped at the chance to review this game is my history with SimCity. I’ve been a huge fan for years, but to me, SimCity 4 was a disappointment. Without the legendary Network Addon Mod, building megatropolis sized cities was continually derailed by bad transport simulation. I would look, and commuters would be driving over an hour and a half to work. Cities In Motion would be my chance to redeem myself!
Scenario Mode
The first mode of three you’re likely to play in Cities In Motion is Scenario mode. Scenario Mode covers over 100 years of transportation, though to be honest, it didn’t really feel like it to me. As you progress through the decades, you get better, faster, bigger vehicles. The challenges get progressively harder as well, making it more difficult to operate your company at a profit.
If you selected Sandbox mode first, you find out quickly that the game only includes the cities of Amsterdam, Berlin, Helsinki and Vienna plus a Tutorial map. My immediate reaction was: “… that’s it?” No, that is very much not it at all. Each Scenario has a set of scripts associated with it that can drastically change the look, feel and size of each city. Once I got the hang of things, I quickly found myself in Berlin again—but this time, I was finding routes that wouldn’t work because of the Berlin Wall!
Another interesting aspect if you go long enough in a scenario is the fluctuation of demand due to a number of factors. As your company grows in popularity, more people want to ride your buses, which can quickly overwhelm your lines in densely populated area. But then the simulated economy takes a turn for the worse, and your ticket prices are just too high for the unemployed to afford, cutting ridership drastically and leaving you with empty buses.
There’s a total of 12 scenarios to play through, unlocking each for repeat play as you beat it. I encountered a bug in one of them, but it was fixed by patch 1.0.13. Not counting the excellent replay value—you’ll go back like I did, looking to improve something continually—I would estimate there’s at least 40 hours of your life to spend in this mode.
Sandbox Mode and the Map Editor
If you’re not in the mood to follow a set list of objectives, there’s always Sandbox Mode and the Map Editor. Don’t like the layout of Helsinki? You can fix that; though it’ll only apply to Sandbox Mode. Want to build a massive thriving megacity to see if you can transport 20,000 riders per month? Absolutely possible. Just want to kick back, and see how big you can make a 2010 Berlin network? You can do that too.
There’s not much to say about Sandbox Mode. It works very well, all of the simulation is there, and you even get random tasks to help the profitability of your company. The financial simulation keeps it challenging, with the economy moving up and down through the years. I personally found the economy affected my ridership more than customer satisfaction, but I could be doing it wrong. The one problem I did run into was the game slowing down significantly with extremely large networks; to test simulation performance, I built up Berlin 1990 to 99% coverage with a massive network of metro, tram, and bus lines. At speeds 1 and 2 things were fine, but at the fastest speed, things slowed to unplayable. However, it’s more likely this is related to a known issue specific to my video card and not an actual issue with simulation.
The map editor is remarkably pleasant and very easy to use. While some labels could be clearer, they aren’t difficult to figure out with a little bit of playing around. The most complicated part of the map editor is the City Growth component. At the top of the screen, you’ll see an odd set of bars indicating year, month and day. You can use these to create a specific growth pattern for your city through a simple point and click interface to a rather powerful scripting engine behind it. Should you desire, you can even create your own scenarios to go with your maps, something several authors have already done.
Community and Addons
One of the key aspects of simulation games has always been the community. Often, the most interesting things come out of the players and fans creating maps, addons, and modifications for these games. Cities In Motion is no exception here.
While it may not be as well known as SimCity, Cities In Motion has a great community. While most of the fans are in Europe, China and Japan, the official forums are English. I took several trips there, and found them to be active, and more importantly, friendly and helpful. I also found staff from Colossal Order regularly checking in, offering support and addressing specific issues players found with the game.
Finding addons, maps and mods was easy as well. In less than 30 minutes, I was able to find and install addons to change the capacity and names of the buses, a dozen new maps, and yes, a cheat to solve my abysmal financial management. I had some difficulties installing the maps on my copy, but a quick trip to the forums followed by a search found the answer.
Should you pick up Cities In Motion? If you like sims, the answer is an unequivocal yes. I found the game to be exceptionally fun, and built with a good understanding of what players are looking for in a sim—both casual and serious. I was able to quickly master the UI, letting me focus on building my networks. I never once found myself frustrated, or in an unwinnable scenario. Even before addons and maps, there’s a ton of great gameplay here that you shouldn’t pass up.
Cities in Motion is available on Steam for $19.99.
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