Cities: Skylines 2’s cool new street instruments are already making me suppose my metropolis will not be a traffic-filled hellscape
On: June 22, 2023
I really like constructing cities in Cities: Skylines, however loving one thing doesn’t suggest you are good at it. And with regards to the cities I’ve constructed through the years, all of them have one factor in widespread: they’re an utter visitors nightmare.
I skilled my horrible street planning expertise firsthand once I tried residing in one in every of my Cities: Skylines cities (utilizing a number of mods) and found issues have been even worse than I assumed once I encountered a quarter-mile lengthy visitors jam solely made up of ambulances, hearses, and rubbish vehicles. Heck, even town I constructed that solely had a single household residing in it nonetheless had a visitors jam of buses. I simply suck at roads.
However the brand new Cities: Skylines 2 street instruments trailer (above) has given me hope. There are such a lot of neat new instruments for constructing and managing roads and visitors that I am beginning to suppose possibly even the world’s worst metropolis planner (me) can handle to not utterly bungle issues with regards to roads.
First, it is nice to see that constructing a bit of street mechanically comes with water and sewer piping and electrical conduits in-built Cities: Skylines 2, so no extra messing round endlessly with pipes and wires (besides when making connections to distant buildings like energy crops and water remedy amenities).
Secondly, holy cow! There are roundabouts! Lastly! They usually appear like a breeze so as to add, even to current intersections:
Cities: Skylines 2 roundabouts”
Third, there is a easy strategy to make excellent metropolis grids. I am particularly glad to see this as a result of whereas I begin off a brand new metropolis drawing my roads very rigorously, my cities all the time wind up a bit off-kilter, crooked, and messy. Parking heaps are additionally new to Cities: Skylines 2 (they solely lately made it into the unique game in an update) which is nice if you wish to construct an American-style metropolis, a lot of that are made from roughly 98% parking heaps.
There are additionally some neat methods to enhance your roads by including timber alongside the medians, sound obstacles to guard close by neighborhoods from the noise, and plenty of different neat-looking options. Dictating visitors path, including intersections, and popping in visitors lights, visitors indicators, and offramps… all of it seems to be a lot simpler than it’s within the unique game.
Or does it look… a bit too simple? I wish to be assured in my metropolis constructing expertise, however I’ve failed so many occasions to construct a metropolis that does not finally descend into one huge, miles-wide visitors jam that I am not solely positive I belief myself. I assume I am going to discover out when Cities: Skylines 2 launches in October. Within the meantime, for a deeper dive into Cities: Skylines 2’s new street instruments, this is a dev diary that goes together with the trailer.
