When I was a little kid, one of the first PC games I ever played that was not "kiddy" in nature (IE not edutainment) was Sim City 2000. The way my mother tells it I would end up crying. Hey, you would two if you had a fire emergency and rioters had just destroyed your fire station.

But I loved it and as time went by and new sequels came along, I got them as well. I lost track of how many hours I spent on Sim City 4. Then came the news in 2013 there would be a new one.

And we all know how well THAT turned out. The expansion was cool, I like that sort of aesthetic… but someone just dropped the ball on that game so hard they put a hole in the floor right to the basement. 

I don't remember if it was a humble bundle or something, but I found myself with a copy of a game from Scandinavia called "Cities: Skylines" via Steam. and let me tell you, it runs circles around that.. thing... EA  tossed at us.

Positives...

expandable cities. Sim City 4 had different sized city plots (and I always went for the big ones) while Sim2013 had one size fits no one. Skylines has a 2km by 2km square to start, but as your city expands in population, you get the option to buy more squares. Default is 8 more, which brings us to... 

Modding. Between the fact the game comes with several mods built in to the massive library on steam, you're basically spoiled to hell and back. Some of the most popular unlock all the squares on the map, so you end up with a 16km by 16km or greater map. 

Choices. Just going off intra-city transportation. Sim City 2013 had buses, streetcars, boats and trains, plus the maglev if you had the expansion. Skylines has buses, subways and trains in the vanilla default, but the DLCs add streetcars, ferries, monorails, even BLIMPS.

Detail. sticking with the transportation theme. in SC13 You plopped some stops and that was it. The vehicles routed themsevels. Skylines lets you plan out routes

negatives. 

Music. With the exception of a golden oldies station with licensed songs... the music is a bit dull. I have a mod that allows me to add in music packs and I have two radio stations from GTA V instead (Non stop Pop and Los Santos Rock Radio, with all the ads and DJ segments)

performance. This game is a system memory hog. normally, I can just shut down one game and load up another. Skylines, my PC runs it better after a full reboot and taking out a few unnesiary programs. If you don't have more than 8 GB of RAM, forget trying to add assets. 

OVERALL

A