IGN has shared a preview for Cities: Skylines and discusses whether 13 Finnish developers could take on Maxis’ SimCity.
Developer Colossal Order claims two key differentiators from EA’s genre stalwart: freedom and control. The former manifests itself with Skylines’ openness to modification. While the small team has built a hearty city-builder, Colossal Order is building mod support into Skyline so that the game can grow even further after launch. (SimCity encourages most forms of modification, but doesn’t have an official modding tool.)
And while that’s all well and good, there’s always a possibility that a mod community will be underwhelming (or nonexistent), so I’ve extracted more excitement out of the control level Colossal Order showcased during the hands-off demo. I’m never really one to micromanage my in-game cities, so being able to create swathes of residential buildings or large roads with photoshop-like brushes and marquee tools is a nice way to create a signature city look without a ton of clicking (though fans looking to be specific can lay down individual buildings by doing things the old-fashioned way).
