Fan of Friday: Week of 9/4/2015

I've got a new addiction and it is literally eating up all of my spare time.

Cities: Skylines!

Oh my goodness, I love this game soooooooooooo much. It's absolutely brilliant.

If you haven't heard of it before, it's basically a contemporary version of SimCity 2000, but better. You build roads and zone for residential, commercial, and industry. You supply power and water and services and watch your little towns grow into beautiful cities.

The thing that really sets it apart is its attention to detail. In SimCity 2000, you zone for industry, but in Cities, you zone for ore industry or oil industry or agricultural industry or forestry industry. Tiny trucks shuttle these parts to commercial buildings where they sell them to customers. In SimCity, you buy bus depots. In Cities, you plan out bus routes and watch people queue at bus stops. There are trash services and pollution and traffic congestion. There are sidewalks and dogs and teeny tiny fire trucks. Every time I play, I notice something new. 

Also, it utilizes Steam amazingly. Maybe most games do this now, but it takes basically two clicks to download custom buildings and cars and none of that pesky moving files around and making sure they are in the right folders. Once my sister showed me how to do this, I went on a bit of spree. I now have a Jeep Wrangler, the DeLorean, a 'FedEx' truck, and a Volkswagen bus.

I downloaded the Spinnaker Tower from Portsmouth and a community swimming pool and a park that is just the Star Trek Enterprise and Bob's Burgers.

I showed the game to my sister and she was instantly enamored. She downloaded it, but her old laptop couldn't handle it so SHE BOUGHT A NEW LAPTOP. She needed one anyway, but this game is that good.

If you are interested in learning more about this game before sacrificing your life to it like I did, this youtube series shows it off and does a pretty good overview. In it, he has a special traffic mod. I was upset that it wasn't standard in the game download, but I found the mod on Monday and I have been wreaking havoc 'fixing' all my intersections. It's a game changer, guys. 

I'm really not joking when I say it's an addiction now. I've got two different parties to go to this weekend and I really wish I could blow them off and stay in my PJs all weekend and develop the perfect round-about. You've been warned.