Cities in Motion 2

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Cities in Motion 2 review
Sergio Brinkhuis

Review

Back to square one

A day in the life (cntd)


Rather than assigning vehicles to a line, you assign them to a depot from which vehicles are dispatched as the lines that it serves require. In theory, this allows you to run for example one line with mostly day traffic, and one with evening or night traffic using the same vehicles. In practice, it never works out this way. It is difficult to set such lines up and – unless you tend to create very short lines – even the largest depot will run out of room servicing a single line pretty soon. Any overlap between the two lines would send you back to the drawing board of your lines.

On the plus side, managing timetables is done very elegantly. You simply select which times of the day the line should run and then select how frequently vehicles should be dispatched. You can specify the schedule in great detail for daytime, night time, weekend and rush hour. It’s very powerful and it will keep the micromanagers among us tweaking their lines to their hearts content.

Ran out of steam


Unfortunately Cities in Motion 2 comes with a rather extensive list of issues. Some are bugs, many have to do with the game’s poorly designed interface. Of the bugs, the worst is that the game does not always pick up on depot changes for a line. You can select a new depot for an existing line and, if you are lucky, the colored line indicator will point correctly to the new depot. Unfortunately the trams will often just keep coming and going to the old depot, regardless of their orders.

My biggest frustration with the interface is not being able to scroll the map using the mouse. The only way to scroll is using the WASD keys, which felt like a throwback to the 90’s. The list of vehicles assigned to a depot shows only generic icons with no way to distinguish between the various types, few as they are. You will have to click on a tram to see its make and model and before you know it you have 16 windows to open and close. It is possible to upgrade stops and depots when you have outgrown them but good luck finding out how. A simple ‘upgrade’ icon would have been ever so helpful here. It is a struggle to close menus and when you forget to close the ‘delete’ menu, the results can be rather disastrous. Don’t click on your line to see its details because, you guessed, it will delete your line without warning. Where most strategy titles have adopted individual notification icons to the side of the screen, Cities in Motion 2 stubbornly holds firm to a tiny window that features a list of notifications. For a well developed transportation system with several dozens of lines, notifications will fly by at great pace. And each time it does, a beep will tell you so and there is no way to shut off the sound. And then there is the infestation of depots. Before long you will be wondering if you have more depots than vehicles… The list goes on.

Back to square one


With Cities in Motion 2, Colossal Order seems to have gone two steps forward and two steps back. The new 3D engine has potential but graphically, cities are uninspiring to look at. It also feels as if fan feedback to the original was paid little heed if at all. Reading my 2011 review of Cities in Motion, I mentioned not being able to combine stops, an underdeveloped mission system, square canals in Amsterdam, a lackluster notification system and the lack of an AI component as my biggest gripes. Except for the square canals, all these problem still exist in Cities in Motion 2 and several new ones have been added to the list. Worse still, Cities in Motion 2 has a far smaller scope and we have actually – lost – features like going through a century of mass transit or new vehicles that appear as you progress through the years.

The lack of AI, disappointing campaign and overall bland graphics lead to a rather listless gameplay experience. Technically, Cities in Motion 2 is a capable game but there is little joy to be had in a game where all you are doing is setting up new lines and occasionally checking if they still run efficiently. This was somewhat true for the original as well but that game had far more character and pulled it off gracefully. This, unfortunately, does not.

6.5

fun score

Pros

New 3D engine allows for more natural city layouts, bigger maps, great system for zones.

Cons

No sense of achievement, no AI players to challenge you, expect a DLC frenzy.