Well, Cities: Skylines 2 is here, and it's another broken game release.
I don't really understand how people make the review threads, but we're sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it's even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the performance issues, but they really are that bad.
Popular Cities: Skylines 1 streamers are reporting that they are not able to achieve a consistent 60 fps, even with RTX 4090s and lowering the graphics to 1440p medium settings. Based on utilization numbers, it sounds like the GPU is limiting factor here.
Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.
IGN and other reviewers are reporting that the game does not self-level building plots, which is something that C:S1 did pretty well. This leads to every plot looking like this:
Maybe not a big deal to some, but the focus of Cities: Skylines has always been on building beautiful cities (vs. having a realistic simulation), so this feels like a betrayal of Colossal Order's own design philosophy.
Personally, this is a pretty big bummer for me. I like C:S1 a lot, but I find it hard to get into a gameflow that feels good unless I commit to mods pretty hard, and that means a steeper learning curve. For this reason, I tend to have more fun just watching other people play the game. I was looking forward to C:S2 as a great jumping on point to really dig into city-building myself. Maybe I'm being too harsh here because of my personal disappointment - many don't really care about hitting 60fps, but those same people also tend to not build top-end PCs. And it sounds like if you don't have a top-end PC, you're looking at sub 30 fps, and I think most agree that that is borderline unplayable.
There's many things I can overlook here but the lack of bikes nixed my hype fully. I don't want to build car hell yet again. I can leave the house if I wanna see that.
Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but just because a game uses 16gb of ram on a 32gb system does not been it can't make do with 8gb on a more limited system.
Not having 60 fps might be an issue for a shooter or anything that is built on fast reactions, but it doesn't really sound like an issue in a city builder.
I don't know, this whole 60fps thing is a new demand from gamers. Frankly I don't care about reviews anymore. Everyone skews negative, and I'm tired of it.
My hard takes:
60fps doesn't matter. It's not a shooter. Even CS1 I could only get 50ish on a new map, and that's with hardware that's 6 years newer than the game.
RAM should be used. For gaming it would be wasteful not to use it. If you aren't using all your ram then you're loading textures, shaders, and everything from disk, which is thousands of times slower and that would lead to .. you guessed it, gamers bitching about lag. What are you using that ram for anyway when you're gaming that's a higher priority? If you're watching someone and they're complaining that a game is using too much ram shut them off. They don't how computers work. These aren't the days of 256MB of ram. I have 32 gigs. I want them to use it.
Marketers are paid to lie. They don't understand what the game can do, they're paid to sell it. Cyberpunk was disappointing for many because they believed marketers running unleashed, saying the game would be a revolution, that it would be gaming evolved. It wasn't. Instead gamers "only" got a fun open world RPG and they were disappointed by it. (And bugs, they had legit concerns but marketing was stupid around that game and every one of their marketers should have been fired )
I find that people who watch reviewers are exponentially more disappointed in games because they let reviewers tell them how to feel. If you want to start enjoying games more, stop letting them tell you if you should be disappointed. They're going for clicks and views, and the rage train gets a lot of them. Just try it and return it if you don't like it.
I haven't watched anything and I'm excited. I'm not "hyped", I don't think it will redefine city building forever. I think I will enjoy my time in a game that is by definition an iteration of the franchise. Maybe it'll be great. Maybe it'll be worse than the first, but I'm going to decide that myself, not let some reviewer begging me for a subscribe tell me.
even with RTX 4090s and lowering the graphics to 1440p medium settings. Based on utilization numbers, it sounds like the GPU is limiting factor here.
What are the CPU utilization numbers? C:S is a notoriously CPU-first game, particularly with mods. If your CPU can't calculate more than 10fps, you won't get more than 10fps.
Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.
It starts (barebones, slow as hell) with 8GB. You want 32GB or more for it to run somewhate decently.
Seriously, people don't understand what "cache" means, maybe they should just create a ramdisk and install the game there to understand the concept.
Between this and Star Trek: Infinite seems like Paradox's new MO is to set unreasonable deadlines and rush games to release. You should basically consider all their games early access at this point, except they'll charge you for updates. They've learned that a buggy half-baked release wont effect their sales, and they can just patch the game and crank out new features as dlc.
I can't say I'm surprised. I was wondering whether I should jump in on day 1, since I played C:S 1 pretty heavily, and want to support the devs, but this definitely means I'll be waiting at least a few patches.
I never play these types of games but I distinctly remember my friend having a full on meltdown about how fucked up the first Cities Skylines was like a decade ago, lol.
Game companies get greedier, gamers want bigger and better experiences for less money, investors want higher returns, computers aren't getting faster at the same rate and the game industry can afford to treat it's employees like shit because there's always going to be a constant stream of new people who want to work in it.
That's disappointing. Some level of unmet expectations are to be, well, expected for a sequel to such a cultural behemoth as Cities: Skylines, but it sounds like Colossal Order made some sacrifices on the release date altar. Such a shame.
On days like this I ask myself if the reason games are released that broken is because there are no real software engineers in the game industry. Like a carmack with doom. Someone who understands the technical site of things.