City builders don't exactly dominate the industry like other genres, but the experience they provide is oftentimes more engrossing than the biggest shooters and RPG adventures on the market. Between zoning out residential and commercial areas and ensuring there's enough power in a city to keep the lights on, it's easy to lose track of time. Cities: Skylines 2 looks to join a long line of city builders that have made gamers happily lose that sense of time and after the resounding success of Paradox Interactive's original Cities: Skylines, the developer looks to expand on the experience in almost every conceivable way.
Cities: Skylines thrived on its wealth of base game features, as well as its deep well of DLC that made it even easier for gamers to build the city of their dreams. Cities: Skylines 2 is expanding the base experience by implementing many of the original's DLCs from the start, in addition to other wholly new mechanics. Many of these features simplify the Cities: Skylines experience, like having water pipes automatically run under streets instead of installing them manually. One new feature in particular, however, takes the nuisance of landfills and solves some of its greatest issues.
Cities: Skylines' Landfill Problem
While Cities: Skylines made it fun to build a glittering metropolis, it also didn't shy away from the dirty work that comes with running a city. As is the case with other city builders like SimCity, trash collection was an essential feature of Cities: Skylines. All players had to do was purchase a landfill, place it in a favorable spot, and let dumpsters drive around the city collecting trash and dropping it back off at the landfill. On paper, it seemed about as simple as Cities: Skylines' other features, like supplying clean water to every citizen. Unfortunately, trash collection wasn't always a walk in the proverbial park.
Two issues would often arise from this landfill mechanic, especially in cities that had grown quite large. First, they would fill up rather quickly, forcing players to relocate trash to a separate landfill or incineration plant. This would effectively make that landfill useless for trash collection, forcing players to build more. Players were limited to only one kind of landfill, though, creating a sort of cyclical saturation of landfills that could often get in the way of Cities: Skylines' usually accessible nature. Fortunately, Cities: Skylines 2 implements an intuitive and deceptively simple fix.
How Cities: Skylines 2 Fixes Landfills
In Cities: Skylines 2, developer Paradox Interactive seems intent on optimizing the experience from the first game. Landfills play a large role in that optimization, as players are no longer restricted to the same rectangular landfill shape. Now, players are able to draw their own landfill dimensions to fit their needs. Not only should this make trash collection easier for many players, but it should also give Cities: Skylines 2 players a greater sense of choice. Instead of mapping roadways and other buildings around the dimensions of a landfill, city building enthusiasts can draw their landfills to accommodate the surrounding area.
City builders as detailed as Cities: Skylines are few and far between since SimCity fell from grace so many years ago, so seeing Paradox Interactive thoroughly enhance the sequel should be a good sign for the genre. The developer has spent the last few weeks detailing some of the biggest changes and enhancements coming to Cities: Skylines 2 through feature highlights on YouTube, and these new landfill mechanics are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Time will tell if these improvements are enough to lift Cities: Skylines 2 above the high standing of the original.
Cities: Skylines 2 releases October 24 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.