Cities: Skylines II Review - Utopian Thinking

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Colossal Order
Rating: Everyone

In the technical world of city-builders, 2015’s Cities: Skylines made a name for itself as an uncompromising but delicate game where players needed to spin a variety of municipal plates to keep things in order across their fantasy cities. Eight years and millions of digital building permits later, Colossal Order has returned to construct a convincing sequel in Cities: Skylines II. The iterative additions don’t arrive without consequential imperfections, but Cities: Skylines II still boasts all the intricacy and customizability necessary to provide players with a challenging and deep city-building experience.

In Cities: Skylines II, you create a whole world from terrarium beginnings. You start by zoning your districts, then adding functionality with electricity and plumbing before building serviceable districts to attract and placate dedicated citizens. I unintentionally recreated the town I grew up in, shoving all the industrial features to the side with the power and water facilities.

Despite its sandbox impression, Cities: Skylines II has an engaging progression system, offering rewards as you scale from a tiny village into a bustling megalopolis. Each milestone achieved delivers Development Points you can use in infrastructure trees to unlock systems like police and parks, while expansion permits let you extend your city limits and access the resources you need to keep the lights on. Despite how mundane it sounds, unlocking and investing in underground parking and figuring out how it could help my citizens felt revelatory thanks to this guided approach.

 

As my city became more complex, it opened the door to signature buildings like factories or mansions and more contemporary concerns like pollution and congestion, emboldening me to find Arcadian solutions and give my citizens a better life. Even in success, the locals had plenty to say about it via the in-game Twitter clone Chirper. Just like real social media, there was a mountain of mean things to read about my supposedly terrible choices, with a few compliments smattered in between. How dare I try and use green energy to power the city; it’s far too loud now. It forces you to come to terms with the fact that not every digital person will enjoy your utopian vision.

The exponential growth of my cities took a toll on the game’s visuals and performance – Cities: Skylines II struggles to keep up with its own ambitious scale. Up close, there are moments of peculiar beauty, where sunlight streams through the gaps of a castle’s battlements, or you catch the shadow cast by your own terraformed mountain. However, from the typical top-down perspective, the world feels flat and somewhat cold, not helped by the systemic chugging, error messages, and frequent crashing, which scuppered pockets of my playtime. While I hope these issues will be resolved for players post-launch, it was disappointing and frustrating to contend with while fine-tuning my pipes, wires, and bus routes.

You can zoom in and get attached to the individuals living in your city, clicking on them to learn about their education, family, pets, and socioeconomic status. At one point, I considered demolishing a whole suburb before I spotted one of my uncanny valley citizens doing yoga in the backyard. After reading their factfile, I couldn’t bring myself to destroy their family home.

If you miss too many citizen complaints, you’re alerted of major problems via booming emergency warnings that disrupt Cities: Skylines II’s calming Brian Eno-esque soundtrack, which is punctuated by appropriately annoying fictional ads. Environmental tragedies constitute hard urban planning lessons, and you’re able to manage traffic control, bunkers, and firefighters to mitigate damage. The first time I witnessed a tornado, it skirted my city’s edges, and I held my breath, praying it wouldn’t reach the center, promptly investing in better protection after the fact.

Quantifying the nuance of Cities: Skylines II isn’t easy. As I dig deeper into its complicated systems, more and more exciting features are still coming into focus. The sequel is ambitious and wants players to juggle hundreds of considerations as they build towards Elysium, and it delivers in that aspect. Yet, unfortunately, the game’s consistent technical problems tend to mire that calculated success.

Score: 7.5

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Sonic Superstars Review – The Folly Of Teamwork

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Arzest, Sonic Team
Rating: Everyone

Sonic Superstars marks a step back to the Genesis-era 2D platforming that put the series on the map and a leap forward by letting three more friends join the adventure. While the former largely succeeds in providing an enjoyable nostalgic experience, the latter fails to allow partners to have the same amount of fun. 

As either Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, or Amy, you spin dash your way through a brand new batch of beautifully designed zones. From the twisting vines and lush greenery of Speed Jungle to the gilded architecture of the Golden Capital, Sonic Superstars pops with bright colors and whimsical designs for the new gallery of badniks. Unfortunately, the soundtrack doesn’t have the same highs as some of the previous 2D entries. The music is not bad, but outside of a couple of tracks, most tunes are unmemorable and don’t hit that next gear of toe-tapping goodness I’ve come to expect from the franchise. 

Platforming holds up its end of the bargain, however. The physics perfectly replicate the feel of Sonic’s Genesis adventures, allowing me to comfortably slip into the action like putting on an old glove. Sonic’s pals sport their familiar specialties: Tails can fly and carry partners, Knuckles can climb walls and glide, and Amy sports an enemy-slaying double jump. Each pulls their weight, so the choice comes down to a matter of preference; Amy became my favorite besides Sonic himself.

Zones are large, multi-tiered obstacle courses filled with deviously placed enemies, death traps, and new traversal gimmicks. I liked mechanics such as jumping across speeding rollercoaster trains in a casino zone or transforming into pixelated avatars in a cyberspace-inspired world. Other challenges are a pain, such as carefully navigating a pitch-black jungle with only a glowing butterfly for light – an idea ill-suited for Sonic’s faster-paced style of play. Besides traditional mainline Acts, new character-specific Acts provide decent avenues to sample the other heroes while propelling the narrative. 

As a whole, levels do a good job of capturing the core fun of Sonic: zipping through elaborate obstacles at breakneck speed while dodging hazards at the last second. That also means they sport the same trial-and-error design ethos of the classic games; you often won’t – or can’t – anticipate a hazard until it’s too late. While not new, I was sometimes frustrated by this approach as going too fast often leads to hitting something that almost feels designed to punish you for doing the thing Sonic and his friends do best. Deaths can feel cheap in some instances, so I’m thankful Superstars does away with the finite lives system of the classic games.

Chaos Emeralds now grant new powers upon their collection, accessible through a weapon wheel. Powers like Avatar and Vision let you send attacking clones across the screen and reveal hidden rings and platforms, respectively. My favorite is Bullet, which lets me fire myself in a chosen direction for an explosive boost. Since Chaos Emerald portals are hidden instead of appearing at checkpoints, these powers are totally optional and easy to miss. Thus, while these skills can be useful, they also aren’t important or vital. I often forget I have them at my disposal and rarely feel guilty about not using them more. Anything can easily be conquered with your base moveset, and while the powers don’t detract, they’re not as meaningful to the experience as I hoped. 

 

Unfortunately, the newly added four-player co-op affirms my biggest fear going in: 2D Sonic is not built for traditional multiplayer, at least not with all participants sharing the same screen. Playing with even one other person can be a mess, as going faster or slower than your partner forces you to respawn back to them. Sonic games are about speed, and levels sport numerous paths, but since players aren’t free to explore independently, you’re rubberbanded back together. This creates jarring instances of partners vanishing and warping back if they zigged where you zagged, which can be distracting in the middle of a tricky platforming sequence. Playing co-op feels less like working together and more like fighting to stay together. 

Additionally, Superstars is inconsistent in which player it prioritizes. Generally, Player One is in charge, meaning if someone else dies, the game continues by focusing on the leader. This isn’t the case in some instances, though. In the casino zone, I fell to my death several times; on some occasions, the game refocused on my partner, who continued onward, and I just respawned. In other instances, the camera followed me all the way to my death, resulting in a Game Over for the team. Other challenges seem ill-suited for multiple players; the aforementioned illumination-focused zone is a nightmare with other people since only one player can hold the light, forcing everyone else to either stick extremely close by or wander blindly. Co-op is also restricted to local play only due to quality concerns, but I can’t imagine how it would suffer much from online play. As it stands, co-op is functional and can be unintentionally entertaining in a purely chaotic sense, but doesn’t feel totally thought out. 

Battle Mode, a versus destination consisting of bland, one-note mini-game competitions, is hardly worth exploring. The character customization, in which you assemble a robot using parts purchased by spending special coins found in levels or special challenges, is uninteresting as well. A second, more difficult post-game campaign offers the most compelling reason to stick with Superstars after you’ve foiled Dr. Eggman’s plans.  

Despite some big caveats, I mostly enjoyed Sonic Superstars as a solo trip down memory lane. The platforming feels good, the levels are mostly fun, and the presentation looks great. Ripping through robots while hitting loop-de-loops and bounce pads still brings a smile to my face. But the game’s new additions either feel inconsequential or ill-advised, watering down an otherwise respectable package. Sonic Superstars offers a solid return to form for the series’ oldest and most ardent followers, with some hedgehog-sized potholes along the way.

Score: 7.5

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Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged Review - A Respectable Lap

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X/S
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Milestone S.r.l.
Developer: Milestone S.r.l.
Rating: Everyone

As a speed-focused arcade racer, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged is a joy thanks to the emphasis on going fast, collecting Hot Wheels cars spanning decades, and crafting your own tracks. However, it doesn’t quite have the variety of tracks to keep it fresh throughout, and the story mode is an innocuous affair, leading to middle-of-the-pack results instead of the checkered flag it was chasing.

While it may not be as technical as most racing sims or as silly as the Mario Kart series, Turbocharged doesn’t lack charm. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 drops you onto tracks in a backyard, on a golf course, and in other real-world locations that recreate the memories of a kid who could dream up their masterpiece track and then put it together wherever they’d like. Loop-de-loops, golf balls, giant spiders, and tight corners provide a chaotic and enjoyable challenge.

The focus on speed is fun, making races quick, just-one-more-time affairs. You must master your boost in standard races, obstacle races, boss races, and eliminations, which are my favorite, as you need to keep the lead for a set time as cars are eliminated until yours is the sole survivor.

 

Your boost bar is crucial since you use it to perform jumps and lateral dashes, two features new to the sequel. Players can use the lateral dash to slam into other cars, but it, along with the jump, can also be used mid-flight to right your vehicle back onto the track, fueling the chaotic control during races. You gain boost via drifting, and thankfully, the mechanic is forgiving and pretty easy to, if not master, at least get a handle on quickly. Different cars have different boosts, which can change how you approach a race. One car may only have three bars max, giving you three boosts, while another has an entire bar that lets you save or burn as much as you need. 

Figuring out how much and often you can boost around tracks is essential; you may run into a situation where you can’t jump over an obstacle. Limited boost made me enjoy how I had to be just a little strategic in using it. There was more than one instance where I overdid it, finding myself unable to jump over a barrier or boosting right off a course. I never felt cheated, but I had a good laugh and learned from my overexcitement. In those instances, holding a button respawns you with enough boost to try again, though you lose a handful of seconds. 

The game includes a story mode, Creature Rampage, but it’s mostly a throwaway Saturday morning cartoon affair. Creature Rampage’s premise is simple: Giant monsters are on the loose, and your job is to shrink them down and subdue them by racing, all while listening to jokes from a wisecracking robot, a professor who seems to do more harm than good with his gadgets, and a fellow racer. The story plays out like a motion comic, with panels moving around furiously. It’s all a bit forgettable, and I honestly couldn’t wait for the cutscenes to be over, but it doesn’t linger long enough to get in the way of the races and earning more coins, upgrades, and pieces to customize tracks. 

The roughly eight-hour story mode does a good job of nudging players to use a variety of cars. The Hot Wheels aren’t just there to look cool; a Rip Rod in the drifter category takes corners like a dream, whereas a swift Mini Cooper is better suited for handling specific track terrain. I liked being pushed to use different cars in various situations, and the types really matter. I used a car unsuited for off-roading and couldn’t navigate dirt corners, encouraging me to explore new cars. After that nudge, I began upgrading my cars to have different boosts or handling benefits via the perks system, and before I knew it, I was customizing my cars with new looks. 

I would have enjoyed more variety in the track locations during Creature Rampage and other modes as you end up racing through much of the same scenery, hearing the same music, and looking at a game that seems stuck in a past console generation with sometimes bland visuals. It isn’t enough to detract from the fun, but you see a lot of the dinosaur museum and golf course before the game is over. 

 

Seeing this as a virtual play box on top of a racing game is a huge part of the proceedings. The racing is tight, fast, and fun, but the need to earn more coins to buy more cars for your virtual garage is enthralling. Hot Wheels vehicles have several rarity ratings, and as you play, different ones are cycled out in a shop on a timer. So, if you see a van with toast popping out of it, you might impulse buy it before it disappears, like I did. You can also refresh what’s for sale with some coins. I couldn’t stop adding vehicles to my collection; the weirder, the better.

Upping the customization ante is the track editor. It only took me a couple of minutes to get comfortable with the basics before I was making brutal, unrealistic tracks. It’s definitely a feature that takes some time to fully grasp, but it’s so much fun to select, say, the museum track and start laying down obstacle after obstacle in a winding track of doom and despair. Community tracks allow you to save ones you want to revisit. If you’re even a little bit creative or just like throwing stuff together like me, the track editor and car customization offer plenty of fun ways to get more mileage out of the game. 

Players can also take on others online in pretty standard fare like a quick race, rounding out the game’s features. Given the creativity present in other portions of the game, the online offerings feel downright vanilla, but it’s still a good time showing off your custom car. 

I can’t knock Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged for too much; it’s an enjoyable, arcade-like racer that feels like something you might find in the arcade. It captures what it’s like to be a kid imagining race courses for your toys and offers an almost overwhelming customizable playbox. The quick races and variety in modes never let anything become too dull before you’re on to the next objective, boosting your way to victory. I’m not a Hot Wheels diehard, but the sheer creativity, speed, and customization hooked me.

Score: 7.75

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