(typing, lounge music)
All right, so here we are with another Cities: Skylines expansion pack!
This is the fourth expansion, Mass Transit,
available for $12.99 USD.
And, yes, this is a large-scale mass transportation-focused pack
as you might expect from the name,
giving you options like cable cars, ferries, monorails and blimps,
and multiple transport hubs.
These are not only great for combining several
different types of transport in one location,
instead of spreading it across the city.
Some of them are just much larger versions
of things you already have like these train stations. They're great!
There's also new scenarios,
an assortment of canals and new road types,
and bridges to go along with them,
new landmarks, and new policies
pertaining to the new vehicle types
and other stuff that the pack adds.
But really, the biggest draw of this DLC pack
are the different transportation types.
Let's start with the cable cars,
which is a welcome new pedestrian transport option.
It's obviously great for mountains and
hilly regions and stuff.
You might think of ski lifts and whatnot,
but it's not just for that. You can put them anywhere you want
and just sort of get pedestrians around.
So they don't have to necessarily walk there,
or take a car or a bus or anything else.
It's another way for people to get around on foot.
And it's pretty awesome, if you ask me.
Same goes with ferries.
No, not Tinkerbell, the boats.
These travel along ferry lines that you place on water
and carry passengers from one place to another, naturally.
And these are another highly welcome addition
because it makes islands and watery maps much more playable.
This is a map type that I've pretty much avoided playing with
very much in Skylines so far
because it's kind of hard to get people from one place to another
without having to resort to any of the other transport options.
Bridges and tunnels and things like that.
Those are still good to use too, but I really like water vehicles.
And something else to make use of all that open space
with water is awesome, in my book.
Same goes for monorails.
I absolutely love monorails!
I love them in the game, I love them in real life.
I love them in my dreams at night.
They're neat and I like the way that they look above roads
and weaving in and out between buildings.
And then the last new major addition here,
as far as vehicles go, are blimps.
And, uh... (chuckles)
You can kinda think of these as sky buses
for entertainment or getting around
or education or whatever.
A fun fantasy, but ultimately unnecessary.
I mean, I'm not really aware of any cities in the world
that actually have a dedicated blimp system
for their citizens to get around
that isn't just a one-off touristy thing.
But here, you got 'em.
So if you want to live out your blimpy fantasies, go right ahead.
If nothing else, the aesthetic is really cool.
Sort of weirdly futuristic for such a retro technology.
But for all of this stuff that it adds in the paid-for pack itself,
the free update that launched alongside Mass Transit
is arguably more awesome.
Or at least, I've gotten more enjoyment and use out of it.
For one thing, you get an updated transportation user interface.
Not only more involved but is more useful,
and you can navigate to the things you need to more easily
without having to individually click on a bunch of stuff around your city.
An incredibly handy thing indeed,
seeing as you're gonna be messing with this stuff all the time.
Managing the transportation has always been a huge part of Cities: Skylines
and these kind of changes and updates are things that I expected,
honestly, even earlier than this,
seeing as this came from the Cities in Motion developers.
The same with the rest of this stuff, like naming roads
and adding priorities for different roads.
As well as looking at detailed traffic routes
and analyzing where every single little citizen is going,
and checking which type of vehicles go on which routes
more often than the others.
And something that I've been waiting for ever since the game launched.
Same goes for the stop sign and stoplight editing.
You can modify each individual intersection
and customize whether or not it has lights or stop signs,
or mess with the yield system.
It's not quite as involved as I would like,
but I've still spent hours retrofitting my old cities
with these new traffic options,
especially the intersections. They're really useful
for fixing up problems, as far as traffic flow.
Same goes for the visual aids for road building,
Actually, placing roads with the plain old grid
that it had before was sometimes a huge pain.
But with these more involved options for measurement and
other things that make it more visually easy
to lay down roads in a good way,
has just been a long time coming and it's finally here, and it's free.
And when you combine it with the other big free improvement,
which is better traffic AI and emergency vehicle logic,
these are things that all needed to be addressed in a big way
for Cities: Skylines.
And it was kind of baffling to me that it hadn't been yet.
But sure enough, my biggest cities
that had huge transportation problems in the past
it's just a lot better.
Sure, you've been able to get a lot of these features with mods in the past,
but this integrates a lot of those features from mods.
They're not the exact mods themself,
it's just part of the base game now
that's the same idea as the mods were already doing.
Even though the mods are still arguably better.
Or at least they're more complex and more involved.
So, if you want even more than the patch is providing,
then there's still the mods that are out there, but this is a great thing
if you don't want to mess with the mods,
or they're too overwhelming to go through them on the Steam Workshop,
or you just don't have time for that.
And that's pretty much me, so,
I welcome these additions wholeheartedly.
Cities: Skylines was already worth playing,
but it's even more so with the free update that has been added
alongside Mass Transit.
And as for Mass Transit itself, I mean, for 13 bucks, it's solid.
It's still optional, though. I don't really find anything
in the paid part of it necessary,
It's really nice. I like more options
and things in the game. Aesthetically, it's very pleasing.
I like the cable cars and the ferries and the monorails,
and yeah, even blimps.
Even if it's not entirely necessary, it's just really good stuff.
So, yeah, that's my quick off-the-cuff thoughts
on the Skylines Mass Transit expansion pack,
and I hope you found this useful to some degree.
And if you did, I've got plenty of other videos
on Skylines and all sorts of other things here on LGR,
with new episodes going up every Monday and Friday.
And as always, thank you very much for watching.