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- [LGR] Greetings and welcome to another
LGR "Cities: Skylines" pack review thing!
And this time around, it's Campus,
the eighth expansion pack for "Cities: Skylines!"
And despite when I'm uploading this, it was, in fact,
released back on May 21st, 2019,
for the PC version of the game, at least,
at a retail price of $12.99.
Though it's worth noting that I didn't pay for that
because Paradox just e-mailed me a review code
some time ago, and it's like, "Oh, okay."
No stipulations or expectations attached,
just a review code, so here I am, reviewing it.
And yes, it took me a little longer
than I'd initially hoped, due to a few things.
Mainly, an unexpected week-long trip, but also 'cause,
I gotta be honest, it didn't excite me very much.
I mean, I like the idea of an educational expansion
for this particular game,
and I don't hate it or anything, at all.
It's a fine pack!
But after looking at the feature list
and seeing the trailers
and just kind of reading about how it works,
it feels a lot like déjà vu,
like I've already covered this pack.
And the biggest reason for that is because
this is the third time that they've used the whole
"Paintable Districts" idea,
first seen in the Park Life pack
and more recently seen in the Industries pack.
Heh-heh, and just as an aside,
I find it personally amusing that "Skylines"
gets a university pack before "The Sims 4" does,
but I digress.
That's another topic entirely
I'm sure we'll address in the future.
So yeah, just like Park Life and Industries,
Campus is not a pack that really overhauls the game,
so to speak, but rather adds an additional couple layers
of complexity and micromanagement.
And as you would expect,
that mostly takes the form of educational institutions,
colleges, universities, and libraries,
and all that kind of stuff.
So that means you no longer have to rely
only on generic zones or buildings
for your educational needs.
Now, you lay down campus districts,
either on their own
or overlapping other areas that you already have,
same exact way that you did with parks
and industrial districts in the past couple packs.
And each of these educational districts
will come with their own individual policies
and specializations, and can be leveled up
through five levels.
In other words, yeah, like I've been saying,
it's Park Life and Industries all over again,
with a fresh educational skin.
And you know what?
I get it.
I've praised those two packs,
and this one is worthy of praise as well.
I mean, Colossal Order has a solid enough framework here,
so why not maximize the potential?
But that's just the broad overview,
so let's go over a few specifics
of what exactly you get in campus areas.
And that starts with the placing down
of the areas themselves.
Just painting it on top of the map wherever you like,
and then choosing a specialization
with any one of three types of campuses,
a trade school, a liberal arts college, or a university.
Each one with their own visual aesthetic,
and each of these three also have three unique faculties,
with the trade school offering the Police Academy,
the School of Tourism and Travel,
and the School of Engineering.
Then the liberal arts college faculties being
the School of Education, a School of Environment Studies,
and a School of Economics.
And, lastly, the university faculties being
the School of Law, School of Medicine,
and School of Science.
Now, as for playing and earning all these items,
it's the same basic process as the last two packs.
You place an administration building
somewhere within your district,
and you place down some level one buildings
and slowly start gaining reputation and students.
And you customize your policies
and choose whether or not to charge any tuition, and,
eventually, you level up so you can unlock even more stuff,
up to the prestigious level five.
The one thing that is different here
is that campuses can actually lose reputation and level down
if you don't meet and maintain the requirements
for your specific level of each zone,
adding some incentive to keep checking in on things,
instead of maxing everything out in short order
and letting it exist in the background for eternity
like you could with Park Life and Industries, to a degree.
And on top of that,
these educational areas are not evaluated
in the same way either.
Campuses function on an academic year,
and that is 40 weeks long.
With a trio of requirements to balance, meet and maintain,
yeah, that definitely adds a bit more complexity
to the whole situation.
I like that.
And, of course, all of this serves
the expected overarching purpose
of increasing the attractiveness of your cities overall,
as well as bringing in exchange students,
which is this pack's version of tourists.
And they work alongside the existing tourism feature
and actually show up in the same menu.
But these people will, of course, pile into your campuses,
instead of tourist traps.
I mean, they might do that too, but mostly campuses.
And it doesn't stop there.
You also have varsity sports
that have been added to this pack.
You got basketball and baseball, swimming,
track and field, and American football.
And there's another layer of customization
for these varsity sports teams, as well.
You can change around the mascots and the jerseys
and the ticket prices and the color and the coaches
and add things like cheerleading budgets
and all sorts of stuff,
just to try to get as many people as possible
to come to your cities just to watch these sports teams.
Of course, there are also a host of new policies,
of things that are citywide
and apply just to individual areas.
So you can apply ordinances
for things like free food for students
and book fairs in the city,
and you can sponsor academic works.
Now that last one's kind of interesting.
The academic works, they're the end product of research,
and this happens every single academic year.
And depending on how much, really just money,
that you put into it, the outcome is affected,
and you can provide things like tax dollars
and signing research grants and hiring staff,
and adding certain campus buildings
to increase the odds of this happening.
But once you do, you get some cool one-off works
that you can display and, you know,
show off and make people like your city even better,
and put them in the new museums, for instance,
which can be built either inside or outside campuses.
Though they are unlocked by maxing out each type of campus.
There are also academic libraries and public libraries,
the latter of which added in a free patch
that launched with Campus.
Not just libraries, there's also bus customization
and classic yellow school buses.
The citizens now have job titles,
they've rebalanced the education system overall, citywide.
And there's also a super useful policy called Industry 4.0.
Now this is something that
really could've been awesome to have in the Industries pack,
but it's here now, so whatever!
And this actually takes normal citywide zoned industry
into the future with automation,
making use of highly skilled workers,
in addition to the lesser skilled folks
that were normally working in the normal zones.
And, of course, there's some other miscellaneous things,
like new radio stations and some other little policies
and buildings and such
that are unique to each individual type of campus.
But, you know, it all serves the same basic purpose.
That is really diving into the nitty gritty
of making your city work for you in the way that you want,
with the type of resources that you want.
And, you know, you gotta be into this type of thing,
just like with the last couple packs.
And again, I wanna say that this is not a bad pack!
I like Campus about the same as Park Life and Industries.
It's just that, after three of these packs
that follow the same kind of formula,
it's starting to feel like treading water to me --
just a bit!
It's not stale yet.
It's one of those things
I start to get a little concerned about
in the back of my mind, and that's all.
I fully admit, that's just my own experiences talking,
reviewing all these simulation game expansions
over the years.
But yeah, no, as it is now,
this is another thoroughly decent pack
that adds some interesting stuff to "Cities: Skylines,"
making an already highly enjoyable game even more enjoyable
for a pretty decent price, indeed.
But I still hope that Colossal Order
shakes things up a little bit more for pack number nine,
whenever that arrives, and whatever that may be.
[jazz plays all jazzily]
And if you enjoyed this look
at this "Cities: Skylines" pack,
then cool, I've covered a bunch of 'em,
well, all of them in the past,
and I'll continue to cover them in the future.
So stick around, if you'd like,
or check out some of the other LGR things
that I do every week.
And, as always, thank you very much for watching.