Deep down inside, I love sim/management games. Cities in Motion tapped into that and pulled on the heartstrings of nostalgia at the same time.
But in the end the frustration and lack of feel of progress made it more like work than a fun management simulator.
The game sets you into several historic European cities including Berlin, Helsinki, Vienna or Amsterdam (and Tutorial Town) between 1920 and 2020 a time when cities began booming and public transportation became vital. Since I have been to two of the towns included in the game it was sort of cool to be able to play them.
In the campaign mode you start off in Berlin, which already had some existing infrastructure that you need to work to improve, expand and update. Periodically the game gives you some goals to be attained like creating a line from point A to point B and transporting a certain number of passengers to some destination. Interspersed with this is the need to keep the company reputation and finances in order. This is done by making sure the passengers are happy, prices are adjusted accordingly and the company has enough funds to continue on with the task at hand.
The game offers a typical top-down view with the camera being able to rotate 45 degrees at a time so you can always see what you are working on. Even then it’s frustrating to try and delete something and I often deleted a track when I wanted to delete a stop. You have to be zoomed in quite close in order to make it as easy as possible and even then it seems the slightest tick of motion and you’ll miss. But it’s a minor annoyance at best.
