This first expansion for Cities Skylines II is a year overdue. Personally, I was far more optimistic about it than most other players. Though that review was biased by the fact that I never got any of my cities up over 100 thousand population, and so wasn't running into many of the problems that other players experienced with the simulation breaking down in large cities. I think my largest city was somewhere around 70-74 thousand population at the point that I published my review.

The game launched in such a messy state that Colossal Order had to devote so much time and effort to fixing core problems that they had to keep delaying the expansion. They were in a really hard position, as publisher Paradox had sold the expansion with the deluxe editions of the game in pre-orders. This content was promised to players, and was sold to players prior to the game launching. It's not like Colossal Order could just not release it.

This stuff is exactly why pre-order and "Deluxe Edition" cultures in gaming need to die. With all games being available digitally (and most games being purchased digitally), there is no risk of a supply shortage, and so no reason to ever pre-order a game. Offering pre-orders and pre-order bonuses is just a cynical, anti-consumer trick of publishers to try to get more money out of gamers. Sell the product before it's actually for sale, and know that you're guaranteed to get at least that many sales, even if the game turns out bad.

Colossal Order did say that, due to the delays, they tried to fit as much water-based content as they could into this expansion. They also claimed to have put a lot of time into fleshing out systems and testing the new content to make sure it all worked. I had hoped that this supposedly more holistic approach to this expansion, and the extra time given to it, would alleviate many of the complaints that I had with the first game's expansions being so limited in scope. I'm sorry to say that it didn't quite work out that way.

Mmm, fish milk...

I'm also sorry to say that, while I was working on this review, Colossal Order and Paradox announced that Paradox has fired Colossal Order from its development duties on Cities: Skylines and Cities: Skylines II. After the end of this year, development of the game will shift to Paradox's in-house Iceflake Studios (the developer of Surviving The Aftermath). I had played Surviving the Aftermath. I thought it was fine, and largely had a good time with it, even though I never finished the campaign and never got around to reviewing it. So it's possible that Iceflake might handle Cities: Skylines II development just fine. But this situation sucks. Colossal Order created Cities: Skylines. It was their game (and series). For Paradox to yank it away from them in this blatant act of IP hoarding is just cruel, greedy, and evil.

I hope that Colossal Order survives, that they are able to retain most (if not all) of their staff through this, and that they come back swinging in a few years with a new city-building game that will rival Skylines. Maybe, in the long-term, competition between Paradox and Colossal Order will lead to a renaissance in modern city-building games, as each tries to out-do the other. But in the meantime, it's likely going to be a rough few years for Colossal Order, and I wish them all the best.

Repeating the first game's mistakes

The feature previews for the Bridges & Ports expansion sure seemed promising. New modular ports, bridges, drawbridges, proper quays and piers, a fishing industry, offshore oil drilling, waterfront zones, and a bunch of new parks and landmarks. It sure seemed like a fairly comprehensive and holistic feature suite, on paper.

But then I actually got to playing it, and almost immediately started to notice that there were things that I had hoped or expected to be included, which simply weren't. Despite the supposedly-holistic approach to water infrastructure, this expansion is still missing 2 key pieces of water recreation infrastructure that I've been asking for since the original Cities: Skylines over a decade ago. There are no public beaches, and no marinas. Yes, you can technically build a makeshift, superficial marina using the quays, piers, and a couple of boat props, along with any other Detailers' props or decorations. The piers do seem to provide some passive beautification, but nobody ever actually uses these structures that I might spend hours putting together. People don't walk the decks of the piers, or actually sail the prop boats out into the water. Would it really have been too much to ask to be able to create a simple seaway and "pleasure cruise area" for a marina, similar to the way that fishing areas are designated?

You can make makeshift marinas with quays, piers, and boat props, but nobody uses them.

The lack of public beaches really hurts the aesthetic of any coastal city. There are some props that can be placed on sandy beach areas to give some appearance of a beach. Maybe some tents here and there, some lawn chairs, and a few other such objects. But there are no beach towels, surf boards, sand castles, lifeguard towers, or things of that nature. Most importantly, just like with the makeshift marinas, nobody will ever actually go to that beach. People don't walk along the beach, swim in the water, sit in the lawn chairs, or play in the sand. The beaches are just completely lifeless.

The ocean is a common setting for a lot of cosmic and Eldritch horror. Lovecraft himself set many of his stories in fishing villages or on boats or ships. There's no shortage of video games that feature Lovecraftian fishing villages, from Bloodborne to The Sinking City, but I'm not aware of too many video games that focus on the fishermen who go out into those Eldritch oceans to catch the abominable fish. Well, now we have such a game in Dredge!

Dredge was on my radar since its release. It was one of those games that I put on my wishlist, but often skipped over it. Eventually, it went on sale on the PSN, and I had some extra gift card balance in my account, so I finally snatched it up and played it on-and-off for a few weeks. Unfortunately, my experience with the game was less-than-ideal, but that was entirely my fault, and talk about why later in this review.

Survival horror on the open ocean

Much to my surprise, Dredge is not really overtly horrific, except for like one (or maybe 2) area(s) of the map, and also the final cutscene. Despite the Eldritch inspirations, Dredge can be a surprisingly chill and relaxing game for the vast majority of its play time. How dangerous or scary the game will be will largely depend on how you choose to play the game (and how closely you adhere to the main quest). If you're constantly going out at night into the middle of the ocean, far away from the safety of a harbor, and actively fishing with dangerous threats nearby, then yeah, it might get a little challenging and maybe even creepy. But if you play it safe whenever you can, navigating paths that keep you within a short sprint from a harbor, and frequently resting to restore your sanity, then the game is pretty easy.

Though, under normal circumstances, the game will occasionally force you to have to go out at night to catch nocturnal fish. But even then, careful planning can still allow the player to avoid most of the more dangerous hazards. The day-night cycle goes very fast, but the clock only runs when the boat is moving or the player is fishing. So you can sit and idle for as long as you wish in order to check your map or your quest log and plan out the day's activities. Safe harbors are usually placed within a day's journey from each other, so again, careful planning and deliberate play can be very effective at mitigating risk.

Light is necessary to avoid hazards, but can also attract other panic-inducing dangers.

Surprisingly, there are no survival elements. Heck, there's not even any crafting! You just invest research tokens into new equipment, and collect various materials to upgrade your boat, and then just buy the upgrades and equipment with the cash earned from selling fish. You don't have to buy provisions or cook the fish you catch in order to fill a hunger bar. There really isn't a sleep or stamina meter either. Nor do you have to buy things like fuel for your boat or batteries to keep the lights running. The only things for you to manage are inventory space on your boat and a simple sanity meter (which effectively operates as a proxy for a sleep meter). I'm personally torn on whether including a hunger meter would have hurt or improved the game.

I keep being drawn to games developed by the Chinese Room, despite always being disappointed by them. Their games always represent the things that people dislike most about "walking simulators". But since I don't have any inherent dislike for walking sims, I keep giving The Chinese Room another chance. Still Wakes The Deep caught my attention by being described as "John Carpenter's The Thing set on an oil rig". The Thing is a masterpiece of horror, and one of my favorite movies ever.

I had visions of Still Wakes The Deep being a story about inter-personal paranoia in the claustrophobic and isolated setting of an oil rig that is gradually being overtaken by a Lovecraftian alien threat. That's only partly true though, as Still Wakes The Deep plays up the cosmic horror element, while downplaying the paranoia element and replacing it with simpler themes about interpersonal relationships and the artificial walls that people tend to put up between themselves and the people they care about.

An oil rig is a great setting for horror, combining dark claustrophobic corridors with the terror of being stuck at sea.

Alone, together, on an oil rig

The setting of an oil rig is an interesting one for a psychological horror story or video game. The environment is completely enclosed and claustrophobic, with little-to-no escape. People are forced to live and work together in close quarters, and their survival is largely dependent on one another. Being stuck in such a setting, with people who you can't trust, would surely be terrifying.

The short length of Still Wakes The Deep does hurt it a lot. Specifically, the inciting incident happens very early and suddenly, with little-to-no build up or transition between "normal" and "everything's gone to shite". I never felt like I got a chance to really get to know any of the supporting characters, to the point that I wasn't even sure what their names were, or which character was being referred to when a name came up in a document or conversation. Similarly, when I find any given body or corpse, I have no idea who it's supposed to be. I had a brief opportunity to snoop around in a few characters' cabins at the start, but all that really told me was that the boss is a hard-ass, and there's one other character who might be a racist, neo-fascist prick. Other than that, there's like one opportunity to have a brief exchange with each of the main supporting characters, and it's all optional, and most of it is more about the state of the rig anyway.

There's hardly any time to explore the rig or get to know the crew before the inciting incident.

The brief intro, and fact that the rig goes to shite so quickly and suddenly, means that there's also never an opportunity for the player to get a feel for the setting itself. I got about 20 minutes to walk through a couple hallways, some crew cabins, the mess hall, and the main deck, and then it's right into the horror, with the rig literally falling apart around me. From here on out, it's hard to ever get a sense for where, exactly, I am on the rig, or how the different sections fit together or relate to one another. When floors and walls literally start collapsing, I can't tell one hallway from another. This is despite the fact that the game loops the player around through the same mess hall and lounge, that we saw in the intro, like 5 or 6 times throughout the game. Despite revisiting this same location multiple times, I never really recognized it until I was inside the lounge or mess hall. Every set piece just feels like a semi-random series of corridors and obstacles in which all I have to do is push forward on the analog stick to get where I need to go. There's no open-ended exploration whatsoever, no hidden secrets, and no alternate paths.

The PSVR2 set for the PlayStation 5 is a pretty neat piece of hardware. I bought one at release, and have been enjoying it a lot. I might even write a review for it after I've finished playing all of the launch titles that I've bought. The PSVR2 has a critical problem though: there aren't very many games for it. There weren't any high-profile AAA games that had VR compatibility except for Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil: Village, which were both already a year or 2 old when the PSVR2 released. Horizon: Call of the Mountain was a release title too, but it's more of a stand-alone expansion pack for Forbidden West than a full game.

Since it isn't backwards-compatible with PS4 VR games (even though the PS5 was heavily advertised as being fully backwards-compatible with PS4 games), the PSVR2 doesn't have the benefit of the established PSVR library. Hit titles like Star Wars: Squadrons, Resident Evil VII, or Déraciné sadly aren't playable on the PSVR2 (unless they get PS5 upgrades from the developers, which doesn't seem likely).

There is a silver lining though. This lack of titles may have been bad for the PSVR2 (and its initial sales figures), but it may have been a good thing for some of the smaller titles available on the platform. Those small titles had an opportunity to shine without there being any massive blockbusters to steal the spotlight or players' cash. One such small standout it a little virtual vacation game called Kayak VR: Mirage. After Gran Turismo 7 and Call of the Mountain, Kayak might be the premiere launch title for PSVR2 (even though it is also available on PC VR platforms, and has been for about a year).

The lack of any blockbuster PSVR2 launch titles allowed smaller games to shine in the spotlight.

Virtual vacation, without the sunburn!

Out of the gate, I was very impressed with how this game looks. I'm used to VR titles looking a little grainy and blurry (especially the original PSVR titles I played), but Kayak VR looks sharp as a crystal on the PSVR2! I'm sure it help that the game is only rendering relatively small environments without any people, and it doesn't have to do any complicated A.I. calculations or anything like that. Nevertheless, these exotic locales look absolutely gorgeous. This game is a textbook example of a "virtual vacation", as just sitting, taking a deep breath, and admiring the view is often just as good as the actual game. I can almost smell the salt in the air!

But there is an actual game here, and it's kind of a racing game, I guess? When you're done admiring the views, you can chose to play several races on each of the game's 4 maps. You won't be racing against actual people in real-time, however, as these races are all time-trials against ghosts of other players.

Races are time-trials against ghosts of other players.

Each race requires the player to navigate through a series of gates in a specific order. But these aren't your typical, hovering magic gates that you see in most video games. The gates are physical poles hanging from physical wires strung up throughout the map. If you hit one of the poles with your body, the kayak, or the oar, you'll be docked several seconds from your time as a penalty. These gates are pretty narrow, so completing these races requires some fairly precise handling and control of the kayak. It gets surprisingly difficult.