In the interest of promoting responsible social distancing, I’m recommending multiple time-sink video games designed to keep you playing for dozens, or even hundreds, of hours. Because money is going to be tight for a lot of people, I’m focusing on video games currently deeply discounted on the Playstation Store for the remainder of today, March 16th, 2020. After today, the games will revert to regular price, but remain solid recommendations.
Cities: Skylines
(Developer: Tantalus, Publisher: Paradox Interactive)
Remember SimCity? Not SimCity 4, but old, classic SimCity. Paradox Games’ Cities: Skylines is the modern-day SimCity we deserve.
If you played the old video games in that series, you already have an idea of how this one works. You start with an unspoiled landscape and then build a functioning city block-by-block, or district-by-district, depending on how much money have in your coffers. You’ll find familiar districting options like Residential, Commercial, and Industrial, and each of these have a number of variations depending on how much DLC you’ve invested in. Tech Districts, Tourist Districts, and different forms of resource exploitation like Oil Industry or Farm Industry give you a ton of freedom in designing your Town/City/Metropolis as you see fit. Set policies to keep your citizens happy and moving in, like Legalized Marijuana, or mandate recycling to keep garbage levels low at extra cost. Whatever you imagine modern SimCity video games might have, Cities: Skylines likely has it. (Aside from Kaiju. Tornadoes, yes, Kaiju, no)
Multiple years-worth of DLC are currently available in an á la carte smorgasbord of different expansions. While you can already build Universities to better educate your citizens beyond High Schools, the Campus expansion allows you to build larger, more detailed college campuses, and the Industries DLC allows you to build massive supply chains ready for exportation to parts unknown. You can pick and choose what you want and don’t want, downloading additional content in small bites over time, or you can buy the Mayor’s Edition bundle, which gives you most of it all at once. I own every bit of it and have yet to come across anything that didn’t feel worth it, particularly when found on sale.
During particularly robust sales, you can also often find Cities: Skylines bundled cheaply with Surviving Mars, a game that functions like a SimCity on Mars with a few adjustments.
Stellaris
(Developer and Publisher: Paradox Interactive)
If you have played Cities: Skylines or the PC-exclusive Crusader Kings II—then you can attest: Paradox Interactive’s bread-and-butter as both developer and publisher is their robust library of of city/colony/empire management video games. The most impressive of these currently available on the PS4 is Stellaris, which is best described as “Civilization on a galactic scale.” You begin with a race and government of your choosing and a single planet within one solar system and then go about the business of galactic conquest—whether by means of massive fleets and ground troops, or via even-handed diplomacy—becoming the head of a Galactic Federation of pacifist corporations. The number of interchangeable options in relation to how you craft and expand your empire are endless.
When I initially picked up Stellaris, I had reservations over how it would control on a console like PS4. There’s a ton of options for the exploitation of resources, raising of defense platforms, upgrading of ship and weapons systems, and creating trade agreements with neighboring civilizations.
A mouse-and-keyboard are ideal for this sort of detailed management, even if not my method-of-choice, but I was extremely relieved to find myself able to navigate from real-time battle to trade menus and back again seamlessly. This is the silver standard of PC-to-PS4 ports when it comes to management sims video games, second only to the flawless port of Two-Point Hospital by Two-Point Studios.
As with most of Paradox Interactive’s signature series, Stellaris is laden with DLC expansions, and some offer more substantial gameplay tweaks and adjustments than others. The arguably optional Plantoids expansion adds bio-organic plant races and their unique systems and units to the game and these changes are largely aesthetic, while the must-have Leviathan content adds massive deep-space monsters for your armada to tangle with. None of them make the game worse and, as low-priced as they can be during a good sale, it’s difficult to say no to any of them.
World War Z
(Developer and Publisher: Saber Interactive)
If management sims video games aren’t your thing, and you’d rather spend your night emptying round-after-round into a massive pile of zombies, look no further than World War Z—an uncommonly solid book-to-film-to-video games adaptation that borrows the book’s lore, the movie’s visual aesthetic, and Left 4 Dead’s squad-based gameplay.
I’ve heard World War Z referred to as “Left 4 Dead 3” and in terms of pure gameplay, that’s accurate, aside from the mechanic that allows players to inhabit the undead. I missed that particular multiplayer mode at first, but I can understand why it’s not here. The game is primarily focused on capturing the unique look and feel of the franchise and does so by filling the screen with a flabbergasting number of undead. Fans of the WORLD WAR Z film (we’re out here) will instantly recognize the iconic visual of hundreds of zombies piling atop each other to reach higher locations, topple defensive structures and generally swarm you en masse.
Each level’s location dictates the group of survivors you’re following, each on their own unique journey. Character classes and related weapon-choices are selected and upgraded individually at loadout screens, giving you a lot of options with which to find the style of play that best works for you.
Saber has added Seasonal DLC to the game post-launch, and I regret to say I haven’t made time to dig into it, though now that I’m thinking about it, I probably will sooner rather than later. I’m particularly intrigued by a recent addition called ‘Horde Mode Z’ in which players hold out against wave-after-wave of zombies in pursuit of various rewards.
Tags: Cities: Skylines, Civilization, DLC, Expansion, Galactic Federation, Left 4 Dead, Paradox Interactive, Playstation, PlayStation 4, Playstation Store, PS4, Saber Interactive, SimCity, Stellaris, Tantalus, Video Games, World War Z, Zombies
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