I read C:S 2 as CS:2...

Sorry, that's Cities: Skylines 2, not Counter-Strike Source 2, right?

I had it running at 100+ fps.

Some of the settings there are absolute killers. Volumetric coulds is nuts. The game is 90% staring at the ground, and I lose 10+ fps with that. Ditto for transparent reflections, and the settings for global illumination on high are insane as well.

Sure, once you tune it down selectively it looks like CS1... but it also performs like it.

I really don't understand some of the choices they made here, either in the way the visuals work, the way the default settings work or the way they communicated it. If they hadn't come out saying it'd be super heavy and they renamed "high" to "ultra" or had an intermediate setup between medium and high they wouldn't be getting this much crap.

Yeah, there’s “bad” and there’s “embarrassingly terrible”

Yeah... but some people wish for more finished games and that includes performance.

Like I get it it's playable... and some games release in much worse state but unless it's an indie game with zero money that needs that early money to continue they should wait.

It's CS2, not CS2.

At first I tought it was mistake and you repeated the same 😅 .

At the same time I hear you but still I feel like it's still not acceptable to release half done or poorly optimized products and hope that they'll be done over time. For those who pay for the product it's almost an insult.

I've been a fan of the series for a very long time. Since the first game. But the overkill that released PD:TH isn't the overkill of today. They are extremely incompetent and replaced by fresh blood. PD3 is going to be a mess and I will not be surprised if they go back to releasing PD2 DLCs again.

I mean, there are some nits I can pick.

Places don't feel as alive as they did in the original. The original was still deeply flawed, mind - but this goes even further than that.

A great example - when there was a firetruck putting out a fire in the original, you could see little dudes squirting water. CS2 doesn't even have guys come out; the fire just magically goes away. Multiply this by... everything.

There's no bikes (at least as far as I can tell), and the pedestrian path tooling seems to be a huge step back (the only dedicated pedestrian path I can find is technically considered a 2-lane road, but it doesn't allow cars).

The music has these cute little segments inbetween. But there's only like... 5 of them. Once you hear all 5, you've heard everything and they start to grate. The other 2 "radio stations" don't have the NPR segments, but they do have "ads"... and by "ads" they mean exactly 1 ad that you hear every time for "Spaz Electronics". You can turn the ads off but I'd expect more than just a single one.

Everything overreacts to anything you build. If you upgrade a road, it technically disconnects power + water + sewage for a hot second. Then you get a bunch of spam about "I don't have any power!" blah blah even though the game was paused and they absolutely had power.

It's really hard to see what trips Cims are taking. The original let you see the paths Cims took throughout your city, which let you make informed decisions around public transport. Now you can just see... how much traffic there is? Which doesn't tell you anything about where Cims are going, just where you have bottlenecks. It very much encourages a "just 1 more lane, bro" kind of thinking.

Not having a wide variety of public transport options is a bummer. It feels like they left some stuff out for a future DLC (e.g. monorails).

There's no light shining from the camera at nighttime, so it can get actually literally pitch black at night. Like "turn off the day/night cycle because this is unplayable" levels of dark. A subtle light coming from the camera when not in photo mode would've done wonders.

The zoning information is really hard to read. I can't tell what areas I have zoned with something else because it colors areas from other zones as white and unzoned areas as clear... on a mostly white background. It's really really hard to tell at-a-glance what needs to still be zoned in some cases.

The more I play it, the more it feels like CS1 is the sequel and CS2 is the original. There's just so much that's not done as well or that's simply not there. The stuff they added is cool, sure... but like, I wish it was additive on top of what we had before, and not "back at square one". It just makes me want to play the original.

Agree. I'm several hours in and I'm honestly loving it. Face it gamers, y'all just like to hate things, it's fun to be in the "in crowd" who knows better than everyone else to not buy something. Misery loves company.

Meanwhile, imma keep playing.

The issue is that Rockstar never remade GTA.

They outsourced that work to Grove Street Games who had already done the mobile ports and said have at it. Grove Street Games took their mobile ports (which were already compromised) and adapted them back to console & PC with a new engine. I assume everything was done on the cheap and to a deadline and what they produced is what they produced. For Rockstar it wasn't a labour of love, it was money for old rope and if they had given a damn they wouldn't have outsourced it or at least had stricter quality controls & acceptance on what someone made for them.

Rockstar made a slightly better job with their RDR port in that they didn't completely fuck it up but it was still outsourced and a minimal effort.

I'm having a great time on medium graphics

Looks like they are talking about Cities: Skylines 2

You basically get them through Steam - 2 hours is generally enough to figure out if a game is a total ripoff or not

Spore early game was fun.