They allow you to concentrate your efforts and properly plan out transit systems-a big improvement from the more seat-of-the-pants concept of the original game, where you're pressured to jury-rig and make it up on the fly.

These structures form central locations for public transportation. Perhaps the best example of this comes in the form of the new hub buildings. Mass Transit provides tools that make for better-running cities. Authentically, you have to work within the constraints of this terrain and embrace a municipal vision that's far from the relative cookie-cutter metropolises seen elsewhere in Skylines. The new Ferry Empire scenario offers a fairly light challenge when it comes to moving folks around your watery city, but it's set it on a unique, beautiful landscape.

Since Skylines is pretty familiar to its fanbase at this point, being able to mix things up like this and put a fresh face on everything adds more to gameplay than you might imagine. You can practice something of a 'sea and sky' philosophy for coastal and mountainous locales, for instance, using monorails and ferries to link neighborhoods and give your cities something of a Vancouver or Seattle vibe. You're free to embrace the quirks of each city's particular geography. The most obvious facet of the expansion is what it adds to city character.

Mass Transit is centered on two areas, largely addressed in the three new scenarios and three new maps that present fresh challenges when it comes to efficiently moving your citizens from Point A to Point B. What's included here smooths out some kinks in the original game's transit systems, allowing you to build more efficiently running cities-albeit at the cost of some added micromanagement that moves the game well out of the virtual mayor's office. However, it comes awfully close thanks to an effective collection of people-moving options, ranging from ferries to monorails to blimps. Mass Transit-the latest addition to the growing Cities: Skylines family from developer Colossal Order-doesn't quite change my mind on all of this, as I'm also a real-world mayor who focuses on the big picture. I’ve always treated it as something of a necessary evil-a hassle best dealt with by quickly laying down extra roads, bus lines, or whatever other available gimmick so that I could keep constructing the new subdivisions and industries necessary to keep my citizens healthy and happy. Public transportation has never been my favorite part of city-building simulations.

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