Watch Cities: Skylines get trashed in the Natural Disasters release trailer

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You might be surprised to learn that being a good mayor is not entirely compatible with being a wrathful supreme deity. Case in point: The Cities: Skylines Natural Disasters DLC that went live today, adding "new systems for disaster alerts and responses," and of course the disasters themselves, including earthquakes, tornadoes, forest fires, and, somehow, worse. Disasters can strike through simple bad luck, or they can come about for more sinister reasons.

"More sinister reasons" of course means you, because if there's one thing more fun than building up a thriving, modern metropolis, it's calling forth great burning balls of rock from the sky to smash it all to pieces. But whether it happens through vengeful whim or the vagaries of fate, once the carnage has begun you can choose to stand back and watch, or help with the effort to keep the lights on and the traffic moving.

The Natural Disasters expansion includes five pre-made scenarios with custom game objectives, an emergency broadcast network to help spread the bad news, and new hats for Chirper, the in-game social media mascot. There's also a Natural Disasters Scenario expansion to the regular scenario editor, which is free for everyone.

Naturally, no disaster is complete without Chris Livingston, and he's been playing with the expansion over the past few days. Find out what he thinks about it here.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.