Cities XXL
Before I even get started with this review I have to make note that this is my first experience with the Cities series of games. There has been a lot of negative comments with regards to what this game is compared to previous outings, and while it may in fact be terrible in that regard, I can’t make any judgments as this is my first Cities game. I’m sure people will still skewer me in the comments, but I can only review it as the only game in the series because to me, it is.
Cities XXL is a sort of macro city simulation game. Well, it’s hard to really call it a game because as far as I can tell there is no real endgame situation. You just spend your playtime building up a massive city before moving on to create another city. It’s pretty simple in premise, but the execution makes it feel much more complicated that it really needs to be. There is a fine line that these macro simulation games have to walk; make the game hard enough to give it longevity, but make it easy enough for people to be able to pick up and play.
With that being said, let’s start with what I really enjoyed with my time in Cities XXL. Cities XXL is a game that can seem to require a great deal of time to get into, so the fact that it has a full tutorial suite is a plus. It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that had a dedicated tutorial list, but it’s appreciated as jumping right into the game as a newbie was a humbling experience. The tutorials are laid out in easy to digest chunks that don’t require a lot of time to learn. The use of the Mayor, and you the player as a new intern gives the whole thing the feeling of having a connected story.
Another thing that is really impressive is just how large the scope of the game is. You aren’t just building a little city here, but instead you can create an entire world populated by cities that you have built. It opens up a great deal and even allows you to trade with cities you’ve built. This allows you to create cities with widely different focuses that can feed off of each other with the use of the trade window. The game really gives you the sense that you can keep playing it forever, if that’s your sort of deal. Land is spacious with tons of room to build and manages to put even the latest SimCity to shame in this regard.
One thing that really surprised me was in how you build roads in Cities XXL. I’m strictly a SimCity guy, most notably SimCity 2000 which I still have boxed on the shelf behind me, so I’m so used to building in rigid square shapes with everything sitting on a grid system. Cities XXL challenges everything I know by allowing you to freely form roads in nearly any way you see fit. For much of my initial play I refused to build outside of what I knew, but once I did it opened up a new world of possibilities. This building style also flows into the actual brick and mortar buildings. Since you can build all sorts of wild roads you’ll have to deal with making structures fit within them. This can lead to some groovy city layouts, but you’ll also have to deal with strange empty patches if you don’t plan.
The variety in structures that you can build is also a big plus to the game, and one of my favorite things about it. You can choose from creating small zones that will automatically fill in their respective buildings like most city building games. Residential zones will populate with homes, Commercial lots with businesses, Industry with industry and so on. Where Cities XXL shines is when you choose to build single plot structures. If you don’t want to build an entire zone of random houses, you can pick each individual home and place it by hand. You can (and I did much of the time) design each zone with exactly the building(s) you want. Not only that, but the number of buildings for you to choose from is large and varied so it’s easy to get lost really designing even the smallest of zones and cities.
PC