Cities XXL (PC) Review

Cities XXL is, in all fairness, a solid city-building game. This is simultaneously its greatest asset and its biggest problem. Everything expected from a city-builder is present: a top-down, zoomable camera, various tools for constructing a city (namely the ability to place roads, zone areas for residence, commerce, or industry, make several variations of each of these, or tear it all down and start anew), different maps to start on, and the ability to unlock new buildings after reaching certain milestones. Money must be managed, population must be controlled - the usual. A tutorial exists, delivered by screenshots of goofy-looking pre-rendered characters exchanging witty banter, but otherwise the player is left to their own activities.

All of this is put to catchy, atmospheric music and decent graphics. The frame-rate could be better, the models work (although at times things turn out odd, such as houses sitting atop concrete slabs higher than adjacent houses due to being placed on hills), and the camera and some auto-placements are finicky but mostly easy to figure out. The UI, a source of contention for some, is off-putting at first but reflects a modern style found often in touch-screen interfaces, consisting of flat squares. It's not always easy to find everything, but it does look nice, although the black base comes off as drab.

The major flaw, then, is that Cities XXL doesn't particularly excel at anything. It does exactly what a city-builder should and no more, unlike the superlative Cities: Skylines, which does everything and more. There aren't any captivating or unique features; everything is in place but often must be hunted down, and things are customisable yet might require fighting the camera or auto-placement snapping, and on the whole it doesn't offer much that its predecessor, Cities XL Platinum, didn't already have (despite costing twice as much, or the same with a "previous owner" discount).