Making Bill Gates levels of money and having a massive, thriving metropolis under your yoke. They’ve seen it all before. Cities XXL lets you choose among a variety of truly enormous maps ripe for development, and gives you all the tools and space necessary to make your city formidable and self-sufficient. Mass Effect Legendary Edition Has Been Rated in South Korea. Cities XXL is something that I have to hate by its very nature, simply for being a pain in the ass to review. I have a hard time believing that Cities XXL was play tested and found to be acceptable. pc. The Best Horror Movies To Stream This Halloween. However, Cities XXL suffers from what appears to be simplistic gameplay. For the most part, the game gave us framerates in the triple digits when we weren’t actively doing anything. Cities XXL > Technical Support > Topic Details. If you want a picturesque coast filled with billionaire mansions, then you don’t need to wait for that to evolve by improving the land value and wealth of the inhabitants. We don’t seem to have the same crashing issues that we’ve seen from the franchise in the past, but the framerate can still drop to absolutely unplayable levels at the tip of a hat. Unfortunately, for this installment I have to be upfront and say, the game is not worth your money or time if you own Cities XL. The original Cities XL was heavily criticised for a few things, the main one being performance due to it’s lack of multi-core support. But whether that’s enticing enough (and how well the multi-core support is functioning, given the performance hiccups I had) is debatable. We have to assume that they’ve been working away on this in the background for a while, but perhaps the reason that this “update” hasn’t taken too long to piece together is because this looks like a game that’s brought only minor improvements to the XL series. These are familiar problems, in a familiar game. Throw down another power station. It’s a city-builder in the most literal sense, and is without much nuance. There’s a sense you’re supposed to just mess around, rather than immerse yourself in a builder with any real depth. Founder and Editor of PC Invasion. For now, let’s move away from dead pop stars and on to a different type of performance. All of these factors work hand-in-hand to create a fully-immersive experience, and games since have made a serious effort to mimic that addictive quality. For those familiar with the prior games, they might find themselves with a case of déjà vu. Cities XXL is a really difficult game to review. There has been a ton of controversy from critics surrounding Cities … But I’m not talking about a city that spans the entire map, or even a quarter of it. Marvel Reportedly Plans To Bring Back X-Men Origins: Wolveri... Shia LaBeouf Reportedly Eyed To Play Popular Star Wars Chara... Watch: Peter And Miles Exchange Words Of Wisdom In New Spide... New Pokémon Leak Reveals Scrapped Gen VI Sequels, PlayStation Store Adds Free Goodie For All PS4 Owners. Cities XXL, though inconsistent when it comes to the frame rate, is completely playable, but only until my city gets a wee bit big or during lengthy building sessions, where my hard hat is welded to my skull. Here’s the thing, much of what was wrong with the previous XL games still remains. The information panels are so bland and lacking in personality that it makes what could be considered the least fun part of a city builder (money management) even less engaging. So the goal, then, is to design lovely-looking cities that might be featured in postcards, and Cities XXL does offer a lot of pretty photo opportunities. Spider-Man 3 May See All 3 Spideys Swing Into Times Square. Watch Video Read Article. Such aspirations take root with the construction of roads before giving way to fashioning of industries to provide jobs, retail units, tourist areas and a whole lot more besides as players seek to establish a robust and functioning economy. Perhaps because word of the performance issue problem kept you away. The first stop for the uninitiated should be the game’s tutorial which in being divided up into a dozen or so topics, provides digestible lessons on how to get started in earnest. Hunting down the thing you need involves quite a bit of clicking around in different areas of the screen, so no change there. I’m not really sure how you can manage to have your typeface off-center on the main menu of your game, especially when it’s a game about micromanagement and fine details, but that’s part of the magic of Cities XXL I suppose. We ran Cities XXL on our beefy test rig, featuring an over-clocked 4770k, 22GB of RAM, and a 295×2 GPU. You lay down roads, designate zones for commercial, residential and industrial purposes, plonk down amenities and diversions to stop your citizens from rising up against you (by leaving), and then just watch as the money rolls in. The actual gameplay featured in Cities XXL is for the most part very enjoyable. If you’ve missed the last four games, not to worry, as Cities XXL is one of the simpler city-builders. In spite of whatever else might be wrong with it, there is no mistaking the sheer amount of creative freedom that Cites XXL allows. There’s little reason to worry about budgets when a boost in cash is only a few factories away. There was Cities XL, Cities XL 2011, Cities XL 2012 and Cities XL Platinum; each game obsessed with expansive megapolises, and each only slightly tweaking the formula, leaving them nearly indistinguishable. This review is based of a PC copy of the game, given to us for review purposes. This is the definition of being nitpicky and on its own would barely be worth mentioning, but any graphic designers in the audience may want to prepare themselves for some fairly atrocious kerning. At larger resolutions, scaling becomes a massive problem. Cities XXL and the XL series in general are closer to a sandbox than a full city sim, which may go unnoticed by newcomers but is worth highlighting. With many of the same building types, road types and near-identical UI, economy and management elements as before, it’s pretty clear that Cities XXL takes the idea of an iterative sequel and runs it into the ground. There are a few additions to the mix here, but there’s nothing that will take your breath away. Every single one of them looks like some weird mutant human that moon-walks forwards, if such a thing even possible. It doesn’t beat around the bush. Il semblerait qu'il n'y ait rien à redire. And since the solution to most problems is build more stuff, that’s all managers end up doing. It does what the previous Cities XL did with a few improvements, but it’s very expensive at £30 given how little has actually been changed or added. Not because I had a hard time breaking down the details of it or exploring all of its nuances, but simply because I feel like I’ve already reviewed this game. Steam Workshop support is really the only new feature that substantially improves the game, and maybe in time there will be enough user-created content so that it starts to feel like a new title, instead of an old one with some new pipes. Also, as before, you can’t just build all this stuff with reckless abandon. I don’t mean down to a standard 60 FPS or even the bare minimum 30 FPS, I mean we saw frame rates in the single digits, often below 5 FPS. 8.1. great. Sadly, they have  chosen to push out a slightly different version of Cities XL. You just build some elite houses. As a fan of the genre Cities XXL is a disappointing release, and I think only worth picking up if you’ve never played a previous release from the series. It received mostly mixed reviews and Monte Cristo sought to improve with its sequel Cities XL. Dexter Revival Will Serve as a 'Second Finale' for the Show, There's a 50-50 Chance We Really Are Living in a Simulation, Halo: The Master Chief Collection to Get a 4K/120FPS Xbox Series X/S Upgrade, 19 Weird New Facts We Learned About Star Wars, 5 Truly Twisted Horror Movies Worth Watching (Once), Assassin’s Creed Valhalla DLC Will Take You to Ireland and Paris, Scientific Study Determines Sinister Is the Scariest Movie Ever, Things Ghost of Tsushima Doesn't Tell You. The game offers a quick and helpful tutorial, but somehow things still feel somewhat unexplained at times. No crisis poses a problem when you can just throw money at it, and there’s always more to throw. Cities XXL represents a serviceable starting point for beginners certainly, but is simply far too riddled with bugs, performance issues and recycled content to recommend to anyone else who has sampled the series previously. Get involved in the conversation by heading over to the Strategy Gamer forums. First impressions of this game are not great. Most critics complained that the game is not a big enough departure from its previous installment and that not enough innovation was brought to the table for the third in the series. Businesses need to be close to residential areas for easy access, shops must be within range for folks to reach and industries must be away from living areas due to the air pollution that they create to name just a few of the considerations that need to be thought of. Lack of polish and presence of bugs serve to frustrate. Cities XXL’s biggest new addition is an engine that isn’t archaic, and it’s hard to get enthused about under the hood stuff. Andrew Garfield And Tobey Maguire Reportedly Now In Talks For Spider-Man 3, Supergirl Fans Petitioning To Save The Show From Cancellation, AMC Theatres Will Reportedly Run Out Of Money In 6 Months, Watch: Tom Holland Becomes Marty McFly In Back To The Future Fan Trailer, Watch: Nicolas Cage Is On The Hunt In National Treasure 3 Fan Trailer, Watch: Boba Fett Gets His Own Star Wars Movie In Awesome Fan Trailer, Wanda Will Reportedly Be Responsible For Electro Coming Into The MCU, Marvel Reportedly Plans To Make At Least 3 More Deadpool Movies, New Matrix 4 Theory Says Neo’s Return Is Part Of The Oracle’s Plan. For the record, I mean that literally. “Here you go,” it says. With cities never really seeming alive, you’re really just creating a snapshot of a city. Cities XXL does this but not elegantly, which again boils down to an annoying interface and lack of easy to access game feedback. Cities XXL suffers from one very big problem: It's virtually the same game previously released, only with bigger maps to build on. It’s not a terrible game by any means. However they finally found their place with the release of 2006’s city-building simulator, City Life. I had some hope for Cities XXL. Well, the music anyway. Boasting a musical score generously stuffed with gentle strings and ear-caressing vocals, the soundtrack that accompanies the player’s city crafting efforts is both hugely pleasant and relaxing but despite its aural potency, still isn’t quite enough to dispel the disappointment at the game’s failings elsewhere. It definitely has a more modern feel to it, but it really looks like it was a rush job. You can find out more in our The game tries to play as a “Best Of,” but at the same time, there isn’t a single damn thing here that demands you to pay literally double the asking cost for the previous game in the series. Reviewed on: PC; Cities XL tries to expand the city-building genre with new ideas, but the solo game is generic, and the online features aren't ready for a ground-breaking ceremony. Today, Cities XXL has been finally realeased after more then 2 years of waiting. Shortly after Cities XL’s release, a company called Focus Home Interactive bought the rights to the franchise and decided to take some big steps of their own. With the player usually acting as the mayor of said city, they make decisions about labor and production for their citizens and must gauge how important the citizens’ happiness is in their decision-making as well.