City builders have had a rough time of late, with Sim City's disastrous launch ruining the long-time genre leader's reputation. Cities XXL is a rehash of Cities XL, and so hopes landed on Cities: Skylines (not a related franchise despite the similar name). It seems that the title has come through for fans of city building, as the reviews are positive:
Gamespot, 8/10: "Cities: Skylines is the best city-builder on the market right now. The game's presentation is stodgy, but it is all but guaranteed to provide you many hours of carefully crafting cities, laying out zoning, and establishing districts for specifics residential and industrial uses...all free from real-world mayoral headaches like 6 a.m. phone calls griping about snowplowing. Right now, there is no better way to take a peek at life as a mayor without filing your papers to run for office in the real world."
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Destructoid, 9/10: "Cities: Skylines not only returns to the ideals which made the city-building genre so popular, it expands them. I enjoyed every minute I played this title, and the planning, building, and nurturing of my city brought forth imagination and creativity from me like few titles ever have. If you're a long-time fan of the genre, or just wanting to try it out, you can't go wrong with this game.
"There's a bit of universal appeal that comes with building and maintaining your own virtual city, and for a while I thought that magic had left the industry. I was wrong. Cities: Skylines is a title that will eat up hours of your time, and with a commitment from the developers to continue support for the title in the future, and Steam Workshop integration, the huge amount of replayability the base game has will become even bigger. I wholeheartedly recommend this game and can't wait to see what modders and Colossal Order have in store for us in the future."
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IGN, 8.5/10: "More than anything, Cities: Skylines is about the simple joy of building. It's a really impressive and often beautiful simulation, where an amazing number of virtual people go about their business across a huge swath of land. Getting in and creating something is easy, though mastering it will require extensive research on community wikis to understand why growth is stunted even when you address your citizens' apparent concerns. Don't expect exciting scenarios or random events, but do expect to be impressed by the scale and many moving parts of this city-builder."
Game Informer, 8.75/10: "An abundance of video games task you with destroying, while very few have you create in meaningful ways. With city-building games, developers have taken different paths to create this rewarding experience, but they've always stood in the shadow of the king of city-building franchises: SimCity.
"Cities: Skylines not only elevates past the canopy set by SimCity's once-towering reputation, it casts a massive shadow of its own. Cities: Skylines is a single-player experience (with no online requirement) that allows players to build the city of their dreams - provided they have the skills to make it last."
