Cities: Skylines Xbox One Edition Review

The sky’s the limit?

City building games used to be huge business a few years ago, before dropping completely off the radar. Cities Skylines aims to change all that, but can the complex management controls ever work on a gamepad?

Gameplay:

Simulation games have certainly been tried on console before, going way back to C&C on the PS1 and N64. But mostly they’ve been muddy visually and hellish to control on game pads. The last generation brought somewhat of a revival, but despite the relatively recent release of Halo Wars 2, this generation has seen the genre slope back off to the PC for the most part.

City building games are realistically one of the better targets to bring back, because they rarely require the twitch based reactions and high clicks per minute of RTS games. Even so, the controls are still vital for an enjoyable experience. Thankfully, Cities Skylines has one of the best thought through control schemes I’ve ever seen, losing none of the granularity of the PC controls, and little of the fluidity and speed. Most items are accessed via the d-pad, which then brings up simple radial menus, some of which have an alternative which can be accessed by pressing the Y button. Control with the sticks is easy, and allows more than enough precision to accurate place things where you want. Buildings will also snap to roads and corners to help you out. There are some basic tutorials, but it’s an intuitive system which I got to grips with in under an hour. It only really takes that long because the game locks a few of the items away until your city grows to a certain population size.

My main issue is that Paradox are charging the same amount for Cities as when it first came out, and including none of the DLC. There’s not even been an announcement (as far as I’m aware) saying if it will come out, and if so, when and for how much. Cities doesn’t exactly take a mega PC to run in the first place, and is regularly available at a discount from many of the major PC stores, so unless you can’t or won’t game on a PC, this version doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. The controls are brilliant, but the mouse will always offer up a little extra fidelity, and without any bonus content, additional DLC or other reason to go for the Xbox over PC, this version does feel a little neutered in my personal opinion. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a huge amount to do, and unlocking and building all the buildings will take dozens of hours, but it was a little disappointing to see.

Presentation:

Cities will never be the prettiest game when zoomed in, but it’s certainly no visual slouch either. The Xbox one version is surprisingly performant as well, managing to maintain much of the detail from the PC version on reasonably high settings whilst rarely struggling with frame-rate issues either. There are a few hitches, but never jarringly so, and never to the point where gameplay is affected. Most slowdown seems to occur either when zoomed in to the max, or when transitioning across views when the game has to suddenly load in far more detail at short notice.

There’s not an awful lot of sound in the game – a few muzak tracks in the background help whilst away the time, whilst the traffic and other ambient effects are fine, they’re hardly aware winning. There is some nice bass though, especially when you build new roads, giving a satisfying feeling to your work. The game could do with some speech, and audio is certainly an area where you can notice that this is hardly a multi-million pound AAA title in terms of the overall budget.

Conclusion:

“Cities Skylines” is a superb example of a well-thought through port from PC. The controls are simple and work well, especially given the slow paced nature of the game. There’s a huge amount to do and work towards, and my only real criticism is that the price asked is a little high considering none of the impressive PC DLC has made it across so far. The base version is now regularly discounted on Steam, so unless you don’t have any other way to play the game, or are completely tied into achievements, this certainly isn’t the best value way to get back into city building, even if there is nearly endless content even in the default game.