Cities XXL

Cities XXL is a city-builder for players who want to lay roads, zones, utilities, and transit lines rather than watch a city unfold on its own. By our assessment, the appeal is straightforward: a large-scale urban sandbox where the basic loop is zoning land, balancing services, and trying to keep the whole thing connected. Its problem is also straightforward, because this is the sort of builder that can feel clumsy and dated beside the sharper city sims people usually compare it with. The texture is more about managing layers of infrastructure than about drama or personality, so the pleasure comes from layout work and incremental growth. It sits in the crowded SimCity-style lane, but with less polish than the best-known names in that lane. Cities XXL is for people who care more about planning blocks and transport than about presentation, and it will not charm anyone looking for a sleek modern city sim.