Oh I remember falling for the Cities XXL scam. They absolutely killed the series with that move.

@mygetawayart

9 ай бұрын

man they really thought they would get away with it

@MugwumpSupreme

9 ай бұрын

Maybe they were quiet quitting before we really knew what it was. 😂

@marceelino

8 ай бұрын

​@@MugwumpSupremepeople were quiet quitting for a long time. This is not a new Phenomena

@MugwumpSupreme

8 ай бұрын

@@marceelino I'm aware of that. I'm referring to the popularization of the term. It's meant to be a joke. 🤦

@jaywilliams720

8 ай бұрын

@@MugwumpSupreme "quiet quitting" literally just means doing your job. stop popularising the term, its just used to guilt working people into going above and beyond for no reward

The only thing Cities XXL does really well is the graphics and the filler in between residential lots. I wish we had that in CS2 without assests, just a simple plop and all of the unfilled space between houses is filled.

@CityPlannerPlays

9 ай бұрын

It really is a helpful tool!

@ash36230

9 ай бұрын

Was nice for creating market plazas easily, squares between hard to use bits of roads, or construction sites. Did like the flexible farms tool, but everything else was a struggle

@anasevi9456

9 ай бұрын

@@ash36230 only if you are really really particular about what you want to do. Old school Sim City experience Cities XL was great, but like SC4 the game engine was sh!t with bad performance over time... and unlike SC4 it barely got any community support or a proper expansion. CS as a series is it's great because it allows you to be really particular, but also it's biggest gripe for me is you HAVE to be really particular with how you do everything, it's not nearly as relaxing as the old school city builder type games when you just want to go with the flow.

@aceb2660

8 ай бұрын

I bet that feature is gonna get modded in CS2 soon

@NicVandEmZ

8 ай бұрын

@@CityPlannerPlays I don’t think it would be hard to create your own version of city game like that with the help of ai

What Cities XL does well (even XXL) is the utilization of filler spaces. I won't forget how happy I am using unused space for parks, something that Cities Skylines 2 needs to implement as a vanilla feature, alongside a prop line tool. OH AND THE MUSIC of Cities XL is so good!

@CityPlannerPlays

9 ай бұрын

I probably should have featured the music... it is outstanding!

@anasevi9456

9 ай бұрын

Yeah, Cities XL as a series is really tragic, as those games were a lot more relaxing to build in [ignoring the eventual performance issues/mem leak] than the really quite overly particular and often tedious road laying and fleshing out of cities in CS:1. They had a lot of good ideas and ergonomics, but the game engine was just trash. It was a lot easier to build a smart looking planned city in Cities XL than most any other builder game i've played, except for another great at ergonomics, but trash game engine one; SC4.

That was real fun, thanks for taking a look and there were some cool features in there! 🙂

@CityPlannerPlays

9 ай бұрын

Thanks Biffa! Yeah, interesting game with some unique features!

The original game released at October 2009 used to be a subscription based "MMO" game. That's right, you had to pay 7$ per month and the only multiplayer features it had was having our city located on the planet, take a look at other players cities and exchange resources tokens. Of course the multiplayer failed miserably and went offline at march 2010, five months after the release. And then they re-released Cities XL 2011, then re-released again as Cities XL 2012, then again as Cities XL Platinum and here Cities XXL.

@danbert8

9 ай бұрын

Yep, that's what I remember, a good concept brought down by terrible marketing and sales and a very buggy game with performance issues. XXL is probably half decent now with most of the game breaking bugs fixed and modern hardware compensating for the performance problems.

@christophelemaire4551

9 ай бұрын

Not to mention the release of this game lead to the demise of Monte Cristo Multimedia, which was the original developer of this game, whose rights were sold to Focus Interactive after that.

@FASynergy

9 ай бұрын

They tried to go the Skyrim route without being Bethesda

@MrBinks-un8ju

8 ай бұрын

And all of them had a horrendous memory leak THAT WAS NEVER FIXED. XXL was just the straw that finally broke the camel's back. The developer only cared about money, and never really added any improvements to the series. There are bugs that persisted from 2009. It was only successful because of the lack of city builders between SC4 and SC2013.

@jonredcorn862

2 ай бұрын

@@MrBinks-un8ju Yeah I remember trying this out after being heartbroken by the sim city 2013 release. Still upset about that fuck up. Possibly the biggest fuck up in gaming.

Games like this always makes me wonder where it would have been with success... like, there are some wicked good features mixed in there...

@HeelBJC

9 ай бұрын

There's a frustrating amount of awesome features for a game that really just isn't good as a whole.

I think it’d be almost poetic to revisit SimCity 2013 before CS2’s release. It’s the only city builder with a superhero! The people want MaxisMan.

@IngoGarza

8 ай бұрын

I was thinking that as well. I installed it and when I started the game it crashed.

@iskolya4136

7 ай бұрын

I still sometimes play SimCity 2013. This game is so underrated. Maybe its not the best SimCity game out there, but definetely not the worst (We have SimCity buildit)

@shade221

7 ай бұрын

simcity 2000 also had maxis man

@Egalitarian917

6 ай бұрын

@@iskolya4136 You have your tastes and I'm glad you like it, but man, did that game ruin the franchise. I remember wanting a refund the same day I bought it and EA refused. I still have my own personal EA embargo ever since.

@dmdm597

4 ай бұрын

​@@iskolya4136 I get what you mean. The disappointment I felt after the release was immeasurable, and then after CS came out and it took over the city builder genre and eventhough CS is my favorite I still sometimes go back to SimCity 2013. Honestly if the game didn't had the small lots and the online only on release I think people would have accepted the game. The game has definitely some really good ideas and some are even being implemented into CS2. Today I learned how to enjoy the game, it's a game that you can definitely play casually and not feel overwhelmed like in CS. Normally when I need to take a break from CS and just want something that isn't that serious I go back to Simcity 2013.

I like the Blueprint idea, where the building costs over time to construct and completes in phases, instead of just plop!

@jg-qj7ts

8 ай бұрын

It’s similar to Workers & Resources, the planning mode and construction experience in that game are immaculate. I just wish the network tools were easier to use, they’re great but insanely finicky

@friendlyfire2615

8 ай бұрын

You'd love Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic.

@Egalitarian917

6 ай бұрын

@@jg-qj7ts Yes, it is such an amazing game. When he talked about how asset traffic models won't allow large numbers of people, I was like... Comrade, let me introduce you to Soviet Republic

I never played Cities XXL. I was roped into Simcity 2013. It was Cities Skylines that really got my attention

@victoriastrange8253

9 ай бұрын

Same here. My older brother was so disappointed in me when I said I was playing Simcity and not CS. He immediately bought me the game

@noneofmybusiness9895

9 ай бұрын

Simcity 4 was great with mass transit, or whatever they called it

@sorrydough

9 ай бұрын

Simcity 2013 had a ton of great ideas with good execution. It was screwed over by the always-online requirement, forced to ship too early, and subsequently abandoned. A genuine tragedy.

@TomanovicsGergely

9 ай бұрын

@@sorrydough Simcity 2013 could be a great game but the main issue was, as I remember, that the size of the map to build a "city" was like the size of first square in Cities XXL, so the game ended around that moment when you started really enjoying it, because there were no space left to build.

@sorrydough

9 ай бұрын

@@TomanovicsGergely yeah that was caused by limitations related to the always online requirement

Some of these features are pretty awesome. I really love the way you can put down whole neighborhoods at once - and they don't even need to be grid-based! You could probably make a Paris-style organic layout pretty easily. Compared to that, CS2's grid tool looks... let's say, basic. I hope they will work on that, although I am aware that many CS2 players would never use automated neighborhood tools anyway, but for a casual game it would be fantastic to be able to do that.

Being able to pick your city from the globe is really cool, and it could lend itself to interesting concepts. What if you could pick a map on the globe, develop an entire city, then zoom out and choose a different map to build a new city and essentially build an entire globe of cities? It'd be awesome if you could make what is basically your own world full of life

I really have a lot of fond memories with Cities XL. I remember playing the multiplayer part with other people and visiting their cities. It was cool.

@CityPlannerPlays

9 ай бұрын

Oh I never played the multiplayer! That sounds fun!

@selwing95

9 ай бұрын

That was the original game plan for this game. Unfortunately, Monte Cristo went bankrupt and the game was absorbed for Focus. It was just a piggy bank for them, they never developed it further. So much potential.

@fastica

4 ай бұрын

@@selwing95 Like with SimCity, focusing on multiplayer ruined this franchise. Most of us play single player and want basic city building features.

I remember buying Cities XL, it wasn't good. Cities Skylines saved what was, at the time, a genre deteriorating in the intensive care unit. And yet, Cities XXL does have the odd feature I hope to see in Cities Skylines 2 eventually, like those houses on the water.

@CityPlannerPlays

9 ай бұрын

I remember really disliking zoning and having major performance issues, but the graphics were a glimpse of what was possible, along with SC 2013. But it never captured my attention like basically every other city builder did. Interesting to look at for the concepts though and it makes me wish there were healthy competition. But I'll honestly settle for just one really, really good city builder.

@robertkelly8106

9 ай бұрын

I was a huge fan of Sim City 1-4 and was looking for an advance on SC4, so I bought Cities XL. What a disappointment! No Cities XXL for me. Meanwhile I had bought Colossal Order's earlier games Cities in Motion and CIM 2 and really liked them (if you want to play old games, those are good candidates), so I was eagerly awaiting Cities Skylines. That was definitely not a disappointment.

@niller207

9 ай бұрын

I would like for him to play Cities in Motion so I could see where Cities Skylines come from :-) @@robertkelly8106

@2727daqwid

9 ай бұрын

@@robertkelly8106 Completly forgot about CiM - those were fun! Also C:S shares like 50% of models with CiM lol.

It's not necessarily an old game, since it's still in active development, but I think it would be fascinating to get your perspective on Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic. It's a city builder...but it's also a region builder, and you're able to design and implement all the production chains yourself, from growing food that gets stocked in groceries, to producing the diesel that refuels your trucks, to building cars that your citizens can then drive. The level of planning is very different, and it ends up feeling like a very unique builder game.

@timscott124

9 ай бұрын

ive heard theres problems with snapping in that game that really killed the fun. line building power lines, for example, is an absolute chore. ive read quite a few "fun except for the ever present snapping issues, give it more time in the oven" type reviews. would you agree with that statement? its still in EA after all

@sheffplaysgames

9 ай бұрын

@@timscott124 I haven't played it for awhile, so I can't say for me personally, but I believe one of the recent updates added a grid that made some of those issues easier to work with.

@wta1518

8 ай бұрын

@@timscott124 It's also communist propaganda. I haven't played the game, and I also don't have a problem with communism.

@sethmcbee7294

8 ай бұрын

@@wta1518 jokes aside, the devs are fairly anti-communist, but with the exception of the game mechanics encouraging you to suppress religion and a couple other minor things, it's honestly pretty light on the political commentary. Not as overtly anti-communist as I expected based on some interviews, but enough to be mildly annoying.

@rosen9425

8 ай бұрын

WR:SR. ooof! Now that is a "city builder" of epic levels. A game that isn't holding your hand at any point ever. In the early days it didn't even have the ability to tell you about looming problems. The learning curve goes from 0 to vertical and continues infinite 😂 Just having a core feature when your population dies out in a large enough proportion there is no chance of natural recovery. Happened to me when I forgot to turn on a heating plant during winter. A total wipe out, the survivors just suffered greatly until the inevitable faith came around 🙈

I remember playing City Life and City Life 2008 Edition. The populations were constantly having a class war. The Fringes and Blue Collars had to work together in every city service building but they could not live near one another or they would burn the neighborhood down. Neighborhood design was key. You don't see that in modern city builders. I also liked how the buildings were tinted with the colors of their class.

This game had some really cool ideas! The space filler, farm painter, that neighborhood tool, and I seem to remember you could zone under bridges by default! Too bad all that came with a whole lot of jank.

I wish CS2 took that planetary view when starting the game to allow you choose different city location and the free form tool with instant filler...would be nice

Love seeing you go back to older titles. A series retrospective (series) of Sim City would be fun, something like building the same basic city layout in all the main series titles to see what changes between them?

@ujer55

9 ай бұрын

Tropico could also be a fun video or two.

City Life and Cities XL was a life saver in that dreadful 12 years gap between SimCity 4 and Cities Skylines. That was such sad decade when it comes to city builders and tycoon games. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat, traumatized by the thought of SimCity Socities. I am glad we all are at a happier place now.

This was such a fun video. I would love to see more like this, looking back at older or obscure games.

Cities XXL was my first ever city-building game, I think I still have it on my steam. And I remember back in the early 2010s we have a forum presented hundreds of brilliant-planned and beautiful-built cities on it with thousands of active users, some of those cities don't look worse than what we got today in CS1 tbh.

I would like to see more videos like this. It is fun getting your perspective on different city builders. Would love to see you tackle Lethis - Path of Progress. For me, it has a lot of charm, but it is really simple, especially compared to Cities Skylines.

I love the new way you are interrupting as editor Phil such a great transition idea!

Great episode, I like these videos a lot. If you like to explore different city builders, I can recommend High Rise City which is an interesting mix with the Anno games

Love hearing from you about other games, keep it up. I found this very informative and didn't know much about this game at all, but it sounds and looks very interesting.

So awesome to see you playing XXL. I actually just found my disc last week along with others including "Tycoon city New York". It wasn't horrible and it brought some cool new feature. I went back to SC4 as it was my go to. Love the random play throughs that you have been doing. Hoping Cities 2 gets its stuff together and they can salvage the game. Take care.

I loved city life's class distribution system. Poor cims were needed for labor jobs, blue collars were created by schools, artsy and engineer bourgeois were created by universities, white collars were the rich, etc... and all residential plots were different based on resident class, and lower or raise the class depending on worsening or improving environment ❤

I see you testing the waters on non-cities skylines content. Can't wait

@CityPlannerPlays

9 ай бұрын

Indeed and thank you!!

This game still has so many neat details and features that i miss in C:S2 though. I primarily played XL and it looked so damn pretty back then, but it always ran so terrible once you actually had a city growing.

I had a lot of fun back then with this game. This game ran better on the setup I had then. Had some great features! Also, thanks for the mention. Appreciate it! ❤

How the game handles terrain reminds me a lot of Sim City 4 (with buildings flattening out the land for better and worse, no lots conforming to the terrain) Which wouldn’t be surprising as in 2009 it was still the top city builder.

@eurobeat_enjoyer

6 ай бұрын

Yeah it was always bothering me in all city sims. Although in SC4 sometimes it could fill the squares with lots if the terrain wasn't too much steep. But what I remember all city sims handled the terrain like this. Is it different in C:S2?

Great vid! Thanks for your thoughts. I enjoy revisits on older titles that still run on modern hardware as the spec requirements are low and you don’t have to fiddle with getting them to work (i.e. way-old releases). So this is kind of a sweet spot between old & new. Thanks for looking out either way!

Would love to see you do a City Life video. That was one of my favorite games. The subcultures added a fantastic twist to your typical city builder.

This was certainly a blast from the past for me! I never bought Cities XXL, but I certainly played Cities XL a bunch and loved it at the time! Somewhere in the mid 2010's I was wondering if there were any new / updated versions of the game, and that's when I came across Cities Skylines. I genuinely thought it was a continuation of the series until about a month after I bought it and realised it was a different developer 😅 I've had even more fun in Cities Skyline over the years though and I'm so hyped for Cities Skylines 2, but there are a few small features of Cities XL like the freeform district tool and the way you can paint the terrain that I still miss. I also liked what they tried to do with the buildings on uneaven terrain having that foundation / retaining wall thing going on. I agree it wasn't executed in the best way, but I think the idea was heading in the right direction at least, and I'm happy to see something similar showing up in Cities Skylines 2 with the cut-and-fill feature for roads.

Wow that was a really good video Phil... I WANT MORE!!!!

Cool showcase! They had some really cool ideas and features, I wish that some of them come to the cities skylines series. Also now that I think of it, I love the placement of homes in Manor Lords, I hope they take a loot at its system! Anyway, is there more Anno 1800 coming too? :) Have a nice day

This video was really fun to watch! I know you said you weren't sure about doing non-skylines videos on your main channel, but i am still happy yo see it. Obligatory video request: would love to see your take on Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic. It would be pretty neat to see your take on a city builder with a theming so alien to North American city planning.

I am eager to see more videos about other city builders from you, as much as I like all the Cities Skylines content. Speaking of other games, have you ever heard of TheoTown? It's kinda like a modern version of SimCity 2000 and 3000 (the latter being my personal favorite SC game). It was initially a mobile game but has been ported to PC with all the typical freemium stuff like ads and diamonds taken out, making it a more complete experience. I'd love to see what you think of it.

What a video! Interesting game that I never heard of, thoroughly enjoyed your laughs as always!

Yeah I missed basically everything after sim city 2k or 3k, until c:s, so I like how this lets me know how we got from there to here. And how it challenges the assumptions of what is or is not possible in the future. Very good insight about c.xxl not being agent based and how that affects what they could support instead!

That transition from in game footage then zoomed out to your desktop was 10/10 editing!

What a fun video! I would love to see you play some more older games like Age of Empires, Rollercoaster Tycoon, or classic Civ games. This game has this most interesting mix of dated, poorly-thought out, or downright terrible mechanics alongside some really cool, innovative gems. Zoning on water to build house boats? Super cool! And those freeform zoning tools are awesome! But you can tell it's an old game based purely on that awful UI. The things we had to deal with back in the day.

I had Cities XL and I remember it having some cool features I used to love, such as the fill area tool which made it so easy to make plazas and parks, and I remember the medieval building set being cool

That park tool is insanely great! The auto fill free form one is great too. On a flatter terrain, it' obviously better.

I would love to see you revisit some more of the old sim games. The original sim city would be fun to watch, as well as my all time favorite game Transport Tycoon. (I spent an unreasonable amount of time in that game!)

some neat features in this game, I really like the free form filling stuff for the neighborhoods and industries. Interesting mix of good and bad visuals, tools, etc. I'd buy it on sale but it ended yesterday lol. Maybe next sale

Really love revisiting of older games like this. Maybe make that into a series?

Wild, I remember back in the day I was trying to decide on this game or CS. I got busy and put off buying either. Later I found CS on a Steam sale and never looked back... Thanks for showing me what I missed out on😁

This was a fun review. I haven’t looked at this game in years & definitely remember the controversy.

Sick PC set up. You can never go wrong with Klipsch speakers( unless you have neighbors, lol )

@CityPlannerPlays

9 ай бұрын

@DuckOfRubber

9 ай бұрын

I had those same speakers for like 15 years before they died, then literally later the same afternoon I was at Wal Mart of all places for something else and as I walked by electronics they had them on an end cap! So I bought another set. That was about 3 or 4 years ago and still going strong.

Seriously love the new Editor Phil!

You should make a video on SimCity Societies, aka the forgotten SimCity game that I used to play growing up. I bet that would be really interesting since almost nobody has made a video on it!

Okay that was a lot of fun. I’d love to see more!

I watch 90% of your videos, and I have the same fractal case, the same Klipsch subwoofer, and the same ikea desk drawers in my setup. Obviously any one of them are unremarkable but it felt strange to have all the same ones. Apologies for the possibly boring comment, love your channel!

I had this game when it came out. Remember it being overly difficult to deal with a lot of things. But I did love that you could draw your farm fields, and being able to connect to and trade with your other cities. Two thing I really missed in C:S. Now that C:S2 allows outside connections, I hope they implement a system where we can canonnect and trade our other cities. Though the two things I really need in C:S2 now are better zoning tools, and better industries. Zoning hasn't changed at all since the first and industries has taken a massive leap backwards from the industries DLC.

I very much enjoyed this look at Cities XXL, which I do own a copy. I actually played Cities XL and then purchased the upgrade at a discount. Then CS came out. But there are things in CXXL that I like. Although buggy, the road layout tools have some really cool features. The freeform layout is really cool. The grid layout is great. I am hoping that CS2 will expand on their new grid layout feature and allow players to customize the road type and size like you can in CXXL. But I also hope that CS2 will get a "Roads" DLC (not too dissimilar to the Mass Transit DLC of CS1) that adds new road layout features. I like the Google Earth like city selector. I think that's a really cool concept to have. You take that and the ability to create your own maps and you can literally open up the world to players. The ability to trade between cities is a huge plus. I can see CS2 expanding on that idea and a player being able to trade with published cities online by other players. That would be pretty cool. There are a lot of concepts that CO can adapt from CXXL, SC2013 and SC4 and I hope they consider some of those concepts (they already are to some extent). Do you have a SC2013 review video?

Very fun throwback! I definitely remember Cities XL stepping in to the space left by the major disappointment of SimCity and the related sim neighborhoods game. It did much better at letting you build big while... accumulating all the jank you ran into, with the later game systems (to my memory) also being interesting but often buggy. It may not have been a great game, but it was a fun one for the time. I also very clearly remember the Cities XXL release controversy and as a result taking a chance on waiting for some random new title that seemed like it just might be promising... Thank you Cities Skylines, for saving our genre 😂

I really enjoy the videos where you play other games, I don't know why. Guess I like you a professional planner plays something interesting as Timberborn (it'd be interesting to see you play Satisfactory).

This is a great video, thank you!

The resource demand was literally on the console. It was the red bar that was shown next to the bus icon. You CAN definitely change the day/night cycle. It was again shown to you had you either clicked the play button on the View options menu. You could have a city set to perpetual night if you wanted.

Nice one, yes bring back old games. I just started Bannish and Kingdoms Reborn, never played them before. 😁

you did well to buy it on Steam, i had problems with my old version of XXL on CD, it said that servers were not working anymore to play it -.-'' City Life is crazy, very hard to play!!

Gosh, it’s incredible how far these games have come. I remember playing this game as a kid and being terrible at it. Hahaha 🤣 Good times Thanks for playing this 🙏🏻

I went to look at it in the Steam Store and it's priced at $9.99 as is Cities XL. They must appreciate your large audience!

That free form tool is really cool. Be nice if CS2 had something similar, maybe have options for filler between blocks too, like trees or concrete or just grass would be nice via a little checkbox like you do with road snapping and so on.

SimCity 2013 WAS agent based, I remember that being a big sales point prior to release (yet another supposed claim as to why the game HAD to be online only, as only their servers could handle the simulation), however on release it turned out to be a very simple implementation. Agents would wander down the street door-to-door, en-masse, looking for the first vacancy every day. A kid would end up staying with a new set of parents every day after school as all they were looking for was the first household that was childless 😅

@iskolya4136

7 ай бұрын

LMAO I played SC2013 alot but never knew about this thing. XD

I will say, I really love the free-form neighborhood tool (the alternative to a grid). It's really clever to include that as an alternative to a grid since (a) that is a roadway pattern which is actually fairly common either in European old-towns or in American suburban districts, (b) districts like that are often used to funnel traffic out of or around them an for the sake of roadway hierarchy and traffic control, and (c) such districts can be very hard to design yourself since they are attempting to create a kind of curated randomness that human brains struggle with since we often default to patterns and symmetry.

I remember this games. In 2014 i went to gameshop called JRC, and they had cities XL 2012 in those cheap games section. I bought it for 50 czk thats around 2 dollars and few cents. Later somewhere in 2017 they also had Cities XXL, again in that cheap games section, for 180 czk.. so around 8 bucks. (Also that workshop i think didn't work so well, when i try to play it with mods.. it crashed)

I loved the trading with your own cities idea. Most maps lacked certain areas, so for example if you wanted oil you could build a specialized oil town and connect it up. In the end though, too little QoL, too many frustrating bugs .. If I recall, the worst one was that once you build something it would be impossible to completely remove it again and build something else; there would always be unbuildable parts, remnants from the previous build messing up your new areas - So you had to build correctly and perfectly the first time. A bunch of ways where they were better than Skylines, but the bugs were so many and it fast felt like a hit and run game because they didn't update and fix things.

@jolanser

8 ай бұрын

Agreed on the city trade. Back in the days of Cities XL I had grand plans of setting up different cities to supply each other. Got as far as making an agricultural town and an oil town, but the idea of creating co-dependent cities just felt very compelling.

I got a lot of fond memories of this game when I was younger. I always saw it as the main inspiration for cities skylines, I even thought it was another sequel to xl at first lol

This is actually the first I've seen of this game. The one thing from it that I'd love to see in Cities Skylines II is the freeform grid tool, but without the automatic zoning. Just the roads. I often have a hard time visualizing road layouts that are more interesting than just a squared off grid.

I just gave Cities XXL another try too. Just getting a bit bored with Cities Skylines while waiting for CS2, and trying out some different games. 3 things you didn't pick up on in the video: If you click the Resource panel (next to the population in the top menu) you can actually see the demand (or surplus) of different resources. It's pretty much RCI, but in numerical form and more detailed. Also under "Transportation" you can see if your current roads and other infrastructure are enough to handle the import/export. If you click the "XXL" in the top left and Trade, you can trade between your cities as well as "Omnicorp". You can import/export pretty much everything, from water and electricity to workers to industrial output. This allows you to build specialized cities like in SimCity 2013 instead of producing everything in every city. There is a day/night cycle you can enable, but it's purely visual and has no effect on the gameplay.

@kanojune5754

8 ай бұрын

Does Cities XXL have great amount of rail-based public transportation (trams, trains, high speed rail, maglev, monorails, metros, people movers, etc) and on top of that some asian-inspired rolling stock in workshop?

oooh i see that Klipsch pro media set, those speakers are great!

This was a fun video! I wanted to ask you a question after seeing your set up in your Editor Phil segment. I couldn't help but notice that you use a Mac, like me! I've been boo-hooing over the fact that CS2 will only be releasing on Windows. How have you been playing it? I'm guessing you must have more than one computer... or maybe there's a way for me to play on my beloved Mac that I'm not aware of?

The detailing of many building models was just astonishing

It's interesting. For me, Cities XXL was a game I loved, I modded the hell out of it back in the day and to this day, I still play it more than any other city builder. It is by far more advanced as a world city builder than any other game I've played thus far. Look at the reviews, mostly from people who never even reached making a second or third city on the world map. Cities in this game need to work together. Desert cities you build that product oil should trade it with cities that don't produce oil, then have workers from highly populated cities go and work in desert or remote cities that need workers. It is a balancing act which for me, made Cities XXL the best as every city you built had to work with others to be perfectly efficient. It was and still is for me, the best city builder. Now I know what some may say, I'm a troll. But no, I seriously love this game, love modding it, love playing it. I still sometimes stream it. Cities Skylines is great, but I still prefer various gameplay mechanics in Cities XXL. Maybe I'm the oddball, I just love what I love.

I would love to see you play Sim City 5. It was my first city building game. I loved it but it kinda put me off because the only way i could increase land value to increase population was to spam parks all around the city and that just felt weird. Would love to see your takes on it.

I was surprised to see this video idea coming from City Life since I spent a lot of time messing around in City Life Deluxe and despite it being quite simple, it was so unique for me. I think Cities XXL just went the easy route in naming like City Life did; keeping the base game same but adding more content and assets with new title. I believe it's worth it in 2023, even if it's not on sale... and when modded, because some models look weird

Nice channel and I like it😊

Now I want to see you do one of these videos for 1995''s SimTown.

Sick PC setup, Dude!

The statistics-based simulation as opposed to agent-based is interesting -- one of my least favorite parts of CS is how unrealistic the population numbers feel, so it's neat to see another game take an approach that fixes that. I wonder how feasible it would be to combine the two models; use statistics for the bulk of the simulation but mix in a certain number of tangible agents so that the city can still have "characters" to follow around?

@XavierHyena

8 ай бұрын

C:S kinda mixes stats and agents. More accurately it can support up to 65,535 "smart" agents -- dynamic autonomous behaviour and affects their environment. Every citizen after that is based on statistics models. Not sure, but I think they get a visible "dumb" agent in the game world. Otherwise there's maximum 65,535 vehicles/people visible in the world at any time.

CitiesXXL had a few very nice concept i wish would be present CS:2, like that world map (Cities could trade with each other over continental highways). I remember build a ski resort in that game, with ski lift, snow plows and all that stuff. A pity they never came around to fix the bugs...

The auto zone tool and the option to fill spaces with parks is something I really miss in CS. I had my hopes up for CS2 but who knows, maybe later…

yo man, good watch. thanks for the content.

Maybe in a future video you could revisit Urban Empire. Used to play that game a bit myself

The second-best thing about Cities (X)XL was that it had freefrom zoning and curved roads, both of which were improvements over SimCity. The best thing about it however was that Cities: Skylines was released some time later, which effectively saved the genre. But if you want to do videos on other city builders, I can recommend Cliff Empire (2019). The graphics are 'love it or hate it' but it's a quite interesting take on the city building genre.

bro those few disks were like a slice of my child hood. I am genuinely certain that madden 08 and true crime streets of LA were right next to eachother in my disk binder (i miss disk binders a little).

That zoning tool where it auto-fills the roads in is great. I mean, not great in execution, but great in principle. Something similar where you can define an area and asset size and have the game auto-generate roads would be great in Cities Skylines 2.

the gridding and zoning here look so much more intuitive than in CS - would love to see some of the stuff here incorporated into CS2

Man if City Skylines had these road tools, that game would be amazing 🤩

This is such a throwback. I still have CitiesXL and CitiesXXL in my Steam library. Much disappoint.

A game you should play sometime is nimbyrails. It’s mainly just a transportation simulator but it has a map of the entire world, which is pretty cool!

One of my favorite things about Cities XL is how zoning works: neighborhoods, trees, plazas. Not to mention the variety and size of FARMS. It's a very clever and satisfying system. I'm glad to see they seemingly carried it over to XXL. The games are rough around the edges, but they certainly have redeeming qualities.

@XavierHyena

8 ай бұрын

They carried _everything_ over in Cities XXL, including the memory leak and most of the bugs. It's hard to spot any difference except the colour of the menu buttons.

Idk why but i had it on my steam lib already and had to install it. Its cool that there are a decent amount of mods that make it a bit better. (For example one that makes the roads more smooth), that add roads with bus and bike lines and soo on

It does have day/night cycle. The filters were added to help to sort modded assets.

The Free form tool looks sooooooo good!!!!! love it

Hey we have the same computer case! I love it, it's so classy with great airflow. Great minds think alike I guess

Man the fractal north is such a cool case, got it myself, now I just need a to set up my desk so it don't stand out so much.

This was a fun blast from the past. Back when I was in gaming journalism i had to review this and Cities Skylines around the same time. I remeber thinking Cities XXL felt poorly tested and unfinished. It was an interesting time in city simulation games.