Cities Skylines

After what seemed like a long, long time, Cities Skylines arrived and delivered a city-building experience that truly succeeds old-school SimCity. The sheer joy of getting your city up and running, watching it buzz about as you beautify it, manifests excellently in Cities: Skylines. Throw in Steam Workshop support for mods, tons of support from the developer and plenty of content updates for even more long-term replay value.

There isn’t really much to the game’s “plot”. You’re the leader of a corporation engaged in a technology race with other corporations. Your job is to be more successful and thus…get the most money? There aren’t a whole lot of long-term dividends for why you’re doing exactly what you’re doing in Anno 2205 from a plot standpoint. It all becomes clearer later but for now, you’re not exactly furthering mankind’s triumphs among the stars. Well, not the majority of mankind anyway.

"While most city-builders can function well on maintaining the eco-system that the player creates, a decent end-game in a campaign like Anno 2205 is to be expected…and it sadly doesn’t deliver."

Anno 2205 starts off on Earth as you begin to build houses and plan cities, create power stations and gather minerals and resources, keep your citizens employed and happy and provide ample food and water for their needs. Your citizens begin as low-class wage-earners but can quickly progress up the social ladder to the rank of Operator. This leads to more income for you as you quickly build towards the Arctic. The uniqueness of the area starts to create some diversity in Anno 2205’s challenges – heat is a necessity and you need to keep your citizens close to maximize productivity. Later on, you’ll be taking your city-building exploits to the moon, mining its rare materials to further your research and development back on Earth. Once again, this presents its own challenges. Meteor showers can often disrupt operations on the moon’s surface which means you’ll need to build shields to protect your interests.

As the game wears on, a neat little ecosystem forms between the three habitats you’ve cultivated. Resource from each “city” feeds into the other, making a well-oiled relationship between their machinations important. The problem is that you don’t really feel much of a threat from anyone as you advance further and further into the game. Rival companies will do little more than bribe you for various reasons and by the time you’ve advanced to the lunar stage, they become fairly insignificant to the grand scheme of things. While most city-builders can function well on maintaining the eco-system that the player creates, a decent end-game in a campaign like Anno 2205 is to be expected…and it sadly doesn’t deliver.

It would also help if the end-game were little more than trying to satisfy the big-wig executives you gain throughout. As your Operators progress to Executives and Investors, you’ll receive more income to build and maintain your range of cities. However, you’re essentially stuck trying to cater to their expensive needs with regards to entertainment, gadgets and other luxuries.

"As a building game, Anno 2205 is an intriguing anomaly in the world of gaming. It’s occupied with exploration and satisfying your citizenry, thus converting them into useful resources, as it is with building and expanding."

On the one hand, it does diverge a bit from the established formula of other city builders. On the other hand, by the end of the game, there isn’t much else to do but to cater to the elite one-percenters and their exuberant demands. If this led to some interesting little hallmarks or achievements that were tangible, it would be one thing. Anno 2205’s Investors are little more than a few extra numbers to your bank balance. It doesn’t exactly scream “magnificence” and “awe” to the builder in me.

That being said, the cities themselves look really good. Earth itself maintains a futuristic, clean-cut but still modern architecture that’s interesting to behold at times. Similarly, the Arctic and Moon locations look distinct by themselves and really help in crafting the illusion of three different cities being managed as opposed to the various branches of a main city. That being said, the various buildings could have used some distinction from each other. It may be tough to tell the differences between factories and housings at times. Also oddly enough, Anno 2205 has some rather sluggish performance on higher settings. Even when dialing things down on my configuration – which is an Intel Core i5 with 8 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 – I still encountered slowdown and some choppy frames every now and again. This didn’t exactly fill my heart with glee, especially considering Ubisoft’s horrible performance with Might and Magic Heroes 7.

As a building game, Anno 2205 is an intriguing anomaly in the world of gaming. It’s occupied with exploration and satisfying your citizenry, thus converting them into useful resources, as it is with building and expanding. However, it doesn’t feel like its reach is extending its grasp when it comes to the scope and scale of the story and end-game (and it doesn’t have the mod support or complexity of Cities: Skylines either, though there will be Season Pass content in the coming months). Couple this with odd performance even on decent hardware and Anno 2205 sticks out as an oddity in many ways. It’s not a terrible release at all – in fact, it may just provide several dozens of hours of entertainment. Just remember that there’s very little to go back to once your dominion over Earth and space has been complete, unless you’re fine with catering to the elite the rest of your existence.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Ubisoft’s upcoming Anno 2205, the latest installment in their series of city builders/ simulators, will be getting a collector’s edition, and boy does it really sweeten the pot- designed for fans and newcomers to the series who want the most complete game experience, the Anno 2205 Collector’s Edition includes:

• The Anno 2205 Full Game in an exclusive Collector’s Box
• A highly detailed Moon Poster
• A 60-page exclusive art book
• The Official Soundtrack of the game
• The Season Pass with two upcoming game expansions: Tundra and Orbit 

The last two are the first expansions announced for the game, and they will include new regions to explore, new missions to complete, and new challenges for players to overcome, themed on ice and outer space respectively (obviously).

Anno 2205 will release worldwide on PC on November 3^rd, 2015. The expansions, Tundra and Orbit, will be available at a later date, and be made available to Season Pass owners for no charge.

GamingBolt recently got the chance to try out a preview build of Anno 2205 and are pleased to report that those who are looking to build engaging economies and cities will have a good time with Ubisoft’s latest iteration in the long running simulator series. Compared to Anno 2070, Anno 2205 does not add a hell lot of new gameplay mechanics. Instead it takes what worked in the predecessor and improves it further. Veteran players will find themselves right at home with Anno 2205.

"Every Anno game in the past began from some sort of a central point and in the case of 2205, it begins from the spaceport. This is where you will be spending a decent amount of your gameplay time, unlocking upgrades, objects and parts."

Every Anno game in the past began from some sort of a central point and in the case of 2205, it begins from the spaceport. This is where you will be spending a decent amount of your gameplay time, unlocking upgrades, objects and parts. This is also where you will be unlocking the moon and several other locations along with developing rockets for reaching out to the colonies in the space.

But what really sets apart 2205 from the previous games is that you won’t be handling a single location. Instead the game throws a ton of them at you. It goes without saying that you need to manage them all together if you want to enjoy the game and as such you would need to cross pollinate resources from one locale to the another. Unfortunately, this is a rather clunky task as the interface to achieve this leaves a lot to be desired. Don’t get us wrong. We really liked this feature of cross supporting different locations but this needs to be done in a speedy manner so that consistent immersion can be maintained.

One of the best things about building stuff in Anno 2205 is that everything is done in a modular fashion and seeing it built in front of the players with a list of several different parameters is satisfying. Each structure comes in with four different modules which can be used for a wide variety of functions. It’s extremely satisfying to see that the building aspects have been made better in Anno 2205 and haven’t been tampered for the worst. You will also need to keep an eye out on the amount of energy resources you have and make sure you are completing objectives such as making residential places for your employees, opening up factories, making the correct connections and completing on screen objectives. The system may feel over whelming for new comers but give it an hour or two and the game will suck you right in with its in-depth mechanics.

"Anno 2205’s engine’s capabilities is one of the highlights of the game. The developers have utilized a new engine in the game which has helped to present data in a visual and interactive manner compared to the traditional methods of the past games."

Anno 2205’s engine’s capabilities is one of the highlights of the game. The developers have utilized a new engine in the game which has helped to present data in a visual and interactive manner compared to the traditional methods of the past games. Citizens’ behavior have been totally revamped and they will react dynamically depending on whether they are happy or not. Several user interface updates have also been carried out, ensuring the presentation is top notch. But what really surprised me is the attention to detail that the game brings. Anno 2205 is perhaps the best looking game in the series and I am eager to see whether they are going to upgrade it even further when the game launches next month. The game does have some performance issues though. I faced several crashes and lag in my playthrough.

With Anno 2070, the franchise took a U-turn, abandoning the traditional setting of the series and it worked out really well. With 2205, the developers have taken the series a step ahead with a fantastic new engine, new gameplay mechanics, enhanced building system and dynamic behaviors. Hopefully, the developers can fix the loading times when switching form one location to another and the performance issues. But other than, I am looking forward to what Anno 2205 will bring to the table next month.

This game was previewed on the PC.

Futuristic city-builder Anno 2205 was announced by Ubisoft during its E3 media briefing. With 5 million unit sold in the franchise thus far, the sixth iteration will see players head into outer space for the first time and chart out their fortunes in the great beyond.

This means creating large cities capable of launching moon missions first and then mining resources from the Moon to send back to Earth. It won’t all be linear though as you’ll control sessions on both the Moon and Earth at the same time.

Benedikt Grindel, studio manager at Blue Byte, stated that, “We’re proud to take players beyond the realms of planet earth with the biggest Anno game ever. The development team has been working hard to ensure we are integrating fresh and innovative new content, whilst remaining faithful to the roots of the Anno franchise.”

Anno 2205 is out on November 3rd exclusively for PC. Check out the reveal trailer below.