Cities: VR Reviews
Cities: VR presents a more streamlined experience than Cities: Skylines that's beginner friendly, adapting well to virtual reality with a few significant compromises.
The idea of going back to a sort of Version 1.0 experience of Cities is actually enticing to me. Fast Travel Games has already promised that Cities: VR is set to grow over time with content updates and more. As it is, it’s still a great jumping off point for the VR adaptation. I once again lost myself in its urban management often as long as my headset would allow me to play. The planning and reacting to various events around your town is still fun to handle and the VR controls are good for it. All-in-all, Cities: VR might be a little limited to those who want everything the PC version has come to offer in terms of features and visuals, but still, it might be one of the most relaxing VR titles around right now and feels like it’s bound to only get better from here.
Cities: VR delivers a vignette version of the Cities: Skylines experience. The controls take a brief moment to get used to, but the hardware limitations of the Quest 2 are harder to overcome. That said, the experience is here, even if it's in a much-slimmed and slightly blander version of the broader experience. While there are some crucial features missing, what is here is a fun slice of the core gameplay loop, and that's impressive for a self-contained package.
Cities VR might not offer what Skylines veterans are looking for, but it’s an excellent jumping-on point for newcomers to the franchise that takes a genre full of inherent complexities and makes it work in VR. Sure, its visuals lack pizazz and there’s definitely a lot more to do in the PC or console versions, but as a first step for the franchise on a new platform, there’s a lot to like.
Overall, Cities: VR offers a new way to experience the beloved city-building sim, and, as one of the first games in the genre to come to VR, it is enjoyable despite its not-insubstantial drawbacks. The smaller scale, lower quality graphics, and clunky controls could be a sticking point for fans of Cities: Skylines. However, just like its PC and console counterpart, Cities: VR is easy to become immersed in for hours and does contain many of the same tools and features, which is itself a feat worthy of celebrating. Given VR is technically in its infancy, many of the games and experiences currently on offer can feel experimental or closer to a mobile gaming experience than one for PC or console. Cities: VR is undoubtedly one of the stronger VR games to be released so far, and with a few post-launch patches, it has the potential to be one of the best games currently available for Quest 2.
Overall I didn't have the same amount of fun I remember having with Sim City… whether that's just my tastes have changed over time or it's the way Cities: VR wants me to play a city building game, I'm not sure… but I do suspect that it's just the way Cities: VR has presented things. Some people will enjoy it… others might find the experience a bit hollow, I fall in the latter of those.
The original intention to bring Cities: Skylines into virtual reality sounded interesting, but the result is rather embarrassing. Especially when there's a more capable game of this kind in VR.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Cities: VR needs a bit of polishing in my opinion. While it is there for a majority of the game there are clearly some areas that need some work to make the immersion a bit more enjoyable
Cities: VR is what most players have come to expect for the Cities: Skylines franchise. Players will load into a new map each time and attempt to use the land to create a booming metropolis. Unfortunately, while Cities: VR does this well enough, it doesn’t accomplish much over its screen-based predecessor. While the game is fun for a while, it quickly becomes annoying when the systems stop listening to the player.
Thanks to its intuitive controls, excellent new UI, and the overall addictive nature of the city-building genre, Cities: VR is now one of my favorite titles available on the Quest, possibly in VR in general, and another great example as how to translate a tried and true formula, once thought to work solely on computers, to a brand new system.