Watch: We've played five hours of Anno 2205
Houston, we have a preview.
I thought I wanted to play Anno 2205 because it would let me build a city on the moon, but really, it turns out that's just a bonus. Five hours with an early preview build this week have revealed that the game's biggest strength actually comes from the way it handles multiple settlements at the same time. Or rather, how it asks you to handle them.
The game begins as many city builders do, with the player transforming a wonderful island paradise into a noisy metropolis, full of identical buildings and poorly managed road networks. But then, just as you're starting to get everything figured out, you're granted access to a second area, this time in the arctic. With region-specific resources and buildings, you'll need to have your cities work together to progress (fruit, for example, can only be grown in a temperate climate). It's an interesting dynamic and one that has me thinking back to what the SimCity reboot could have been, perhaps, had it not been hamstrung by its desire for multiplayer.
Unfortunately the preview build came to an end as I finally looked towards the stars (or at least the moon, anyway), but so far, I've enjoyed my time as the CEO of BrattCorp. Anno 2205 isn't a perfect city builder, as I explain in the video below, but it is a good one.
