Video games have been home to a number of bustling cities over the years. Some of these try to mirror the ones we have in real-life, while others take all manner of creative liberties that work to stretch and spark the imagination.
Not every video game city was created equally though. A few have managed to have distinct identities of their own that stick with the player even after they've put down the controller. The very best ones are those that are not only pleasing to look at, but also perfectly capture the mood and tone of the games themselves, as well as the state of the characters that inhabit them. So with those things in mind, here are some of the most iconic cities featured in video games.
8 Wood Oak City – Streets of Rage
Crime-ridden cities that need cleaning up are nothing new in the realm of video games. But, when the Streets of Rage games were first released on the Sega Genesis in the early 90s, Wood Oak City quickly helped set the standard for what such a city should look like on a 16-bit console.
The landmark titles had wave after wave of street thugs for one of the four playable characters to beat up before facing off against an end-level boss. The city was given a fresh coat of paint by the time Streets of Rage 4 rolled out in 2020, with a hand-drawn art style that struck a nice balance between modern and retro.
7 Raccoon City – Resident Evil 2
After the close-quarters horrors of the Spencer Mansion in the original Resident Evil, Capcom decided to expand the playing field for its sequel by throwing players onto the zombie-infested streets of Raccoon City.
And despite its dilapidated state amidst the ongoing viral outbreak, the city still managed to hold its identity through locations like the RCPD, many of which were beautifully recreated for the game's 2019 remake.
6 Los Santos – Grand Theft Auto
The Grand Theft Auto games are pioneers of the 3D open-world genre, with each one giving players the freedom to explore and cause all manner of mayhem within its interactive sandbox. And of all the cities featured in the games over the years, Los Santos is perhaps one of the most memorable.
Modeled after the city of Los Angeles, the city is noted for being home to the Grove Street Families first introduced in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The city was once again revisited in Grand Theft Auto 5, where it was fleshed out even further with additional neighborhoods and boroughs, marking one of the largest featured in a video game at the time of release.
5 New Vegas – Fallout: New Vegas
The games in the Fallout series might be set many years after an all-out nuclear war, but they still house some of the most bleakly beautiful open worlds out there. This is especially true of the remnants of Las Vegas that serve as the setting for the Fallout 3 spin-off, Fallout: New Vegas.
Largely untouched by the horrors of The Great War, the city of New Vegas is the perfect haven in an otherwise barren wasteland. Don't let that fool you into thinking it's an ideal tourist destination though, because you'll have to fight your way through bandits and countless other mutations in order to get there.
4 Gotham City – Batman: Arkham City
After fighting his way through countless criminals and villains from his rogues' gallery in the brilliant Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Caped Crusader returned once again for an even bigger serving of bone-crushing justice in Batman: Arkham City.
In the game, Gotham City has been overrun by escaped prisoners from Arkham Asylum, forcing the powers that be to enact a city-wide curfew. So with all the hapless civilians locked safely in their houses, this turns the city into the ultimate beat 'em up sandbox as Batman tries to rid the streets of the criminals and villains that have since started to run rampant.
3 Night City – Cyberpunk 2077
Regardless of what you think about Cyberpunk 2077 and the less than ideal state the game had launched in, you have to admit its setting of Night City is one of the most visually striking in a video game.
Developer CD Projekt Red took everything it had learned from its work on The Witcher 3 and turned the dial up to eleven, creating a multilevel metropolis that wouldn't look out of place in dystopian science-fiction films like RoboCop and Blade Runner.
2 Vice City – Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Although an argument could be made for any of the other cities in the 3D GTA games, no other city in the series even comes close to evoking the same sense of identity as Vice City.
From the sandy beaches of Ocean Drive to the neon lights of the Malibu Club, every square inch of the metropolis calls to mind the city of Miami in the height of the 80s. And with rumors that we might be returning to this specific location for the next game in the series, one can only begin to imagine what the city would look like in full next-gen glory.
1 Rapture – BioShock
Of all the cities we've had the pleasure of exploring in video games over the years, the city of Rapture stands as one of the most captivating. Located deep underwater in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the once beautiful utopian paradise was intended by its creator, Andrew Ryan, to be the perfect getaway from all the religious, social, and political machinations of the world, post-World War 2.
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions as they say, and so the city gradually falls into a dilapidated state following a civil war. What's left are the remnants of a narcissist's ideologies, as well as the victims of a culture obsessed with genetic modification. The city is also home to the iconic Big Daddy and Little Sister pairs, roaming the darkened hallways in search of the highly sought-after chemical substance, ADAM.
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