10 Best Video Game City Breaks

See the world via your sofa.

By Benjamin Richardson /

Are you in the hunt for a quick winter getaway, but restricted by a limited budget? Yearning for culture, sightseeing, and shopping, but can't seem to find the time to make it a reality?

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No problem: with a controller in hand and console under telly, you can bring all the best the world's greatest cities have to offer straight to your living room. There's no need for a visa, foreign currency, or any of those daft little travel toiletries that last a day but cost your life savings. And you can be there in an instant.

But tourism this way isn't restricted to just location; it's temporal too. Fancy a trip to Los Angeles? Sure! But wouldn't it be better if you could slip back in time to La La Land during its golden age in the '40s? Absolutely!

With the re-release of Rockstar's sleuth-em-up L.A. Noire on the Nintendo Switch allowing just that, now seems as good a time as any to book a week off work, pack our bags, and take a trip on the sofa around gaming's other magical metropolises.

10. Florence - Assassin's Creed 2

In E.M. Forster's classic novel about feminine liberalism, Lucy Honeychurch peers through the windows of her Florence pension with disappointment, not just because it doesn't overlook the Arno, but because she feels restricted in her own life. Four hundred years earlier, Ezio Auditore's only concern was whether he could jump out of one onto an unsuspecting target. Ubisoft's second sneak-em up perfectly captures the heartbreaking Medieval architecture of Italy's City of Lillies - and some of the views are to die for.

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