I should have better things to do than blog about games, again and again, right? This is a professional blog for an IT company, after all. But, I just couldn’t let my last review stand without reporting in on how the real game plays in comparison to the demo I reviewed a couple weeks back. There are a few differences that affect gameplay.

Cities XLis a new city simulation game and MMO from Monte Cristo. As a longtime avid SimCity player, I just couldn’t wait for this new game to come out, especially given the incredibly disappointing experience of SimCity Societies (the last version of the SimCity franchise). Cities XL lets me build the city of my dreams (or nightmares, in some cases) in a more realistic fashion than any previous city simulator.

Cities XL logo

As with the demo, you begin your Cities XL experience by creating your avatar. The avatar is what “you” look like in the program and on the Cities XL website. Once your avatar is complete, you are presented with the application’s main menu.

From the main menu, you can work through tutorials, set program options, and play in solo mode (by yourself on your computer) or in planet mode (your city is online amongst many others on planets). The solo mode is free, in the sense that once you’ve bought the program, you can play at no additional cost in solo mode. The so-called “Planet Offer” is a subscription-based online mode where your cities can buy and sell resources with other player’s cities. You can also visit other player’s cities as if they were your own.

You get five days of the Planet Offer free when you first install the program. I’ve decided to hold off a while, though, and see how I like the solo mode before I consider investing in the Planet Offer.

The on-screen tools have been modified since the demo, and these changes are improvements. There is less screen clutter and better control of game features. For instance, you can now easily pause the game (which may have been possible in the demo, but I didn’t find that feature, so I’m not sure); you can also play it at normal speed or twice normal speed if you’re impatient.

You still begin your cities by selecting a map, of which there are about 25 to choose from. Each map has various resources and difficulty levels. Then, you place a road connection (or if your city is on an island, a seaport) to enable intercity commerce. This road connection is just a road that connects to an edge of the map. Somewhere on this road you place your Town Hall. And then you place a Utility Center that gets your city started with resources such as power and water.

From there, you begin building your city by placing residential, industrial, and retail zones. Initially, there aren’t many choices for zoning or building, but this changes as your population grows. Over time, the various zone types offer up to three levels of increasing density. Your citizens also begin to demand city services such as health, education, security, and fire protection (which cost money every budget cycle to maintain).

As your city becomes more sophisticated, it needs various levels of industrial buildings, from farms, heavy industry, offices, manufacturing, and eventually high tech. These industries require citizens. The simpler industries need unqualified workers, and then qualified workers, then executives, and eventually elites, as they are called. Each citizen type is harder to satisfy in terms of city services, employment, and commercial needs.

Residential, retail, and industrial buildings all require a regular supply of reasonably priced resources. You can expect to build or buy additional electrical, water, fuel, and waste resources as your city grows. All of these things cost money and are charged every cycle against your city budget.

Your city benefits from additional road connections to the edge of the map, as well as the presence of seaports and airports. Parks, landmark buildings, and leisure buildings keep citizens entertained and the wheels of commerce turning.

Oh, and watch out for the pervasive problem of pollution, which kills everything according to warnings I’ve been “sent” in the program. Place your dirty industries and resources far from residential areas, but no so far as to make the daily commute intolerable. Good luck with all this!

So, how have my cities been doing? Hartnell, Troughton, and Pertwee were the first cities I built. Each one has grown bigger than the last, but reached an unstable limit when my patience ran out and I moved on. Hartnell grew to about 150,000 citizens before problems became nearly insurmountable. I moved on to Troughton and grew that city to nearly 250,000 before different problems severely plagued it. Learning from previous mistakes, I then built Pertwee, and it’s currently hovering around 600,000 citizens, but struggling with budget problems. Again, I’ve learned some things and have some new ideas, so I’m about ready to move onto Baker and see if I can grow it to 1,000,000 citizens.

(My fellow science fiction geeks may recognize where I got the names for my cities: each is the last name of an actor who played Doctor Who in the British science fiction series of the same name.)

I’m going to again rank this product 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Craig Samson

Have I ever mentioned that I love SimCity? Not the last terrible version Electronic Arts called, “SimCity Societies.” That game isn’t about city building as much as it is about nannying the citizenry. No, I like to build the cities far more than I like to manage them. For me, SimCity 4 was the last real version of SimCity (released way back in 2003).

Cities XL, by Monte Cristo, is a city building and simulation game in the spirit of SimCity 4. It will be released in the US on Friday, October 9. This game builds on all the best parts of SimCity, but modernizes it in several important ways. I recently downloaded a demo of the game and played it for a week. Here are my thoughts and observations:

Cities XL Screenshot from citiesxl.com

3D Camera. Finally, the camera can be moved around 360 degrees and moved vertically from high above the ground all the way down to street level. But this game very badly needs the support of the 3dConnexion SpaceNavigator to make camera motion easier and more intuitive. Please, please, please!

Avatar. At the beginning of the game, you create your avatar. It represents you in various ways throughout the game, including an avatar mode where you can control your avatar on the streets of your city (another good use for the SpaceNavigator, by the way).

Landscapes. I was able to experiment with only three maps in the demo I was using. The three maps included a volcano landscape, a mountain lake, and an ocean-side beach. All three maps were larger than the largest maps in SimCity. Each offers varying amounts of resources like oil and fresh water. The maps are richly detailed and contain considerable elevation variation.

Utilities and Resources. The first building you place is your town hall. After that, you place a structure called the All-In-One. It provides important resources such as fuel, oil, water, electricity and waste management. Eventually, as your city grows, it will need more of these resouces than can be provided by the starter facility. It’s necessary, then, to scout for the availability of resouces, such as fresh water. If the resource is available, you can build a water tower. If not, you need to buy the resource from a neighboring city (or the ever-expensive in-game conglomerate called OmniCorp).

Road Network. Roads come in a full variety of sizes, from a narrow dirt farm road, through single-lane streets, and up to small and large avenues. The roads can be straight, angled, or curved (or any mixture of those three). The roads can be elevated and cross over/under each other, as well as intersect at various angles. Sadly, the demo didn’t provide access to more advanced transportation networks like highways, rail, water, or air.

City Services. As your city grows, the game reveals additional functional structures you can add. These include security (police), health, education, and fire protection. Placement of these structures makes your citizenry happier and more likely to attract a higher class of resident.

Zoning. Much like SimCity, you build your city by zoning. You can place residential zones to increase your population, retail zones to increase commerce, and industrial zones to increase productivity. All of the zone types come in varying levels of density and the residential zones also come in varying social classes.

Zoning Redux. There are multiple clever ways of creating zones in your city, and you’re free to mix and match as you go. First is the rectangular zone where you snap down the four straight sides of your zone and it arranges the plots inside. Second is the freeform zone where you click your way around the edge of the new zone, placing a border road; Cities XL then fills the zone with various plots. Last, you can simply place an individual zone anywhere you like. The zones nicely snap to the roads, whether they’re straight angled or curved.

The Clock. Cities XL runs at a constant pace, unlike SimCity where the clock speed can be slowed, sped up, or paused. The passage of time is denoted by a clock face within the user interface. It takes about a minute for each cycle. And with each cycle you pay your debts and collect taxes. The interface nicely displays whether you’re making or losing money each cycle.

Planet Mode. Of course, Monte Cristo has turned Cities XL into an MMO with the subscription-based planet mode. In this mode, you explore the surface of various planets and choose a vacant plot for your city. Each plot is of a certain map type and contains varying levels of difficulty. The demo, though, only had two planets and three maps to choose from. In this mode, you can also visit other user’s cities and explore them as if they were your own.

Social Networking. Annoyingly, there is a a floating chat window that persists throughout the gameplay. As you build your city, you can watch (and participate in) a constant stream of chatter in this window. It can’t be closed, but you can filter some of what appears in it. Also, when you create your Cities XL account, you create a profile page on the website that trumpets your accomplishments. This page is rather Facebook-ish, and I’m sure there’s much more social networking opportunity than I discovered, though.

The demo has certain additional limitations that prevented me from making a more thorough review. The demo is still available for download, but will cease working on September 30. The demo I used was operable for only seven days, and cities could not grow larger than 22,000 citizens before the program gracelessly exits. Also, many of the things to build are not available in the demo. In fact, Monte Cristo claims the real game will contain ten times the content of the demo.

My Rating: Provisionally 4.5 out of 5 stars (I need to play the real game to be sure).
Cost: $30 to $40, plus $6.32 to $9.25 per month for the planet mode.
Availability: Friday, October 9 in the US.

Craig Samson