Cities XL is a good city-building game that manages to introduce some much needed new ideas to the genre without straying too far from established conventions. Whether you're a core fan or new to the genre, there is a lot to like about Cities XL. As a city-builder, the game largely succeeds. What it gets right is enjoyable, where it innovates is refreshing and its few missteps are not disastrous.
It is arguably the best city-building game released in the last 6 years, and remains closest in spirit to the venerable SimCity. Core fans will be on very familiar ground as the game sticks to the tried and true city-building formula. New players may also find that is more accessible than SimCity 4.
As a true city-builder, Cities XL contains two distinct albeit inseparable concepts of management and construction. And now with the online component, Monte Cristo hopes to add a new dynamic to move the genre forward.
But "SimCity Online" this is not, so while it's tempting to make direct comparisons to Maxis' game, it would be more productive to examine Cities XL on its own merits with an understanding of where it draws its inspiration.
Without going into all the specifics of gameplay mechanics, we'll look at what Cities XL does right, where it is lacking, what it can improve upon, and examine some missed opportunities that might have kept it from being truly "great".
Gameplay: City Management
In Cities XL, the act of city management essentially boils down to balancing housing with jobs. Here, at first, it can be easy to start overdeveloping and finding yourself mired in demands that you aren't able to meet. If you can show just a little bit of fiscal restraint and take a conservative approach to growth and expansion, you should be able to coast along and stay profitable.
Learn to take the game's advisory warnings with a grain of salt. For the most part, these warnings tell you of impending problems, and not necessarily problems you have immediately. Being purely reactionary will often lead to overwhelming debt, so take the warnings under advisement and act on them when you can afford to.
One of the most useful data panels is the population summary, so management for the most part is an academic affair. If there are more jobs than people, zone appropriate residential. If unemployment is high, then create new jobs, or export your workers.
The financial data panel is clear and concise. Don't provide any new services until you can afford the monthly expense. Again, many aspects of the city management is purely academic and it's easy to see the results of your actions. However, there are some aspects that I found puzzling such as Retail.
Retail will say it can't sell goods fast enough so businesses lose money and eventually go bankrupt. It wasn't exactly obvious how to solve it, and to be honest, I'm not sure if I really did solve it. In truth, though, trying to solve this unexpected behavior actually made playing the game more interesting. Was it because there aren't enough customers? Should I increase the population? Could it be related to traffic flow? Should I upgrade the surrounding street capacities? Is there too much Retail competition? Should I reduce the size of the retail zone? These are the kinds of problems I enjoy solving in a city-builder, using a combination of number crunching and "physical" construction to get results.
It's these types of problem solving situations that elevates city-building games to something higher than the equivalent of tweaking a spreadsheet. However, I would have liked to see more of these moments in which a problem did not always have a single elementary solution. I think that by following so closely to convention, Cities XL might risk being almost too formulaic. Gameplay would have really benefited by adding an extra layer of player initiated and non-controllable variables, something like City Ordinances and Random Events.
Resource Management is a welcome addition, and has the potential to create some new gameplay dynamic. The basic concept allows you to import Resources you need, and export your surpluses. Conceivably, these Resources will be crucial when you undertake one of the Mega Structure projects. It also gives you another means to deal with excesses or shortfalls.
This is a great addition to the city-building game, and is exactly the kind of subtle refinement that the genre needs to move forward. So it feels all the more tragic to me that Resources feels at best unfinished, and at worst, a gimmick to get you to subscribe.
As you build your city, you'll be bombarded with constant messages about how Water, Electricity or Fuel is too expensive, and to start Trading for these resources. And the way these messages are presented, it's easy to think that Trading is the only way to solve the problem. This is a not-so-subtle nudge that Monte Cristo wants you to go online because if you try to trade with OmniCorp - the only trading entity in single-player mode - you wouldn't be blamed if you thought it was designed only to rip you off.
As a Planet Offer subscriber, however, trading Resources with other players is basically what you're paying for so it's unfortunate to see that the online Market Place feels a bit under-developed.
You set a price for the goods you want to sell, and you buy resources that you need for a price you can afford. That's basically it. It would be nice to have your Resource summary on the screen at all times so you can see at a glance when something changes as this could affect your contract, but all too often you're trying to sell the same thing that everyone else is also trying to sell so you may not always find a buyer.
Gameplay: City Building
Of course, balancing your population and budget is only part of the city-building experience. The actual construction of your city is where most of us will look to find fun and fulfillment.
You'll get your standard city-building tools that are the staple of the genre. Laying down roads, overpasses and tunnels is fairly easy for the most part. There's a wide selection of street types and a good compliment of bridges, though I found the bridge tool can be fussy to work with.
When it comes to zoning you can hand-place each lot yourself, or draw in big areas and let the tool create the street grids for you. The auto-fill zoning tool can behave strangely at times, but otherwise serves to create odd shaped areas.
These tools are basically functional, but don't always behave the way you might want. Often it will be necessary to go in with the bulldozer to clean up some of the layout atrocities it's prone to creating on your behalf. It's not a huge deal, but I felt that with construction being such a big part of city-building, these tools felt like they could have been a bit smarter and more flexible by allowing you to modify and refine their behavior.
The terraforming tool is disappointingly rudimentary, allowing you only to flatten land but nothing else.
Still, with the tools you're given and a little creativity, you should be able to create interesting city layouts, especially if you choose one of the more exotic geographic locations, but again, I found myself restricted or bewildered by the construction tools more than I would have liked.
The removal of the permanent grid certainly gives you more freedom but at the price of some frustration. Perhaps a good compromise could be keeping the game grid-free, but allowing you to toggle the grid on and set the grid size in order to help you line things up. A grid can also help with visualizing how things are spaced in relation to each other for creating that perfect layout. This is a small gripe, really, and might only apply if you're the kind of player who is very particular with how you want your city arranged.
Using transit access as a means to calculate the effectiveness of civic buildings is a vast improvement over the standard area-of-effect radius of SimCity. This is definitely a more logical approach and also gives you more freedom to both strategically and aesthetically place these buildings. However, it would be nice if there was still some area-of-effect radius in which the building becomes less effective if it's within range of another similar building. This would encourage you to spread your services throughout your city instead of unrealistically clumping them in one area.
Sorely missing is mass transit.
Having to rely solely on roads and highways feels like an incomplete experience. The only way in which you can improve traffic is to upgrade your roads, or construct new ones. There is no option for a more nuanced approach by having commuters drive to, say, a car park, and take a subway, or a bus or a ferry or carpool, for example.
Here, again, I think having something like Ordinances would add a lot more interest in how you construct your city and the way you deal with infrastructure challenges.
For example, you might enact a Carbon Tax to discourage drivers, offer tax rebates for using public transit, or assign high-occupancy vehicle lanes with fines for transgressors to both reduce traffic and generate income. Less cars also means less pollution, not to mention it would improve freight capacity and, say, make your manufacturing sector more profitable. And so on.
The potential is there to have much more nuance, and therefore, much more interesting situations and allows you to solve problems more creatively. I think these types of player initiated variables goes a long way to adding replayability as it creates diverse new game play possibilities worth exploring with each new city you build.
Art and Graphics
Graphically, the game looks amazing at high detail with terrific lighting and atmosphere. The day-to-night cycle is neat to watch, but not practical to play. This seems to be a purely cosmetic option anyway, as you can keep it permanently on any daylight or night time setting and has no effect on the simulation. Some of the buildings look really sharp at night, though it's disconcerting to see cars without headlights. Still, it would have been nice to see the simulation tied into some sort of annual cycle that included seasons, weather and the challenges of snow removal (I'm looking at you, city of Toronto!).
Zooming down to street-level gives us a chance to see our cities from a perspective we've never been able to see before. I enjoyed flying around the city and seeing things from a citizen's perspective. Click on any vehicle and the camera dutifully follows it around which can be a fun way to tour your city as well and get a sense of traffic flow.
I'm a big fan of these little details, and I think they are just as important to the city-building experience as management and construction. Being able to see your city come to life, and seeing the network you've designed actually work is a much more gratifying reward than just having big numbers.
You will see some scenes playing out ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. Workers unloading trucks, kid tossing a paper airplane, a spooky old woman thwarting a mugger, Elites lounging in a pool, a guy dressed in a hamburger suit having an apoplectic seizure while his friend looks on. It's definitely a nice touch, and Monte Cristo can't do wrong by adding more!
Despite these very occassional glimpses, I still couldn't help but shake this over all sense of sterility and general lifelessness. I would love to have seen more visual feedback as it reflects the state of parts of your city as well as the trivial day-to-day sights.
For example, plazas, parks and marketplaces are completely empty, no basketball games, no backyard barbecues, no queues at the movie theatre. I have never seen my Ferris wheel (for which I am paying a decent fee to operate) occupied and working, although there are some cars inexplicably parked out front. (Right now I am forced to imagine that a safety investigation is being conducted due to a tragic accident before the mighty wheel can spin again!) Where they have done so, Monte Cristo has done a good job with these little animations, so this criticsm is just a case of wanting more of the good things!
There is a good variety of building styles, the architecture is varied and while it appears mostly based in the real-world, I still found some of the designs a bit peculiar (your taste may vary). Granted, living in North America tends to give you a bias on how a city should look.
While I am all for diversity when it comes to architectural styles, I found that some of the building styles just didn't quite gel together in some parts. (For example, I'm not used to seeing Haussmann style apartments next to distinctly North American style retail stores, but that's just me.) I hope future building style packs will enable us to really customize how our city looks by allowing us to pick and choose the sets we wish to use.
If I had to take another stab at the art direction, it would be the Avatars. The Avatar Studio is a nice addition, and arguably necessary given the game's online ambitions. The Studio gives you plenty of tools to customize how your avatar looks, but I could never create one that didn't look either smarmy, evil or an otherwise unseemly looking middle-aged man. The character designs feel a bit too cartoony which is at odds with the realistic rendering of the city itself. I almost prefer the generic silhouette of the pedestrians than to actually see them in full detail with their diabolical expressions!
The user interface has seen refinement since the beta and demo builds, and works quite well for the most part. The panels are now much more toned down and not as ostentatious, with the focus being on the data. The permanent chat screen will always be present, but you eventually grow blind to it or you can just drag it off-screen. Unfortunately, I found the text impossible to read at 1920 x 1200 full screen resolution, so hopefully this gets addressed in a future patch.
Sound and Audio
The audio is severely underdeveloped. The music is your typical city-building jazz, generic if not forgetable, but could be forgiven if we could play our own music. However, the lack of ambient sound effects, such as traffic and people, birds and choppers, lawn mowers, dogs, kids playing and just the typical hustle and bustle you would expect to hear in a living city is an egregious omission.
Other Nitpicks
There isn't much in the way of personalizing your city. You can't name roads, or create signs or rename buildings or businesses. These options may not be important to gameplay itself, but their absence is noticeable.
Having to log in every time is a drag, and it's made even more annoying by not having an option to remember your password. I just want to click and play.
One of my nitpicks when I saw the game at Monte Cristo's offices in March earlier of this year was the zoom-levels, which remain largely unchanged. For me, I found that I could never get just the right level of zoom to work with.
Being able to see actual cars and other details at the further out zooms, and even just the silhouette of pedestrians as they move about would have contributed to creating the illusion of a vibrant city with life and personality. If performance was a concern, we should at least have an option to control the level of detail overall.
I don't consider these shortcomings to be showstoppers, but addressing them would go a long way to improving the experience and bringing the game closer to a polished, "Triple-A" title.
Summary
All in all, the end product here is a very capable city-building game which will provide you with some very familiar city-building gameplay -- which is not a bad thing. Cities XL does make some very progressive enhancements that are long overdue for the genre, but at its heart, remains a very conventional, if not even formulaic city-builder.
I would make a strong argument for including some kind of player initiated variables, such as Ordinances, and the inclusion of Random Events to create a real sense of crisis, challenge and reward. It's the reason why we keep a City Journal; to tell the story of our city. Otherwise, every city we build risks being the same experience as the story is always essentially the same.
And just as importantly, it needs more touches of life to really convince us that this city is alive and has a personality. The closer Cities XL can mimic some semblance of reality, the better. Nothing is more depressing than seeing just how empty and quiet your streets, parks and plazas are.
Cities XL is a good, solid start to what I hope will be a long-lasting franchise. I would only expect the game to improve from here, and I hope that one day the online experience will be so rich that few would argue against the price of admission. As it is today, I could not offer a compelling reason to pay the monthly fee just yet.
Despite how you might feel about some of the design and business decisions that has ultimately shaped the game we've been following for the past two years, the end result is actually a pretty good city-builder that manages to hit all the right notes when it counts, and Monte Cristo is definitely heading in the right direction. It is not without its faults. For some, Cities XL may not meet all your requirements and that's fine, but for me, it has enough going for it that it's worth following.
So if you are at all a fan of city-building, I would say that Cities XL is certainly worth picking up if only to enjoy some very familiar gameplay, the new enhancements to the genre and the fantastic graphics and all the other little niceties you may not have seen before in a city-builder. As for the Planet Offer, in all honesty, I would wait to see what more it can actually offer before subscribing.
The Good
- As a city-building game, it largely succeeds.
- It stays true to established convention.
- New players will find it easy to get into.
- New innovations help push the genre forward.
- Presentation of data is clear and concise and accessible.
- Graphics look great, and at certain angles it's very convincing.
The Bad
- Gameplay risks being too formulaic and predictable.
- It lacks some much needed polish.
- City still feels lifeless overall.
- The music is generic.
- The ambient sound effects are non-existent.
- Missing mass transit options makes the experience incomplete.
The Debatable
- Art direction at times is peculiar, occassionally disconcerting.
- Some of the buildings look too alien.
- The avatars look menacing.
- The online component is not yet worth the subscription price.
Score: 7.5 out of 10
How would you score the game? I'd like to hear what you liked best, and what you think could be improved upon.
Oct 20, 2009 at 8:04 PM very well done and fair review....
I agree. I have not tried the release game yet, only the beta...
very good review!
Oct 20, 2009 at 9:22 PM I tend to agree with you on the issues but I feel more strongly about creating a better single player game with optional updates so I'd give it a 5.5 for the moment. I assume it will change as the game evolves though.
BTW low blow on Toronto :P
Oct 20, 2009 at 10:16 PM I agree with Jamon (not about Toronto). This game was utterly disappointing. I am actually in a limbo where I now don't want to play CXL nor feel like playing SC4. This game has sucked the city-building energy out of me. Planet Offer is (and may be in the future) a large rip-off to get the tools and resources that we had expected during game development.
No terraforming and no mass transit means no play.
Oct 20, 2009 at 11:02 PM All in all, a fair and balanced review. I especially agree with the point that the game is a respectable city builder but one, at this point, in need of more polish.
Oct 20, 2009 at 11:41 PM Some how I feel that you are not being totally honest with your rating of the game. It's like when you friend brings you something they made and you are forced to say that you like it. Your close association with the Cities XL people have made you sort of blind. Your review is good but giving them a 7.5 is way to generous. With sim city 4 i could play that game for hour upon hours, this game I can barely play it for 20-40 minutes. Not worth the money.
Oct 21, 2009 at 12:28 AM I didn't agree with the score at first (i jumped to the bottom) but after reading the review I would say Dirk's points are pretty spot on and I agree he was quite fair. Leaving out mass transit was a big let down and PO isn't offering much for the money and the game lacks polish so it's easy to just focus on these things and ignore everything else. I might have been upset enough to give it less points but I think a 7.5 actually is about what the game deserves if you strip away all the bias. Thanks for the review... I know now to hold off from buying it for a while and see what happens.
Oct 21, 2009 at 3:49 AM I'd also agree it's a fair review :)
Most things are reasonable, some things are missing and really bad, some things could be improved on
Oct 21, 2009 at 4:09 AM Nice review of the game. However, I agree with Sky that you gave a generous number, for me it would be between 6 and 7. The most dissapointing thing for me is that at night everything looks dark, as there are no street lights and night-life (clubs, pubs, parties, ect) Just looking from the furthest view down, it all to dark. For the suburbs this is ok, but not in the CBD/Downtown.
The fact that in the Beta, we had people playing in the basketball courts, and i found that they did not need to remove this factor. As for the gameplay I found it quite fun and enjoyable, we now have to wait and see what they do with Custom Content for the game.
Oct 21, 2009 at 6:23 AM Finally, someone else mentions the terrible avatar system! I agree that it's impossible to make an avatar without it looking like a creepster middle-aged man. And the animations, models and designs of the citizens are so poorly done and totally don't fit in the cities. I think they should completely scrap it and rebuild it from the ground up. I don't know what they were thinking when they greenlighted such poorly made 3D models.
Personally I don't even think the game is worth buying even for solo play because of the tools they take away from you without a monthly subscription - which makes the game far too expensive for what they offer.
Oct 21, 2009 at 7:23 AM Great review, Dirk. You brought lots of good points and I'm glad you summed up "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" at the bottom of it. The game, as many have said throughout its development, does indeed /look/ good, but the problem stands on what it actually /feels/ like.
Curvy roads and 3D rendering are certainly something everyone was waiting for a very long time, so kudos to MC for this. But the problem here is... to what expense? An unpolished game and a very clunky UI with a very poor-designed concept, especially budget, taxes, ordinances and the overall simulation feeling (like zoning and resource trade, especially off-line) and no sandbox mode.
And thank you for mentioning the lack of CB-critical issues such as terraforming (which to me includes Region Play as well, because I can't really imagine a CB-game without a way to expand my cities further in a more realistic fashion, dare I say, /life sized/), mass transit for single-player mode, odd nightlighting system (no street lights, no car headlights), the buildings mishmash, the hustle-and-bustle you'd expect in a metropolis and many other features.
My rating would be 5.5/10 (much closer to the GameSpot's review), mainly because of these missing features and the unpolished game. Again, bendy roads, tunnels, bridges and 3D are most welcomed here, but I can't trade off those great features I mentioned earlier at expense of a more complete and solid city sim. And basing on your review, the game feels like the Beta right now. Cities XL does certainly have potential, but it still needs to improve considerably. Blocking the way to custom content makers and denying new features to the solo players will hurt this game in the end...
Oct 21, 2009 at 12:05 PM I think this is definitely a fair review. I happen to like the game and am looking forward to seeing this evolve in something great.
Oct 21, 2009 at 12:35 PM Very good review. I completely agree with you Dirk. Yet, Jamonbread is right about the single player mode. According to me, it weighs in the bad aspects, and I'd give a 5..5/10.
I can't wait for upgrades, that game can really be a 9-10/10 hit, it has the potential !
Oct 21, 2009 at 12:36 PM A very fair review and well justified. I don't think it was too generous or excessively critical at all.
Oct 21, 2009 at 2:03 PM It is not a bad review but missed a couple of key points such as, rail and very large square lot sizes. I would not recommend to anyone that they run out to buy this game until rail and lot sizes has been added and addressed. However, if one looks past the glitches and isn't a purest for realism in a city builder then this game will fit the bill for you.
For myself the bare minimum is they add rail and activate numerous smaller lot sizes similar to SC4. At that point I would make a recommendation that's it's worth buying.
I guess we'll have to wait and see how this game unfolds!
Oct 21, 2009 at 4:22 PM Dirk: I commend your desire to be as fair and balanced as possible. I do agree that the features that exist are done very well. However, as a long term enthusiast of all the simcity renditions before this, I found myself hitting the limit of fun after about 5 or 6 hours of play in a genre that has in the past provided me with many weekends well wasted! A game for which I upgraded my computer in anticipation of playing, and a game that should have me salivating all day at work to get home and play, has instead left me completely ambivalent with the entire experience. I became frustrated by the interface and discouraged by the knowledge that an investment of time into a particular city would not let me reach my ultimate goals due to the various limitations of the game that you mention (lack of terraforming, mass transit, city size limitations, etc). The Planet Offer I must concur seems utterly pointless at this stage, and has drawn the ire of the customer. A rating of 7.5 seems far too high of praise for the current product, and I must agree with others that a mid range 5 or low 6 would be entirely appropriate.
Oct 21, 2009 at 4:47 PM @elimgarak I can appreciate your sentiments.
I think what we have to be careful here - and I tried to make a point of it in the review - is the natural tendency to directly compare Cities XL with SimCity 4. While direct comparisons can be useful when discussing features, it seems unfair as a means to derive a final score.
If I were to use SimCity 4 as a standard and derive a score for Cities XL based on that, I may not have come up with 7.5. However, I explicitly said that I would judge Cities XL purely on its own merit, since these are different games from different developers. I still maintain that Cities XL is a good "B" rated city-building game, and still has a way to go before it approaches an "A" quality title.
Oct 21, 2009 at 5:27 PM Despite the slitly generous rating, if you think about it, this is something completely new. As for as i know, this is the first truely 3-D city builder in gaming history. Sure its not as good as other city builds, it does lack several /needs to be there/ things, but its the first of its kind. Last i check Sim City 1 was just a road and a poor rail system. Though CXL isn't everything we hoped for, but it has potential. I haven't played yet, reading the reviews about it, I'd give it a 6.8, rating what it could have been if done right, +9.5.
Oct 21, 2009 at 6:39 PM Dirk, I understand people might be biased by what the SC franchise offered to them, but as you said here, it's almost instinctive to compare Cities XL with SimCity 4 (Vanilla).
However, because of the nature of the genre, you look at it for what it can offer to you as an evolution to the city-building genre. SC4 is still very popular because it mimics reality as close as possible simply by providing the tools that make a 21st century city run (like mass transit, budget, graphs, stats, etc.) AS WELL AS some extra creativity tools (like terraforming, region play, disasters, park tools, advanced transportation, etc.). All of this stuff can be found right out of the box without bizarre tricks and gimmicks like 'optional' subscription fees. At the end of the day, you can't but mark this stuff with the inevitable "like in SC4" label and this is where CXL fails to deliver, IMHO.
And since Cities XL falls into the city-building genre, it's natural we take SC4 as the benchmark to beat. You can't compare, for example, Tropico 3 with SimCity 4 although they're both simulation games. Even though T3 doesn't give you the features I listed above, it's still a fun game, but only because your final goal is not that of building a city (despite the fact you still have some of the tools to make one). If Tropico had been presented to the public as a city-building game with these limited tools, it would have certainly been a failure.
So, if I have to rate Cities XL merely "on its own merit", it's still inevitable I have to compare it to the best CITY-builder game available. The CB genre is strictly bounded to its own /evolution/ and this is the reason of my final vote. Alas, I got to admit that because of this, we can't but be a particularly demanding audience. It's the flaw of being a CB fan unfortunately, and that's because a few companies dedicate their time and money to this niche genre. We can only hope that sooner or later (hopefully sooner) SC4 will be eventually replaced by a realistic, dynamic and flexible city-building game. "The Possibilities Are Endless."
My $0.02
Oct 21, 2009 at 6:49 PM @g314 You are right, and I don't disagree with you at all. :)
Oct 21, 2009 at 9:59 PM I liked the review! I found it fair and balanced, as people would say.
While reading, I noticed about the "lack of life" in the game, eg the empty plaza, and I noticed that the name of its forefather, City Life, lives up to its name. I think that City Life was more lively than Cities XL. No, there wasnt any city backround noise in it, but it had good music and there was always life on the streets, on the basketball courts, and plazas. Now back to its son, Cities XL.
I am not even going to mention mass transit.
Im still not interested in the planet offer.
I love the graphics, and the fact that you can zoom down to street level. That was in City Life. The thing that wasnt in City Life was the variety of the buildings.
At first, I had my mind set on not buying the game, but thanks to your review, I wont turn my back on it. I will keep checking on it, and over time, I can see Cities XL being a great game. It was potential; I see it!
Oct 22, 2009 at 1:37 AM I am disappointed to see this rated at 7.5 Dirk. You make good points for and against but I feel you are just dancing around how you really feel about the game and your being kind as to not discourage people from trying it.
You touch on the lack of life in this game. What about the lack of fun? I find this game very boring. I was not excited while playing this game. Nothing jumped out at me and made me put my thinking cap on to get the full potential out of it. I feel this game is not a City Builder (even a good one at that). This game is a population / money builder. There is no real sense of how things balance out. You can't plan in this game, everything is reactionary which makes for a boring game. All your focused on is getting to the next population milestone so you can unlock some features that should never have been locked in the first place. As you said "Gameplay risks being too formulaic and predictable." Once you get the pattern down its more like playing with Lego's. You know where the pieces go you just need time to assemble it.
I feel you could have listed more items in your good and bad lists and with slightly more detail. You can't rate a game on potential, you need to rate on playability today therefore I feel this game does not deserve more than a 5/10. If there is no excitement in a game, nothing to drive you in a game, nothing to make you look past the flaws (and all games have some flaws) and play and play and play until you fall asleep at the keyboard in this genre, then its not worth $10 in the bargain bin. Well maybe $7.99 :-)
Oct 22, 2009 at 3:42 PM I canceled my pre-order and got a refund. To be quite honest, I don't think the game looks that horrible, but there are a lot of problems and I don't think it's complete. My experiences with the beta were decent if not spectacular, and I liked some of the ideas MC had, but I do think the game doesn't finish the deal. The biggest problem is that the game was rushed out before it was finished, so many of the standard gameplay elements are missing. Mass transit is absent, as are ordinances, adjustable tax rates for classes of sims, and a bunch of other things.
But what if we analyzed the game as an "economy simulation with city-building elements"; which is essentially what the online mode is anyways? The problem is that the online trading system is buggy, incomplete, and generally weak.
There are other problems as well, such as the marketing and retail strategy. I don't want to have to subscribe to the Planet offer to get patches, buses, and transit add-ins. I want those to be either in the initial game or in single-player as part of an expansion package (Like Rush Hour for SC4). I'd give the game a 5.5 - there was definitely effort, but they needed to spend a lot more time polishing the game and adding features before releasing it.
Oct 22, 2009 at 5:44 PM Half a game. This is what CitiesXL is. The graphics are good but after that it's all downhill. I've been playing solo mode for a week now and the game has become boring. Very predicable. After you learn how to keep everything in balance the game becomes easy. They were wrong to sell this game as anything else then a online game(MMO). I bought the limited edition with extra building and without them it would be even worse. Can't wait to buy the ski gem and then have them tell me(after) it will be a extra $10 a month if I want snow for my ski resort. It's a city building game without mass transit-great! Don't think I should have to pay every month just to get a more complete game. I have no interest in playing any type of MMO let alone this one. If I knew this is what it was, I would not have bought it.
Oct 23, 2009 at 12:01 AM Wow...I was hoping to see an objective review of the game but I guess advertising/marketing money goes a long way towards making a crap game into a "good" game.
Oct 23, 2009 at 5:45 AM Good review in my opinion, though I have to agree with some others the review does seem a bit slanted. The major issues, particularly mass transit and the like, are really downplayed, and I felt those major issues needed to be brought to the front a bit more.
I've played a friend's released version a few times already, and it is intriguing enough to ALMOST go to CXL website, card in hand, to order my own...then I remember the major frustrations...it's just not worth it at this point.
Oct 23, 2009 at 8:02 AM Excellent review, Dirk; well written and ultimately fair, even when I do not agree with your final rating. From all the videos and screenshots MC provided during the development, one was led to believe that the game would certainly top SC4 in every aspect. Seeing the lack of transport options - with SC4's basics giving rise to constant innovation by the various teams and individual players - means to me that MC not only missed the boat but could not find the shoreline. The same goes for the look and feel of cities: granted, SC4's populations have an ant-like quality to them and are utterly random, but it was here where I expected MC to add a truly new dimension: a city population that reflected what a player did with the city.
My take on MC is that they thought the SimCity community would flock to anything if the graphics were good enough and basically saw no reason to listen - despite site like this one offering plenty of sound advice. In the end it is SimCity's Societies all over: just another quick exploit of the concept. XL will end up on the same dusty shelves in a year or two.
Oct 23, 2009 at 11:11 AM Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it. I know some of you you may not agree with the "score" which can be pretty subjective. To be honest, I was debating whether or not to include any kind of score because I knew it would always be contentious :) however, I figured since we're not really a professional review site, whatever our score is really doesn't really affect anything other than make for lively discussion! You may not agree with it, but that's OK, we're just here to discuss.
Anyway, do I feel it is a somewhat incomplete experience? Yes, I mentioned that. Do I feel it was "half a game"? No, there's more here than there is missing. Is it "better" than SimCity 4? In my opinion, no. But is it a good "city building game"? Yes, if I step back and look at it for what it is. Could it be improved? Certainly, and I expect it to.
Personally, I found that I didn't entirely hate it or find it completely pointless, unlike some other "versions" of SimCity I've played. ;)
Oct 24, 2009 at 12:14 AM This was the feedback I was looking for. When I had brought a copy of the game, I had some CD Key trouble, so I couldn't play the game. Anyway, that's fixed and I'm enjoying the game. Dirk, you are right, the game is incomplete. It needs more life and business in the streets, more action with the trucks, car crashes, and of course, (I miss it too) MASS TRANSIT! Uh, I can't stress it as more as anyone else! I can't believe they forgot mass transit! It one of the most important parts of a city building game! I have a bad feeling I'm going to get bored easily if they don't make improvements fast! I think the least they could do for now is add varity in the transportation of goods and people. It would be cool to see trucks being unloaded at the docks or something. That is the kind of stuff that I think is what makes a city building game special, fun and interesting.
Oct 24, 2009 at 1:23 AM I received Cities XL about 2 weeks ago, and I've played it ever since. So here are my views.
Pros: Great graphics/detail, emphasizes on the economy, shows exceptional traffic data (although more detail, such as traffic density, would have been welcomed), gameplay is understandable, great selection of roads, city services are standard.
Cons: NO MASS TRANSIT, SimCity 4-like zoning would have been better, zoning OVER a zoned area would improve gameplay, OmniCorp is the only city you can trade with in Solo mode, missing architecture style selection (exp. only American, American and European), 3 wealth levels of SimCity 4 are way better than 4 types of class, Solo players have to log in.
Was it a waste of money? NO
Am I still gonna play SimCity 4? DEFINATELY
Could it be better? DEFINATELY
Should mass transit be provided to Solo players as well, even if it's a one-time payment? DEFINATELY
OVERALL: This game is a good concept for the future of city-builder simulators, but there is a lot of missing content that the SimCity franchise had, for example, MASS TRANSIT, which has been in every SimCity since 2000.
Oct 24, 2009 at 4:34 PM i give it 6/10.
but sc4 rh is 9/10 (including plugins from here and others is 10/10)
Oct 26, 2009 at 3:47 PM I'm sorry, but let me re post the comment again due to spelling problems and not finishing a point:
I completely agree with the lack of Mass Transit. It is a damn, awful shame that in most of these pictures and in the game, everything requires parking spots and it seem that they have ruled out Mass Transit as a way of transportation. Go to any old city in Europe (e.i. Rome, London, Amsterdam, e.t.c.) and none of those cities have parking for automobiles because they were built before 1945, before America started exporting large amounts of automobiles around the world (Thanks General Motors *sarcastically*). These cities have been economic powerhouses for centuries (and still are) without having to have automobiles and automobile infrastructure.
However, I do love how there is a wide array of roads to choose from, but I HATE how the formula for more street life/business life are based upon an up and down formula, meaning that if I wanted more people on the street or business to prosper, I would have to widen the scale of the road or if I wanted to degrade street life/business life I would make the road scale smaller. This up and down formula is the EXACT OPPOSITE known correlation between street life and road scaling sizes. A plethora of U.S. and Europe studies from national to cities regions have all shown that the more a street usage is built for orientation towards pedestrians and walkability, the more people use it. The more you widen roads and orient its use to cars, the less pedestrian usage a road gets! Why do you think cities built before 1945 (and have very little modified their streets for the automobile) have up to 90% of the population that either walk, use mass transit, or bike to work, home, and all the 3rd places in between?
I sincerely hope they bring out either a huge patch or an expansion pack that fixes many of these problems that are associated with the game-play. If they truly wanted to be progressive in simulation game-play with city building, they should take suggestions from everyone (e.i. people with internet capabilities to contact them and especially URBAN PLANNERS), not just the employees who make the game.
Oct 26, 2009 at 6:38 PM Thanks for the review Dirk! I agree about much of what you say about the game, but to me it seems sort of shallow overall.
Having played CXL has had one positive benefit for me at least. It has reinvigorated my interest in SC4. I'm back playing that again on a regular basis.
Oct 26, 2009 at 9:45 PM The wide availability of the internet has made gaming more functional yet more infuriating.
Once upon a time developers actually had to publish games that were finished (do you remember those days?). If you bought a game and it didn't work that was the end of a deal between you and that company. You'd get a refund and direct your attention to the better companies and other games.
Not so these days.
With the advent of the internet developers can be lazy SOBs. "Why finish it when we can release a patch later? At least the graphics are done, that oughta hold them."
No darn it, graphics don’t hold me.
I paid you money so I could get a game NOW, not so I could play something in a month or two or three. When I first got SC4 I knew there'd be mods and custom content but I was happy to play from the start because I was given enough tools to be entertained without waiting for updates. I wouldn't spend a dime on CXL knowing it will now take AT LEAST a year before it reaches the playability SC4 had on release.
And come on people, really? Nobody in their right mind would buy an FPS with only a single type of gun then agree to pay more (plus online fees) for the promise of more guns in the future. You'd even CONSIDER paying them for being able to add mass transit options? That is a foundation to a city game, a bare minimum basic! We shouldn't have to pay ANYTHING for such features BECAUSE THEY SHOULD ALREADY BE THERE.
I have no problems making comparisons between the SC4 and CXL as Monte Cristo set out to do exactly that: compete with SimCity making a city building game. We're not talking apples and oranges we're discussing Granny Smith and Red Delicious apples. Still, the way things are turning out, maybe it IS unfair to compare the two. After all, if they're neglecting basics while hyping tidbits like that ski resort nonsense then perhaps CXL is more aptly thought of as an "all-in-one" Tycoon game than a true city builder.
Oct 27, 2009 at 5:54 AM This game is a budget title, packaged as a mainstream release. What I don't understand is why so many reviewers are going all softly-softly when it comes to Planet Offer and the fact that Monte Cristo sells you cripple-ware in order to force you into it. The reality is that no sane person can conceivably consider PO a fair deal when all you get for your money is a massively abstracted trading facility that offers absolutely no benefit above what you would otherwise receive in single player if the same identical feature hadn't been deliberately crippled. The rest of the game is promises heaped upon spin, which ultimately adds up to a developer that got distracted by the 'rivers of gold' that some genius in marketing imagined might flow from an online component that suits neither the style of game nor the demographic of most city-builder players.
Oct 27, 2009 at 7:18 AM Other bad things, there is no plugin can be made and no custom map can be made.
Oct 27, 2009 at 11:21 AM And why to upgrade my computer to play a game that is so much limited?
And why not compare the game with SC4 in its essence? When released, SC4 was very limited as well, but not that much as CXL.
Its not fair give a 7.5 rate to a game where the developers downgraded it intentionaly without bother with the players opinions.
Back to SC4, for now.
Oct 27, 2009 at 7:17 PM basicly Cities XL reminds me of S.C.S. (Sim City Socities) but at a larger scale.
Oct 29, 2009 at 2:20 PM As a fan of city-builder games, I am going to purchase this game... If anything, to only keep this series going (and maybe wake-up EA/Maxis). I hope Cities XL 2 will be the equivilant of SimCity 2000.
Oct 29, 2009 at 11:00 PM Although no one can base enjoyment on playing a game purely on reviews it nonetheless does provide a fairly good guide whether to give it a go. Unfortunately I will not be buying this game based on the reviews I have read.
As I am getting older I find that I seek games to mentally challenge me as opposed to just simply look at pretty pictures. That said, devs have to balance a game for new comers as well as making it challenging for players who are accustomed to the genre and seek more 'micro-management' amongst other things. The option for this is a no-brainer, simply produce an add-on for players that request more challenging aspects - I myself would pay additional for this.
Having lived through and played all the Simcity games I am somewhat surprised at MC's offering, or lack thereof.
SC4 kicked off development close to what 10 years now? If MC, or any other dev cannot produce a CB game substantially better, and I am not just talking graphics, then we really are in trouble. Also remember that MC has already had a crack in this genre with Citylife.
So after waiting 2 years for CXL to arrive I now find myself disappointed in what could have been the greatest CB game to date. Maybe it will be three times lucky for MC if/when they release their next version. Here's hoping.
Oct 31, 2009 at 11:34 PM Wow! I was finally making my way here to find out what you all thought about CXL. I was expecting some good and some bad, but was really hoping for a lot more good than bad. And while there are some things that make me want to go out and purchase the game, I am not sure that I will. I dont understand how a city building game can be released without any mass transit. None??? Really??? I live in a small city but there are still buses that run within and in/out of the city. What city is there that doesnt have some form of it? This is very disturbing. I also can say that without any terraforming tool, the game is lacking some MAJOR pieces. And it's surprising because many of these pieces that are lacking in CXL were the best features of SC4. I know they are different games, different manufacturers but wouldnt the developers look at what was great about a game they are definitely going to be compared to? I dont understand. I really was hoping to read more about how great the game is and I would have purchased it immediately. But now, this new computer that I purchased (not just for this game) is not needed for all the reasons I thought I would. I plan on reading more reviews and keeping up with the posts from all of you.
Nov 1, 2009 at 1:20 AM Dirk, I commend you for taking the time to review Cities XL for everyone and break down all the details and nuances of the current gameplay. I am however in disagreement how you can rate the game at a 7.5 out of 10 with only 6 bullets calling out areas of "The Good" and a combination of 10 bullets allocated for "The Bad" and "The Debatable" (which in my opinion, if it's debatable then it's certainly leaning more in the direction of bad than good).
So statistically speaking based off your bullets alone, you list this game as having only 37% good properties against 63% bad / questionable properties. That means it really appears as falling into a rating more like 3.7 out of 10.
Nov 1, 2009 at 7:35 PM What a shill this site has become. this game does not even deserve to be on here, and this site has become so sycophantic to it. I am offended by this game.
Nov 2, 2009 at 12:54 AM Is this true ?
Nov 3, 2009 at 4:46 AM I really had high hopes for this one...
But after reading the reviews, I can't do anything but be reluctant to go out and buy this one...
I wanted to try the demo, but apparently it has been discontinued since end October...
I mean, I downloaded it from some site, but when wanting to signup on MC's site, I couldn't.
If I can't play a demo & read a lot of reviews ranging from "very bad" to "it has potential, but fails to deliver.", then I'm forced to say I'm not buying this one...
Also, if the potential needs to come from content I have to subscribe (pay extra) for... no-no
Nov 4, 2009 at 5:26 AM i have posted your blog on my site
Nov 4, 2009 at 8:08 AM This review is too fair in my opinion, CXL does not deserve higher score than 6. The game is not complete in any way, it is half done.
Nov 6, 2009 at 6:24 PM I will not even consider purchasing this game until mass transit is available in the single player mode. I am not interested in a monthly subscription at all.
Nov 8, 2009 at 1:25 AM I am only interested in the single player element considering that this game was on the market as a single player game with an online component.
It is seriously lacking content and the horrid trade makes it broken. you should be able to trade single player cities.
No public transportation...in fact no transportation other than 'road', 'big road' and then 'even bigger road'
The only thing I can see that this game offers, is the free form building and the curved roads. Other than that, simcity 4 STILL outshines everythnig else this game does.
Nov 9, 2009 at 1:29 PM This game leaves a lot to be desired. It makes sense why people would call it an unfinished product rushed to market. It had a few good new ideas, but I guess they didn't get the memo that the fans just wanted SC4 but with a facelift.
Nov 10, 2009 at 8:52 PM Toronto snow removal = good.
Cities XL = Bad
7.5???? Commmmooooooon. This game is more like a 3 or 4.
Somebody tell Maxis we want the Macro Managment of Simcity 4 combined with the Micro Management of the Sims.
I was saying boourns indeed..
Nov 11, 2009 at 1:41 PM Played Rush Hour for years, always felt challenged and that I was improving. I gave up on CXL after a week. No mass transit, no atmosphere, difficult to negotiate the terrain , zoom in/out, and find my place on the city map. the buildings are bland and lack any texture.
Honestly , don't waste your money on this over-hyped rip-off, and get back to Rush Hour.
Nov 14, 2009 at 12:51 PM Good review Dirk. But I must say that when I got SC2000, SC3000, and SC4 out of the box, all of them had me wondering where the weekends went. That was what they were UPON RELEASE, before the custom content was added later. Rush Hour blew the top off in terms of challenge and entertainment.
Cities XL felt unfinished and bland. I found out I have to pay for the PO extra content, and I was having non of it. Mass Transit? Disasters? It left a lot to be desired. (I am not pleased with these lazy developers that think they can leave out a lot of the basic minimum requirements from the initial release, and make you pay for it online, through a patch, or expansion pack that costs just the same as the initial release).
Where was the challenge? The unpredictability of a disaster? I liked the new editions to the genre such as the 3-d, the resources and the curved roads, but that got old quick.
Personally, Simcity (especially SC4) inspired me to want to own at least 2 buildings one day. (After 7 years of continuous growth in her business, my mother is thinking of building her own place instead of leasing. She likes new challenges and so do I). Cities XL is on the level or Roller Coaster Tycoon for me, which although fun for a spell, didn't inspire the same feeling of continuous challenge and possibility. When a computer game can stir the imagination like that, for me it ends up being worth MUCH MORE than what I initially paid for it.
In conclusion, I am now more fired up to play SC4.
4.5-5/10.
Nov 16, 2009 at 5:39 AM I've been playing SC4 for years now and although it has some graphic limitations, i still think it is the best city-building simulation ever made, but when i watched some of those CXL "video demos" i said to myself " WOW !!!!! ", this game will be amazing, and since then i've been counting the days for its release and now that i have it i must say i'm quite dissapointed, and i agree with the comments posted above, the only thing i want to add is that the only features CXL has that overcomes CS4 is the down view of the city and the curved roads. I really hope MC comes out with an upgrade SOON, other wise this game will end up in my " FAILURE TO OVERCOME SC4" game box right behind CITY LIFE and other simulations games not worth to be mentioned, thank you!
Nov 27, 2009 at 8:11 AM Nice Post I already digged this
Regards
Dec 6, 2009 at 3:36 PM What a rip-off. No Mass Transit? Even Sim City Creator on my DS has more features than this horrid excuse of a game! So what if the graphics are great? They're basically telling you to buy the candy because it's beautiful, but when you start eating it, it tastes like crap. WTH?!? Monte Cristo, please finish your incomplete game before releasing it or you'll just have a bunch of people who'll decide to move back a notch and play SC4 again. Seriously, people these days are just not sane anymore...
Dec 8, 2009 at 6:25 PM Great, now that they've released the bus system (which by the way is yet another feature that isn't complete) MC decided to LIE again to every single solo player by making it only a Planet Offer feature. MC is clearly mad; remember how they said that they would promise solo players the bus system even though every other mass transit feature wouldn't be released to SP? Well, they did it again, this time they removed bus system from SP altogether. No mention of any "sorry" to any SP in their announcement in the new content pack AT ALL. At least have some manners, MC!! After a bunch of hard-core fans were following your game for the past year, at least give them some respect by saying sorry for lying to every one of us out there! All it mentions is a "lower" price for OmniCorp, whoopitidoo. The price's are still going to be a rip-off, that's for sure. Have you no intention of selling this game to sane people? People who aren't insane enough to be going to "Planet Offer" just to get more features that should've been in the game already? Like buses at least? MC, you cannot ignore this. You simply cannot. If this drags on, eventually even all the insane people on PO will start to realize you're just a big fat rip-off, giving content packs for features that should've already been in the original game. Shame MC, SHAME!!!!!!!!!! Now I'm really mad, and even less likely to buy the horrible $40 price-tagged incomplete game of yours!!!!!!
Dec 18, 2009 at 12:16 AM Wonder full writing skills you got mate.
Regards
Angela
Dec 27, 2009 at 6:13 AM Thanks for your review Dirk. I think if somone with city-building experience clears their mind of preconceived notions about the game and tries to make judgements about CXL that are generally-speaking positive - grudgingly mentioning the games problems and eagerly mentioning it's good points, they'll come out with a response to the game like yours.
It's just, not being an impartial witness, I find it hard to be so 'fair' to the game. Quite apart from the FANTASTICALLY BAD SERVICE I got from the support team regarding the games continuous crashes (I spent about 6-7 hours in total sending them emails detailing the issues I was having the sending them the masses of data they asked for and got back nothing of any use. The support team in my opinion is a disgrace to MC and to France - where they work. I would be utterly ashamed if any service personnel from my country were as unprofessional and incompetent as they are), and apart from all the other issues pointed out in this forum, I have to say that what it comes down to is: MC, did you know that this is largely a one player-game? It's not a shoot 'em up with two/more players and two/more controllers, or a race game where you take turns with other players. It needs to be playable in solo mode (i.e without the P.O.). A it stands, it is practically impossibly to create a large city without running a massive deficit and polluting it to the moon etc. (because trading with OmniCorp is so unrealistic), and once you've done that there's no saving it...
I agree with the points made by Brenton, Luxoflax, elimgarack, g314, SimDragon, Justin, and StoNe. Yes, the game has several good features, No, they in no way, shape or form make up for how half-assed a job the developers have done (by the time it was released - MCs fault for not hiring more developers or having an unrealistic release-date, or having an unprofessional 'we'll get it out now and fix it later' attitude, or all three).
Being as impartial and generous as I can be, I give the game a 4.5 - fun-ish for a few hours until you've discovered half it's faults,- don't worry, there's always more faults to discover: shame the same can't be said for it's good points,- once you've played for a few hours you've already discovered all it's good points (but the bad ones keep on hitting you in the face over and over).
Jan 16, 2010 at 4:24 PM i'll give 5/10, i think SC4 is much worth playing then this adorned clone... firstly i was impressed but after hours playing.. i changed my mind. bide for some improvement... increase the complexity and it's deepness... make it finish! halt to play for now.
Jan 19, 2010 at 4:40 AM It was this reveiw alone that was was my decicing factor on buying the game.... well done!
Jan 26, 2010 at 6:33 AM This is some really cool stuff. Thanks for sharing. You really put some great suggestions on there and were very helpful for people who are newcomers in this sphere.
Jan 30, 2010 at 11:56 PM Of course the bridge tool is fussy, its always been fussy. Needs to be placed on an opposite shore line eh, ILL SHOW YOU AN OPPOSITE SHORELINE!!!!!!! :P
Jan 30, 2010 at 11:56 PM Of course the bridge tool is fussy, its always been fussy. Needs to be placed on an opposite shore line eh, ILL SHOW YOU AN OPPOSITE SHORELINE!!!!!!! :P
Feb 2, 2010 at 5:44 AM I added your post to my college Report
Regards
Jeffrey
Feb 6, 2010 at 6:37 AM CitiesXL is crap.
MC lies to its customers.
The game is incomplete.
Where is mass transport!?
Why do trees not work!?
Etc. etc.
2011? Never?
I just wait for EA/Maxis to come out with a REAL citybuilder.
Feb 26, 2010 at 7:14 AM Thanks for the review Dirk! I agree about much of what you say about it.