Review: Cities XL (PC)

When I first heard of Cities XL I thought that this game could potentially ruin my social life. It has taken my favourite genre of games, added a splash of MMO and thrown in some social networking to boot. Surely what little friends I have would have to be pushed aside for a while as Cities XL takes over.

Can't go wrong with a City Building game...

There's nothing drastically original in the game's approach to city building. It's still your standard affair of placing down houses for your citizens as well as providing them with jobs and amenities. Fortunately Cities XL has made constructing these cities a breeze. The game allows you to place houses and industries in three forms of zones. All it takes is three clicks. Most people will use the basic block of six buildings a zone when beginning, but when space becomes tight you can map out space for buildings easily. Roads and bridges are also laid out in a similar manner although the terrain can sometimes make bridges tricky and fiddly to erect.

When you start to see the first citizens arrive in your new city you realise that now you need to get some sort of economy going. You will need to establish heavy, manufacturing, high tech and agricultural industries. These will provide jobs for your citizens as well as money for your budget as companies provide corporation tax. The goods produced from each industry needs to be sold in order for the companies to become profitable and so a tertiary sector needs to be set-up along side the other industries.

The above all takes place in the early game where everything is nearly always hunky-dory. As the game progress and new building are unlocked the game can become increasingly difficult. As industry expands your resources become stretched and companies begin to go bankrupt and leave. Clicking on recently closed business give you an insight into the main reason for the closure. The problem is that supporting business later on the game is very difficult and a lot of it is down to the problems with Cities XL's approach to single player and multiplayer trading and the lack of accurate information as to why they are closing.

It's Enron all over again

When a problem occurs you will be notified by a message on screen. Sometimes these messages will provide you with conflicting reports. One such report told me there was a problem with my offices. However, upon clicking on the office's tab to find out what exactly the problem was, I was told everything was fine and that there was no problem. Single player trading also leaves a lot to be desired. In multiplayer you can trade with other players who know the value of resources and set their prices accordingly. In single player mode you can only trade with the AI controlled Omnicorp.

This company must be connected to Microsoft in some way because the shaft you with their prices at every turn. They're a fraction of what you would get in multiplayer. This makes the extraction of resources like oil largely useless as the cost of extraction is not worth the price you will be getting for it. You'd think finding oil would make you rich, but not in Cities XL. This makes large cities nearly impossible to manage as you struggle to finance the growth.

The game does make up for some shortcomings with an excellent interface that allows you to view your city and all its failings and successes. You can easily see where traffic is a problem as well as where natural resources are. You will nearly always know where a problem is and where it could develop. The game even gives you some basic accounts for you to look at and see where your budget is being drained. You can also check your most profitable companies and adjust taxation for your citizens and your companies.

Think I'll save my pennies Monte Cristo

The main allure of Cities XL is the multiplayer element. It sounds great in theory, but in practice it falls apart. The main benefits are that you can trade resources with other player. However, the trading menu is very laggy and also suffers from some major bugs that can make trading futile at times. It's also very unbalanced. Nearly every other player with be trying to buy and sell the same thing which makes selling and buying resources for your own city very difficult. Another feature allows you to visit other players cities with your own mayoral avatar, but I found this feature pointless.

At nearly ten pounds per month Monte Cristo are asking a lot from its fan base. The company promises future content to be added when you subscribe such as new buildings and a mini game where you manage a company. It's all promises right now and until I see it with my own eyes Planet Offer isn't worth a fraction of what it is asking.

I can see my house from here

Cities XL is a great looking game. At a certain angle your city can look spectacular. I would have liked to have seen a more vibrancy in the visuals though. They feel barren most of the time. My city had a population of 120,000, but you couldn't tell with only a handful of people walking the streets.

Sure there is traffic, but it's pointless as cars have no real destination and they disappear when you follow them or move the camera away. The cities would feel alive if at least some of the traffic had a destination. Everything is instantly teleported and nothing goes on in your industrial estates. You never see any work being done and anything that would entertain you if you zoomed in. Sure it's a tall ask for something like this, but the market is flooded with generic city building games and sometimes you need to go that extra distance to make your own stand out.

My city resembles Pripyat

My city also resembles a morgue. You only really hear something when you click on it, but it's usually a generic sound like a doorbell or siren. Stability is also questionable. When I first received the game it was very unstable. It locked up and froze on a few occasions, but the number of times that happened was drastically cut after a few patches. After installing one such patch, I was unable to play the game for a day as Cities XL decided to keep me stuck on the loading screen. It was promptly fixed later that night.

The main success of Cities XL is that it has the basics right. The developer has created a solid city builder that's addictive and enjoyable. It's only hampered by the numerous bugs/crashes and the over-priced planet offer that mainly promises more than it delivers.