Cities XL Preview [PC]

29 Jul 2009 at 14:59:50 by James Chalmers

I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on a beta version of Cities XL and after our recent interview with the CEO of Monte Cristo, Jerome Gastaldi, I was really looking forward to this game. Being a big fan of ‘SimCity 4,’ Monte Cristo’s promise that Cities XL will be the next generation of city builder intrigued me.  

From the download of the 2.5GB setup file, you know this game is going to be big, and after the hefty install and a couple of additional updates you can now log in. Before joining a planet and creating a city you are given the option of a tutorial which I suggest you take a look at.

However, while the tutorial itself outlines the basic gameplay in Cities XL, it doesn't provide an insight into some of the more complex components of the game (such as trading and blueprints) so you’ll have to use your own grey matter to work them out. At least until a boxed copy is released with a user manual.

Currently in the beta there are four different planets to choose from and you’re given an indication of how many cities are online, and how many free spaces there are on each server. When you join a planet the surface is varied all over the globe giving you the choice of a number of locations including sand, mountains and snow. However, with the beta having been going for a while now, a lot of spaces have been taken so you may have to compromise. Especially as with each location you need to make sure the difficulty rating is suited to you and it has a reasonable percentage of flat land. It took me a good fifteen minutes at least to find an easy difficulty map with at least 40% flat land. Hopefully Monte Cristo will add more easy maps for beginners otherwise the rather daunting prospect of having to play on a higher difficulty map will drive inexperienced players away from the game.

Once you have chosen your map and named your city you are prompted to place a city hall and then its time to start zoning your city for your citizens to inhabit. You have four different type of citizens to cater for:  unqualified, qualified, executives and finally the elite. As your city grows over time you unlock the affluent and educated citizens, but unfortunately there is no citizen development – for example, you will always see the slums inhabited by unqualified workers in your city even if you have the best schools and services around. One of the key aspects in SimCity 4 was the development of your citizens via the different services on offer and even though all cities need some unqualified workers, having a whole district of them isn’t exactly ideal.

Obviously with workers you have to create jobs and at the start of the game you are given the option of farm lands, offices and heavy industry. Like in SimCity, heavy industry pollutes the air so keeping your citizens, offices and crops away from the fumes is your best bet. As your city grows you unlock different levels of a certain industry most of which have three different variations normally giving you the opportunity to create larger more expensive versions of the original industry. And, thanks to the impressive graphics engine, you will notice all the little additions and enhancements to your city.

Three different zoning tools have been created for the game to place houses and industry sectors. You have the traditional square zoning which places buildings in a set square design with roads surrounding it. You can also place single buildings as long as they are connected to a street. However my favourite zoning tool is the free form where you can draw out the perimeter and it will add as many building into the zone at once, meaning you can fill almost every small gap in your city.

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