Comments on: Cities XL: Statuesque

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:40:46 +0000

I do believe you sign an NDA when you create an account with the beta, which means not talking about it. ;)

By: Nalano

Nalano — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:10:52 +0000

I loved SC4. It, along with UT2k4, was the first game to beat 10g on my PC before WoW. I’d use the Simcity Exchange and Simtropolis and just get more and more and more building sets that a lot of talented modders made, in the hopes of approximating what I feel a built-up city looks like, and foremost of that is:

Street Walls – where the facade of one building lines up with the facades of adjacent buildings.

So guess what’s missing in Cities XL Beta? Its as if the designers are too infatuated with their curved highways and their giant monuments to have building sites that don’t plop Corbusier’s dream of buildings in the middle of otherwise bare plots. No matter how tall the buildings are, it feels like suburbia, and considering the bread and butter of most cities are not their highways or their monuments but their built up environment, I was less than impressed.

By: NeonBlackJack

NeonBlackJack — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:07:55 +0000

I’ve been playing Cities XL for a while now and it’s a great time. Slow burn for me too, at first I was skeptical and now I’m incredibly excited for it.

The developers still have a LOT of work to do in the coming month before release, but they’ve been fixing and adding things at a nice pace so far. I have faith.

Cities XL could be great.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:18:43 +0000

@ Railick – ” used to play this interesting game online that was like an mmo where you developed cites with other players”

I remember playing “Legacy Online”, which was like a city-builder but with a strong economy focus (you were really running a company, not running a city, although residential buildings were one of the things your company could build) run in an MMO way. It had the Anno-style focus on supply-chains too – build a chemical plant to make chemicals, need those to make plastics, need plastics to make CDs, sell CDs in your music store, etc.

It was really cool, but suffered from the usual public-multiplayer issues. Some guy with spreadsheets had found the optimal way to run a particular company, so newbies couldn’t compete. Some guilds or friendships would form, and the entrenched successful guys could dump millions on new players to help them get a jump start on other, friendless newbies. Things like that. As I recall, zoning was controlled by players who were elected by the other players.

It seems to be also-known-as StarPeace, and in varying states of disappearance now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_Online

By: AlexMax

AlexMax — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:22:14 +0000

@MD

In terms of ‘exciting videos’ I am convinced that Quake is without equal in that regard. Watching Get Quaked 3, Claw and Order and Dag Def Extreme 3 were what convinced me to start playing Quake again.

By: chadplusplus

chadplusplus — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:48:33 +0000

Well, ambitious sure. But according to some of the speculation over on their forums, it looks like they were too ambitious. After all, accurately simulating human behavior in a game context is rather challenging. There is also speculation that several of the transportation systems are either going to be late or dumbed down.

By: Lucas

Lucas — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:07:23 +0000

I wish more games were this ambitious.

By: MD

MD — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:18:11 +0000

Also, “you have to want to play it” is very true. There’s a fine line between getting owned a couple of times and quitting forever, and seeing something in the game that makes you want to stick with it. You have to enjoy the learning process, I think, but it certainly helps if you have a reason to believe that the end result (being able to play at a decent level) is worth a bit of frustration. When I’m ‘selling’ a multiplayer game I always try to link to exciting videos and show people what is possible with a bit of application. Obviously some games are better than others at being fun for beginners and satisfying for serious players, and I don’t think any game does both perfectly. As far as ‘hardcore’ dm games go, I think Q3 (and QL) does pretty well in that regard.

By: MD

MD — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:08:38 +0000

Yeah, I reckon ‘avoid Duel’ is sound advice for newcomers to any deathmatch game.

By: Clippit

Clippit — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:56:13 +0000

the trick with Quake Live is that you have to want to play it. If you’re new to it, there’s a lot to learn. Obviously you shouldn’t jump straight into duels as this is the most taxing gametype. Like Jim mentioned, just go into CTF, grab a railgun, and try to shoot some of the little men wot bounce across your screen. It’s kind of like “building” in that way – you learn one thing, it becomes automatic, then you start learning the next thing.

By: MD

MD — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:54:06 +0000

Quake Live keeps drawing me back. There’s something incredibly addictive about it, and the ease with which you can jump into a game makes it perfect for quick-fix action. Being Q3 though, it’s potentially life-devouring too of course. But there’s something about the feel, and if I’m honest probably my own lack of ability, that’s preventing me from falling too deeply in love.

@Jim, have you played Warsow at all? Just wondering if you’re aware of it, as there’s a fairly major release due within the next few days and you seem like the most-likely RPSer to be interested. I was thinking of firing off a quick email, but your mention of QL made it seem relevant here. (I’m not associated with the wsw team, just a big fan who is hoping to see some fanfare around the 0.5 release.)

By: Railick

Railick — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:25:52 +0000

I used to play this interesting game online that was like an mmo where you developed cites with other players , can’t remmeber what it was called but I remember it being very interesting. I would like to give this a try but I don’t think it is the same thing :P I gave my copy of SC4 away to a friend who wanted to use it for something or another and never got it back , I’ve missed city building since then ehe.