Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Cities XL: The Urban Demo

By Jim Rossignol on September 1st, 2009 at 5:33 pm.


Huzzah! The Cities XL demo is here, 1gb in breadth, for you to download, play, and then weigh on the platinum scales of consumer judgment. The new city-builder with an online dimension seems like it’s been in beta for about 47 years, but it’s actually only a few weeks. Nevertheless there’s been a marked improvement since the early wobbles, and this limited demo gives you a taste of that improved game with a city restricted to 22,000 inhabitants, built in a choice of three of the twenty five landscapes across the three teeming planets of the game.

I do believe we have a Cities XL interview in the pipeline, so keep an eye out for that, should you be buildingly inclined. Full demo info here.

__________________

« | »

, , .

93 Comments »

  1. 01/09/2009 at 17:42 LactoseTheIntolerant says:

    *Downloads immediately*

  2. 01/09/2009 at 17:44 Ginger Yellow says:

    Huzzah! That’s my evening gone, then.

  3. 01/09/2009 at 17:53 ThornFalconeye says:

    aargh!!
    “No download mirrors available in your area”

    I hope they go up for the central US within a few hours.

  4. 01/09/2009 at 17:56 pilouuuu says:

    Oh, please let this be the real next gen uber city simulator, instead of that Societies crap and as Sim City 5 will probably never get made.

  5. 01/09/2009 at 18:02 Anon says:

    I got the no download mirrors available too.

    Currently downloading it from http://games.on.net/file/29232/CITIES_XL_Demo

  6. 01/09/2009 at 18:02 Torgen says:

    DO WANT!

  7. 01/09/2009 at 18:03 Alez says:

    is this gonna be online kinda thing? as in with a monthly subscription or you just have multiplayer if you want to?

  8. 01/09/2009 at 18:18 lumpi says:

    @Alez: I’d like to know as well. I strongly dislike monthly fees when it comes to gaming– makes you feel like you’re wasting something if you do not spend every minute playing.

    I’d check out a singleplayer version of this, though.

  9. 01/09/2009 at 18:30 PC Monster says:

    Nifty timing. I was looking into getting SimCity 4 the other day based on the ravings of a friend. This should whet my appetite nicely.

  10. 01/09/2009 at 18:31 Xercies says:

    Downloading, i really like city Builders…the online aspect interests me but i hope you can sufficiantly build a city without othe players as well.

  11. 01/09/2009 at 18:34 ack says:

    Ugh, slowness that kills… has anyone found or posted a torrent perhaps?

  12. 01/09/2009 at 18:36 ack says:

    Sigh, beard-growingly slow download. Anyone seen a torrent somewhere (Google doesn’t seem to be in the know yet)?

  13. 01/09/2009 at 18:43 ack says:

    Oops, sorry for double-posting, borked browser seemingly :$

  14. 01/09/2009 at 18:55 Gabanski83 says:

    Wow, even that screenshot is beautiful. Might try nabbing this, very interested. And I’d like to know more about the pricing structure too.

  15. 01/09/2009 at 19:00 Cooper says:

    I’ve been wanting to play this. I’d have tried to get into the beta, but am away and only with my netbook… No 3D shenanigans for me…

  16. 01/09/2009 at 19:11 Torgen says:

    An hour later, and still two more hours to download… :P

  17. 01/09/2009 at 19:19 A Delicate Balance says:

    I’m getting there slowly – using a UK server from Canada. Can’t wait!

  18. 01/09/2009 at 19:34 min3mat says:

    WARNING DOES NOT SUPPORT WINDOWS 7!

  19. 01/09/2009 at 19:34 PC Monster says:

    Uhh, what’s this about having to register to play a demo?

  22. 01/09/2009 at 19:37 PC Monster says:

    Snap! :)

  23. 01/09/2009 at 19:44 Lack_26 says:

    I’ve had this demo downloaded for about 2 weeks now waiting for the servers to be up, yey!

  24. 01/09/2009 at 19:48 Ginger Yellow says:

    WARNING DOES NOT SUPPORT WINDOWS 7!

    Ah. That probably explains my strange error on installing from the PC Gamer disc. It’s saying it can’t find key.xml and then refuses to run, even though it’s right there in the demo folder.

  25. 01/09/2009 at 19:52 Ginger Yellow says:

    Well, XP compatibility mode removes that error, but now it insists that I have an invalid login, even though it works on the CitiesXL website. Maybe the server’s having issues, or maybe it just really doesn’t like Windows 7.

  26. 01/09/2009 at 19:57 Sitting Duck says:

    That city in the pic is the best of the Beta, done by some urban planner. You can just make out on the right the starting area, with traditional european style urban sprawl. The mayor then expanded with two linked circular citylets. Beautiful stuff.
    However, after playing the beta i have to say this game didnt do it for me, and i love the sim cities games. Horrendous performance on my perfectly acceptable rig, and woe betide you actually attempt to make a circular road, or go above a certain population. Or get a plot of land that doesnt have oil as a natural resource. Or build too quickly. Or slowly. Or try to sink your motorways. Or any of a multitude of things that were both easier to do and more satisfying in sim city.

  27. 01/09/2009 at 19:58 Schwerpunk says:

    Only activated for seven days? Grhaah! I hate when they do that.

    I mean, there’s a chance I won’t even play it for that long, but what if I have a busy couple days, then where am I – huh? Where the fuck does that leave me, company’s-name-that-made-this.

    Anyway, it’s probably a wonderful game that I’ll end up buying…

    /e grumbles codgeringly.

  28. 01/09/2009 at 20:00 Xercies says:

    Is anyone else getting Two alert boxes saying you don’t have any adminstrator privaleges to install the game?

    Weird and I’m using Vista

  29. 01/09/2009 at 20:10 cliffski says:

    Bastards. I’ve been waiting for this game for years and I am waaaaaaaaay too busy to try it right now :(

  30. 01/09/2009 at 20:54 Batolemaeus says:

    Tried this for an hour and stumbled over so many bugs it just ain’t funny.
    To name a few, my mouse cursor was several px lower than its actual position, making clicking things much harder for me. Additionally, when i tried to see how to export/import stuff, i had a nasty window telling me it couldn’t find anything, only to occupy half of the screen without any ability to close it. Also, the game seems to freak out completely if you try to start it with more than one monitor active, and will not notice that my user account does not have admin rights, thus failing more or less silently trying to update, and crashing subsequently.

    I’ll wait with that one..

  31. 01/09/2009 at 21:31 Kingmarzo says:

    I have the same problem Xercies:

    Method verify Access failed

    Vista 64bit

  32. 01/09/2009 at 21:36 Xercies says:

    I’ve gone on a few german forums and it looks like along with Windows 7 this game doesn’t like 64 bit machnes Vista or XP.

  33. 01/09/2009 at 21:44 Schmung says:

    garck, 15k a sec. What is this, 1998!? Will try it again later. Been looking forward to this.

  34. 01/09/2009 at 21:45 Kingmarzo says:

    So no new systems can play it and all older computers are struggling with the amount of detail. Thats a clever move!

  35. 01/09/2009 at 21:55 Schwerpunk says:

    Can’t play it either. Hate to sound like a latté-sipping critic, but: Not impressed.

    This sounds more like a botched open beta than a grand demo unveiling.

  36. 01/09/2009 at 22:09 PanicProne says:

    I downloaded it. Installed it. Couldn’t play it.

    I had that annoying .xml missing file error, and I couldn’t register at all.

    Sorry to say this, but my experience with this “demo” can be best described as sh*tty.

  37. 01/09/2009 at 22:12 We Fly Spitfires - MMORPG Blog says:

    Never heard of Cities XL before? Is it like Sim City?

  38. 01/09/2009 at 22:16 Railick says:

    It’s like Simcity as an mmorpg

  39. 01/09/2009 at 22:17 Railick says:

    ER, MMO , lop off that RPG part.

    MMOCBS -Massively Multiplayer City Building Simulation O.o

    My question is, do the diffrent cities of players actually have any sort of interaction with each other or do they each exist without trading/sharing resources with other cities?

  40. 01/09/2009 at 22:27 Xercies says:

    @Railick

    From my guess cities are basically seperate fro meach other but some buildings require mateials that you may not have so you have to trade them. Also from what I’ve seen you can also go to a main city and talk to people and maybe if I got this right go to other cities as a spectator.

  41. 01/09/2009 at 23:05 Railick says:

    Very interesting, I will have to give it a try once my computer is re-internetafied

  42. 01/09/2009 at 23:20 A Delicate Balance says:

    I cannot play it – I only have Windows 7 64-bit machines in the house.

    *sad face*

  43. 01/09/2009 at 23:26 Mctittles says:

    For those complaining about the demo not working, I do not think it is officially released yet. Not sure where this download came from (maybe the pc gamer issue?) but the game website says the demo will not be available until Sept 8.

  44. 01/09/2009 at 23:27 Petethegoat says:

    This plays fine on my pc. I’ve not experienced any of the errors mentioned.
    That said, I’ve yet to work out how to actually build your own city, but messing about in the tutorials has been interesting. Pointless bridges for the win!

    In addition, the character generator is hilarious.

    Seriously though, does anyone know how to start your own city? It annoys me that I’m so limited by the tutorials.

  45. 01/09/2009 at 23:39 Railick says:

    Pointless bridges, is it in Sarah Palin mode? WHUAAZAH

  46. 02/09/2009 at 01:05 Nallen says:

    @Petethegoat – Play Online, Pick planet, pick location, play.

    Better go to bed now. Been on it 4 hours…

  47. 02/09/2009 at 01:45 Torgen says:

    I have to say that the developers have done an excellent job of hiding any information regarding fees/price on their website.

  48. 02/09/2009 at 01:52 Jason Lefkowitz says:

    Just getting the thing running is a game unto itself! Behold all the things you have to do before you can actually get around to city-building:

    1) Download ginormous installer
    2) Install
    3) Start demo, get told I need to create an account (eh wot?)
    4) Jump out to CitiesXL web site to create account (why can’t I do this from within the client?)
    5) Open email client, wait for email to arrive confirming account creation
    6) Click link in email to activate newly created account
    7) Jump back to web site, get told account is activated
    8) Close browser and email client, return to demo, log in with new account
    9) “Updates available!” Wait for updates to download & install
    10) Demo starts. Before I can create a city I have to create a doofy-looking “avatar”. (Why is this necessary?) Spend minutes how to just blindly accept whatever avatar it gave me.
    11) “Choose a planet” for your city. Why? Is there a difference between one planet (aka server) and another? Why not just dump me on whatever “planet” has the most open slots?
    12) Now choose a spot on your planet for your city. World map is covered in dots. Do the dots indicate plots that are available, or plots that are already taken? Waste time mousing around map until I figure it out. Click an available plot at random.
    13) FINALLY reach the city-building part of the game, only to discover that the graphics on my (not particularly shabby) rig look less like that gorgeous picture at the top of this thread, and more like SimCity 3000 as viewed through severe cataracts.
    14) Swear, give up, go play something else instead.

    It’s like they’re afraid someone might actually play their game, so they took a cue from nuclear waste disposal and buried it under a hundred tons of bad design choices.

  49. 02/09/2009 at 01:53 Gabanski83 says:

    Silly question this, but: does it only allow you to build grid-based, American style cities, all straight roads and stuff? Or can I build bendy, windy roads and small, mishapen country towns?

    Plus, does it have different types of transportation available? For example airports? I’ve not seen anything but roads and bridges so far. No railroads, no airports, not ports. Do they feature in this game?

  50. 02/09/2009 at 02:00 Legionary says:

    Not sure what to think. It’s crashed three times in about three quarters of an hour of runtime; servers have been reported as down twice too. Those issues may be related and may be due to server strain at the release of the demo.

    The UI is a little cryptic sadly, and seems to indicate some slightly confused design. If I want to find out which regions are in jobs, for instance, I use the Economy > Jobs overlay. If I want to do the next logical thing and discover more about the problem I have to switch on another overlay from a completely seperate panel. It’s not a deal-breaker but it’s not welcome either.

    The avatar creation is tedious and irritating; I struggled for five minutes creating a character that didn’t look plain ridiclous and having succeeded clicked one of the unlabelled buttons at the top of the screen to work out how to change my digital self’s hair colour and lo! My avatar disappeared and was replaced with a completely randomised one. Whoop de doo.

    They’ve also confused me completely about what the full game will be. Nowhere on the site did it say whether I have to subscribe to play it online, or how much that would be. All I could find were optional payment plans for a premium account that granted free updates (not so free, then!), extra buildings and so on. Developers should know better than creating a demo and site which doesn’t explain exactly what the end product will be and how it will be purchased. Isn’t that the point of a demo?

    Not all negatives, though. The graphics are sweet without being too cartoonish, and there’s a pleasing growth evident at all stages – from the very first building to a new suburb in your city, you always get a sense that things are dynamic and responding to your actions. The city itself is well simulated, and more or less logical in terms of demands and wishes of the citizens.

    The prospect of what it could be a couple of patches down the read excites me greatly, but it’s not quite there yet. There feels like not enough attention was payed into integrating the player into the game experience; after playing the tutorials (be careful to follow their orders exactly otherwise you’ll get stuck behind them not recogising your progress and need to restart the level), I went to create my city and was presented with a world map. Suddenly there was mention of resources, difficulty and so forth, things which hadn’t been brought up yet and so I simply had to guess.

    I’d bet on a hefty patch before or shortly after release, because right now Cities XL is an intriguing and exciting game that spoils it all with rather too many dashes of frustration.

  51. 02/09/2009 at 05:14 David says:

    @Gabanski Yes, you can build bendy roads.

    @people-who-encountered-bugs The beta was riddled with bugs, so this is a shame. Makes you wonder what the beta was for, frankly. Performance was the biggest issue for me.

    @Windows7-users Oddly, I had no trouble running the beta on Windows 7, bugs notwithstanding.

    With regards to multiplayer interactions, it’s kind of integral, but kind of not. You can happily build a city without talking to anyone else, but unless you trade, you’re limited in what you can do. Note that you can also trade (at high cost) with the ‘bank’, so if you’re really antisocial, you can still play solo. (I think.)

    Point is: don’t expect too much in the way of an MMO. After you’ve set up some trades, the MMO-ness of the game really boils down to the chat window. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not much more than that, and the avatar thing is really just an added bonus for the die-hards and/or socialisers.

  52. 02/09/2009 at 07:23 Baris says:

    Holy shit, after going through that crap to actually get the demo running, I log in and update fine, at which point the game decides it’s a good idea that as an administrator, I don’t have the required privileges to play the game.

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

  53. 02/09/2009 at 07:38 Kommissar Nicko says:

    I found it more than a little disappointing that they went through the trouble of making whole planets, and proceeded to make your positioning relative to other cities and on the globe itself completely irrelevant. It’s really like playing Shogun: Total War in that there are only a few maps to do your business on, despite the illusion to the contrary. Furthermore, the fact that you don’t get a clear look at all the options that might one day be available to you is nothing short of maddening. On the one hand, I’m okay with “unlocking” different types of road or building. On the other hand, it’s more than frustrating to find that the space you left for those handsome boulevards you suspected might be necessary is actually a hair’s breadth too narrow for the actual boulevard.

    Also, the performance is horrendous on pretty much any level of detail you choose; my machine isn’t exactly top-of-the-line, but it’s far from low-end, and in spite of this, even on godawful mode, it chugs along painfully.

    Long ago, I wanted to try something other than SimCity 4 so I picked up City Life, only to find it a buggy, disappointing mess several years after release. I fear that CitiesXL will fare no better.

  54. 02/09/2009 at 07:44 TelefonHonda says:

    After the painstakingly slow download (avg. 25kbps) I somehow managed to install it (the demodata.exe kept freezing at the exact same point every time), registered, downloaded the update, and what I get is 2 pop-up boxes telling me:

    “Method verify Access failed”
    “You do not have sufficient access privileges to install the game. Please contact your administrator”

    Apparently the game doesn’t like Vista 32bit, I’m on the administrator account and it won’t just work.

  55. 02/09/2009 at 08:27 houghton90 says:

    to get past the

    “Method verify Access failed”
    “You do not have sufficient access privileges to install the game. Please contact your administrator”

    all you have to do is change the compatability mode to Windows XP by right clicking the exe file, properties etc etc…

    that worked on my Vista 64bit

  56. 02/09/2009 at 08:56 Flibberdy says:

    @people who are getting messages about insufficient privileges in Windows Vista. There is no “Administrator” account in Windows Vista (and 7 for that matter). Even when you set yourself as an Admin you still perform most tasks as an unprivileged user. Have you tried running the game by right clicking it and choosing “Run As Administrator” ?

    I’ve not played the game, so can’t say if this will fix it, but it does fix a lot of similar issues.

  57. 02/09/2009 at 09:00 TelefonHonda says:

    Still didn’t work for me, even after setting it to run in XP compatability. But I found a quite interesting .cfg file; Cities XL\data\config\demo.cfg. It seems like you could change the population limit by simply raising the number in the cfg file, someone might want to try it and see if it works.

  58. 02/09/2009 at 09:30 Frye says:

    It downloaded in 15 minutes, but I set both CitiesXL.exe and CitiesXL_Game.exe to XP compatibility mode without luck. Tried running either as Admin but same problem. On Vista 64.

    Now i can see why software can have trouble running on a multitude of hardware configurations, but this is basic windows programming stuff which MUST be easily reproducable. This is plain lack of testing and programming skill. Once more i feel sorry for the artists and designers of a game who poored their hearts into making something that is then ruined by sloppy programming and bad testing.
    Such a waste…

  59. 02/09/2009 at 09:43 UncleSmoothie says:

    I’m also getting the

    “Method verify Access failed”
    “You do not have sufficient access privileges to install the game. Please contact your administrator”

    rigamarole.

    This is on 32-bit Vista. On a computer built yesterday. Tried the XP compatability mode, too. What a boondoggle.

  60. 02/09/2009 at 09:57 UncleSmoothie says:

    Got it running with a tip found on another forum. Get this: you need to set CitiesXL.exe to XP compatability mode, and CitiesXLgame.exe to Win98 compatability mode. Then it runs.

    For what that’s worth.

  61. 02/09/2009 at 10:22 Xercies says:

    @UncleSmoothie

    Very Very weird, but I’ll try that

  62. 02/09/2009 at 10:32 CMaster says:

    @Unclesmoothie – wouldn’t right-click, run as administrator work? Failing that, a good rule with Vista is to NOT install games to program files. Instead, install them into a “games” folder off the root.

  63. 02/09/2009 at 10:52 CPY says:

    Bah screw demo hulk wants buy now!
    Can’t wait till i get my dirty city buiding hands on this baby.

  64. 02/09/2009 at 11:33 Cheeetar says:

    I spent 2 hours to download the game and somehow screwed up in character creation. Now my nickname and email account are in use, and I can’t access my account somehow.

  65. 02/09/2009 at 11:50 TelefonHonda says:

    Thanks for the tip unclesmoothie, I got the game running but the problem that I had earlier (demodata.exe stops making progress when it’s installed about 90%) is now coming back to haunt me. Tried to launch the tutorial but the game crashed. No wonder, since the demodata.exe is about a gig in size and contains pretty much everything. Going to try leaving the installer on for an hour, maybe I’m just being impatient waiting for the installation to complete.

  66. 02/09/2009 at 12:12 morte says:

    Wish I’d read this comments thread before wasting time and bandwidth on this crap. Win 7 64bit fail.
    It does say in the FAQ that the demo does not support win7 but full game will.
    The whole process was awful anyway irrespective of strange incompatibilities.

  67. 02/09/2009 at 13:19 RussianDude says:

    Stupid thing refused to work on Vista, XP and Seven :(
    No way I’m buying this. Monte Cristo fails again…

  68. 02/09/2009 at 14:54 UncleSmoothie says:

    @cmaster believe it or not, I’ve done all that. I always have a separate Games\ directory off the OS partition. This game is just insidious.

    Using the XP/98 comparability method I got the game running briefly before I took off for the office. It ran horribly slowly and defaulted to the low graphics setting on a quad-core with more RAM than HAL 9000. Most likely because Win 98 didn’t know what to do with all that hardware. As soon as I tried to bump up the graphics, it hung until I killed the process.

    When I get home tonight: uninstall, delete, salt that part of the harddrive like the Romans did Carthage.

  69. 02/09/2009 at 15:05 David says:

    Christ. Either RPS readers are batshit stupid, or the Cities XL is monumental disaster.

    Has anyone actually had any success with it and/or is happy with it?

  70. 02/09/2009 at 15:13 Jim Rossignol says:

    I’ve not had any problems with it :)

    Usually it’s only the people with issues who post: t’others will be playing.

  71. 02/09/2009 at 15:59 FunkyLlama says:

    @David
    Monumental disaster seems about right to me. I’m certainly not buying a game that insists on login, connection, version checking, connection again, version checking again, creating some pointless fucking avatar and choosing a planet, just so I can be confronted by badly optimised graphics. Absolutely hateful. And of course unless I’m missing something if either your or their internet goes down, you can’t save or play.

  72. 02/09/2009 at 15:59 chadplusplus says:

    For those getting the “Failed Access Verify Method” (that might be the wrong order of word), I found a fix by googling that error message. The fix was to find the installation folder and set CitiesXL to run in XP compatibility and CitiesXL_game to run in 98 compatibility. I was able to get it to run at that point.

    The problem for me though was terrible performance. The game ran unplayably slow. One second or more delays on clicks. I even lowered all the graphics settings as low as possible. I suspect it was because I have the 64 bit driver for my video card and when I switched to 98/xp compatibility, the system defaults to the standard windows GPU driver and my video card didn’t get used.

  73. 02/09/2009 at 16:15 Baris says:

    @Jim: I know it does happen often, but I have never seen the “only people who’s game won’t work post” be this one sided since the Xbox360.

    And we all know who turned out to be right about that.

  74. 02/09/2009 at 16:22 chadplusplus says:

    Another interesting thing… Monte Cristo has released the NEW!! Cities XL website which is smoother!! and easier to navigate!!!

    Not mentioned: the removal of the community forums where people were bitching about the bugs and performance issues. That’s pretty shady in my book. Unfortunately, simtropolis is websensed from work.

  75. 02/09/2009 at 16:22 David says:

    @FunkyLlama Regarding offline/online shenanigans, I think the game is stored offline and sync’d periodically — if your connection goes down, you might still be okay.

  76. 02/09/2009 at 16:22 TelefonHonda says:

    So I finally got it working, played it for 2 hours, and now it can’t find the cities anymore and goes back to the loading screen after trying. Oh well, I played enough to form an opinion: do want. The graphics weren’t a problem for me, ran at full settings without stuttering.

    The gameplay itself is IMO better than simcity 4. It may not be as deep, but building bridges, roads, zones, the usual stuff, is just so much easier. For example bridges can have a curve in the middle, so you don’t need hills that are facing each other.

    If I get it working I’ll try the config tweak which I posted about earlier, but since you have to be online all the time I reckon the servers are going to check for cities that are over the limit. After some patching this game could claim the throne of SC4.

  77. 02/09/2009 at 17:56 max says:

    Downloaded the demo, got it all installed. When I run it and log in, it says “checking for updates..” and then after around 30 seconds it just flashes a Download failed message.

    No note of it on the site, and now that they’ve deleted their forums, no way to easily figure out how to fix it.

    They don’t even offer links as to where you can download the beta and from the looks of it they can’t even handle supporting a simple patching mechanism. This doesn’t bode well :(

  78. 02/09/2009 at 19:43 Resand says:

    For me it keeps claiming I’m not connected to the internet. With no firewall or anti virus running. Tho I do have XP 64…

  79. 02/09/2009 at 20:01 Jimbo says:

    The beta has worked for me on Win7 64 without a hitch, so it could just be an issue with the demo.

  80. 03/09/2009 at 05:15 Mike says:

    Bah to this. On the brightside, I still have simcity4.

  81. 04/09/2009 at 06:06 mat says:

    what bloody cd keys are you using to register????

  82. 05/09/2009 at 02:39 Luis says:

    Hi guys!

    Yesterday i downloaded the cities xl demo and after unpacking it showed 2 execute files called CitiesXlDEMO (62,3Mb) and DemoData (936Mb).

    I puted both running and some how the game started but i didn’t have my register done so i had to leave the game and went to cities xl site to register.

    Until today i never could start the game.

    I put both files running, they sort of unpack and install but nothing else occurs.

    Please, what do i have to do to play this game demo?

    Please, someone can help me?

    I have vista 32bits laptop.

    Thank you.

  83. 07/09/2009 at 23:43 A Delicate Balance says:

    I still can’t get this working. I don’t know if it has anything to do with me being on North America, because I understand this was supposed to be a “European” demo, whatever that’s supposed to mean in an online game. Anyway… I’m not impressed so far. The actual game better be good.

  84. 11/09/2009 at 14:49 valber says:

    For win7 users! Try to install it with Windows XP compatibility. It works!

  85. 14/09/2009 at 02:09 Anthony says:

    so heres what i found for Windows 7 users, I got it installed, then went to the folder where its installed to and Right Clicked citiesxl.exe or whatever the exe is for it and “Run as Administrator”. i can get the game to load, takes me to the avatar creation screen.

    now my issues is this, when i create it and hit Upload Avatar, it says connecting and whatnot and gives me an error. It then tries again, then says it loses it connection and just sits at the connecting screen doing nothing… if i close the game out, my network is all messed up and cant get online (IE8 or Firefox) at all and i either restart or disable/enable the network and it works agian…. any ideas?

    thanks in advance to anyone who can answer. again, keep in mind, im running W7 RC.

  86. 14/09/2009 at 02:31 Anthony says:

    Correction – i got it working… here are my steps for the Windows 7 users.

    1.) if you have the game installed, pls UNINSTALL IT.
    2.) once all the old files and whatnot are out, reinstall the demo exe file but when you do, make sure you RIGHT CLICK and run as administrator.
    3.) once installed, go into the install folder and right click the CitiesXL.exe and right click “Run as administrator”
    4.) the game will load and run, and let you create your avatar, then it will let you play from there.

    im not sure why but i think the uninstalling and reinstall as administrator did the trick. it probably allowed an entry into the windows programs exceptions log or something. i dunno, but after that, it worked fine for me. hope this was of help for everyone.

  87. 15/09/2009 at 08:11 Bob's Uncle says:

    Win7 x64 users:

    It installed fine for me, there was nothing special I needed to do. However, when I tried running the demo from the start menu, I got an error (mentioned in a previous post) & also the registration page I was sent to required a cd key.

    Sooo I ran CitiesXL_Game.exe from the installation folder, which did NOT give the same error. Also the registration page it sent me to did NOT require a cd key. Thus at this point I was able to log on & play the game.

    No sweat & hope that helps someone else.

  88. 15/09/2009 at 15:51 rn104 says:

    Installed the demo and the updates.
    When starting the demo, it goes directly out saying “Hope you have enjoyed this demo, blablabla”

    Already uninstalled and reinstalled again…same stuff…

    Anyone saw this ?

  89. 15/09/2009 at 16:22 rn104 says:

    Working!!!

    It seems that the demo is over: You’re member since September 3rd.
    The demo lasts 7 days.
    Please create a new account if you want to play the demo!

  90. 10/10/2009 at 02:51 Richard says:

    You know I really wanted to buy this game,
    So I get the demo first,
    Gives me crap about it not being a readable version or something when it checks for update
    I click to launch
    It forces me to get a patch
    Gives me two choices either… I click Ok then it goes to desktop…
    Or click cancel and it goes to desktop.
    If it wont let me play the dammed demo don’t think I’m going to buy the game.

  91. 11/10/2009 at 20:56 madeinstein says:

    “It forces me to get a patch
    Gives me two choices either… I click Ok then it goes to desktop…
    Or click cancel and it goes to desktop.”

    Same here.. This game has so much bad publicity that without a demo there is no way I’m going to buy it as noone says that full version is any better than this demo. What is this company ‘Monte Cristo”? Can’t even find a company website.

  92. 13/12/2009 at 05:19 Vanjol says:

    i bought the retail of this game, and it needs the cd key in the registration. without register i cannot play this game. PLEASE someone give me the cd key in here please please please

  93. 11/05/2010 at 16:49 Stas says:

    Try to install the game under VmWare (Virtual mashine) :)

Comment on this story

XHTML: Allowed code: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Respond to our gibber

Read our finest words

PopCap On Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare

Search for clues

Play indie, mods, demos

Browse the archive