Last month I spent some time in Cities XL with another RPS ally as we tried to figure out the MMO side of the game. We both ended up feeling a little frustrated by the way it wasn’t really possible for us to construct complimentary cities. “You be tank city, I’ll be DPS city” was the joke that came to mind, but there was a serious side to it: the metagame of economic interaction needs to be improved if Cities XL is going to fulfill its lofty ambitions as a series of online worlds with a player-driven economy. You can read my thoughts on that and the single-player city-builder aspects over on my Eurogamer review.
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I haven’t played a good city builder in so long.
No Sim City 4, I do not want to drive a wonky car around my city, thanks.
I tried the demo; wasn’t all that impressed. I think I’ll stick with (the excellent) Tropico 3 for now. Viva el Presidente!
Sim City 4 was the best city builder ever released as city simulator, so i’ll definitely check out this game. Cities XL looks great, and i hope they’ll provide frustration as you learn the basics to the pro city builder as SC4 did.
If you can build gigantic cities such as one on screenshot above i definitely must try this new game.
Ugh, seeing a screenshot of such urban sprawl makes me ill. Can we have a reverse-city builder where you bulldoze skyscrapers and plant trees?
Wouldn’t destroying such high-density buildings just encourage more city sprawl?
Fair review I would say.
They shoulda released the shots from the Create a Park contest we had in the beta. It’s possible to make some fantastic looking stuff with the road and fill tools, but it requires a ton of patience and is ultimately a bit pointless.
If you like City Builders for the economic management side then I’d give CXL a miss. If you like to just create great looking cities for the sake of it, then this is the best game on the market.
I ranted and raved about the crappy multiplayer so much during the beta but they haven’t really changed a thing. The point is that you are paying for the multiplayer and there is almost no interaction within or even need for multiplayer at all.
Is there anything better than SimCity 4? 4 still needed a lot of improvement e.g Traffic stupidness, but it was still very good
Shame it’s not as great as we’d hoped :(
“the metagame of economic interaction”
It’s not a “metagame” if it is designed as part of the game itself.