Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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.

Remember how angry you were last week when we told you there was a Cities XL demo out, but it turned out an American chap like you couldn’t play it, or found it agonisingly laggy because it was European only? Ooh, you were mad. Remember how you did terrible things to a passing hobo in the name of misplaced vengeance? He may never recover, but your high spirits will because – rejoice! – the US demo is now live too. It’s exactly the same content as the Euro one, but with different servers. 1Gb of quasi-MMO, 3 of the 25 cities available, and playable until the end of September, and available here.

A while back, I got together with Jerome Gastaldi – Monte Cristo CEO and lead on Cities XL – to talk about Cities XL. By “a while back” I mean, January. RPS has been busy with not doing anything. Since the demo has just been released, I thought it time to go back to the recording of Mr Gastaldi’s splendid Gallic accent and forthrightness – I’ve avoided about half the swearing – to talk about Cities XL, the construction genre, and the future of the PC. It’s worth noting that the interview is six months old – I’ve concentrated on discussion of concepts to avoid any details being out of date. And here we go!
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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.

My present “spare-time” gaming could not have two more extreme poles. On the one hand I am playing a bit of Quake Live – jumping onto capture the flag maps to realise I still know how to use a railgun (weird how it returns, like different programming, hardwired into fundamental bits of my brain) – and on the other I am poking about in Cities XL, slowly trying to drag my farming town into megalopolis status. Cities XL – which is still in a long, long beta – has proven to be a slow burner for me. I’m not spending a lot of time with it, but I’ve been spending time on it regularly. Today I’ve been browsing other people’s cities (your avatar can go and visit other player’s cities anywhere on the planet) and realising that I still have a long way to go to get a properly functioning large city. I’m definitely a long way off worrying about the stuff featured in this trailer, which is about maximising the “attractiveness” of the city, which means big, geometric city-plans, parks, and status the size of skyscrapers. Hell, I’ll settle for being able to develop a decent number of skyscrapers on my commercial district. There’s a single glass tower on the map right now. I feel like I have made the Swindon of the Cities XL universe. Maybe I have. A recession-banged Wiltshire of virtuality.

Anyone else building? Or Quaking, for that matter…
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Cities XL is the French massively multiplayer cousin of SimCity. It carries genes from both genres: you create an avatar, and then you start a city on a vast, heavily populated planet. Populated, that is, by other player’s cities. It might just be where the city-building genre goes next. The closed beta is up (keys still available from some sites, according to the homepage) and we were fortunate enough to get some access. Needless to say, I spent quite a bit of yesterday bankrupting my city. No sign of a towering metropolis just yet, I’m just trying to make ends meet. More below.
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