Publisher: Monte Cristo Games
Developer: Monte Cristo Games
System Requirements: Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1; Intel Pentium IV 2.5 GHz or AMD equivalent or better CPU (Centrino 2 or better for laptops); 1 GB RAM (1.5 GB for Vista) (1.5 GB XP, 2.5 GB Vista for laptops); 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon X1600 or better graphics card (Intel Graphics Accelerator or better for laptops); DirectX 9.0c; 8 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Simulation
Release date: Available now

Last year, I spent a few weeks building cities with Monte Cristo’s city simulator City Life 2008. While it was not without some balance issues, I felt it was a worthy entry into a market that has long been dominated by Sim City and its ilk. I was not surprised when Cities XL came up for review, and I eagerly installed the game after I saw that it had an online component, something for which players have been clamoring for a long time. What I found after two weeks of play surprised and disappointed me.

As you might expect, in Cities XL you build a massive metropolis from a single road and a tiny city hall. As mayor, you designate what kinds of buildings are built by zoning various pieces of real estate as residential, industrial, and so on. You also decide when and where to build facilities such as police, medical and fire services so as to keep your city from burning to the ground. And since urban planning is never complete without the horror that is auto traffic, planning and building roads always require your attention.

None of these activities is free; your city always needs more cash. To that end, your primary goal as mayor is to keep city hall solvent by encouraging economic development. Establishing zoning for vital industries, keeping traffic under control, keeping taxes reasonable and making sure your people have clean places to live all encourage more people and businesses to move to your city, which in turn generates more tax revenue. It’s also necessary to consider gearing certain industries and residential areas for the middle class and the rich, as Cities XL breaks up its people into four economic classes. Homes and services that appeal to the lower classes do nothing to encourage wealthier people to live in your city; without the rich, it’s impossible to turn the city into an economic juggernaut.

As in other city simulators, economics is at the heart of Cities XL. To spice up the income, Monte Cristo has included the ability for you to trade economic resources (everything from office space to oil) for vital supplies. And since no city will every really be able to generate everything it needs, trade becomes important. In single player, you only trade with a computer-controlled company called Omni Corp. The prices offered by Omni Corp are so bad they border on criminal fraud, making trade almost useless when playing by yourself. In the massively multiplayer environment, your city can negotiate deals with friends at far more reasonable rates. In fact, the ability to trade resources at anything akin to favorable prices is the primary point of playing online. Subscription rates run from $9.25 for one month to $6.32 per month for three months.

If nothing I have mentioned up to this point, aside from trading city resources online, sounds new or innovative, it’s because Monte Cristo has failed to live up to the promise of earlier games such as City Life. Before City Life, most city simulators were simply focused on economics; if you could keep the government in the black and the city thriving, you won. City Life introduced six types of people to your city, all of whom had differences that went beyond simple economics. Keeping the city happy involved making sure the Have Nots didn’t bother the Suits and keeping Blue Collars from showing up at the bars frequented by the Fringe. This made City Life a game that was more than just economics, thereby contributing substantially to revitalizing the genre. But all of that is gone, now that Cities XL has reverted to a purely economic model for city building. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a step backward. Furthermore, the online component, aside from including the trading of resources and the ability to visit cities built by other people, would have been considerably enhanced by making residents something more than warm bodies who fill jobs. As it stands now, you pay a monthly subscription fee for access to an auction house. While more content is promised, there’s very little there now. The final nail in the coffin of online play is that deals between players can’t be set up to last for longer or shorter than five days. As MMO veterans no doubt realize, every time these deals expire, your economy is sent into chaos because you’ve set up all your deals the last time you logged on, all at the same time. It’s a disappointing recipe for online play, and thanks to the abysmal trade practices of Omni Corp, single player is not a good alternative. As if all of that isn’t disappointing enough, the game also allows you to zoom in and walk around your city or those of others online. This would be great, except that there are few actual people populating the cities, and cars are quite boxy and have non-rotating tires when viewed up close. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: do not include the option to zoom in close if you don’t intend to render the objects in great detail.

Thus, I felt rather disappointed by this latest offering from Monte Cristo. Whoever decided to abandon the interesting game mechanics of the six socio-economic groups from City Life 2008 made a poor game design choice that takes the franchise backwards. And since online play is fairly limited, I can’t say that the new ways of playing make up for it. Priced at $49.99, if you’re interested in a good city simulator, your money would be better spent skipping this one and buying City Life 2008 until more content and better mechanics are offered in the massively multiplayer online component of Cities XL.

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