City Life

By CAPTAIN GORDON EDWARD     October 04, 2006

It has been quite some time since we have seen a quality city building game, and the wait is over. City Life picks up were Sim City left off, and it brings its own additions to make the gameplay different, but more enjoyable. This is their first outing for the franchise though, and while they do have most of the features of Sim City in their game, not all of them are present. What has been added spins the game into an entire new light, making it a grand new experience.

The main addition is the social aspect, almost like rock paper scissors to the next level. This social system involves different types of people that will move into your city and affect how smoothly it runs. There are six different types of people that will live in your town, and they range from dirt poor, to the elite of society. Some people like to be grouped around others, and likewise they will hate being around certain people as well. For each person there is, they will like being around their own type and two others, while hating the other three.

You have the Have Nots, whom are the lowest pillar of society, and struggle with day-to-day life. You have the Fringe, whom has progressive values, but moderate incomes. Essentially they are the "Have Nots" whom utilized an opportunity to succeed. There are the blue-collar workers, whom have traditional values. There is also the Radical Chic whom has high incomes, and considers themselves to be "in the know". The Suits follow them up as a group that has high income and traditional lifestyles. They boast more of a luxurious lifestyle and are the crossover from the blue collars to the Elites. The Elite are the top tear, and are the controllers of most of the subclasses.

The game feels like a city builder, while trying to balance all of the people, in addition to the businesses. At the same time you are building businesses that require different types of workers to be successful. This makes the game quite dynamic, but also at the same time a bit too difficult for a beginner. Now most would believe that they would have an in depth tutorial to cover all of this, so that it can guide you by the hand into understanding the game. The game offers sub-menus telling you information, rather than showing you the ropes, which is quite annoying. I personally had a bit of difficulty trying to figure it all out, by trying to have everyone love each other, but that did not come to fruition. It ended with me having a lot of businesses in the red with no one working, and sapping my budget. Once you battle through this though, it becomes rewarding.

What has not been implemented well was the ability to flatten nearby areas to keep buildings on the same peer. At first it was difficult to struggle through the menus on the game to get a proper sense of what type of building to set up where. Creating buildings in an area may also automatically have roads built to their front doors, which can wreck havoc on your infrastructure unless you have placed the roads in before hand. Rotating buildings can also be a chore and rather than letting them line up perfectly. Other buildings often cause larger building sections to turn sideways, rather than with the flow of the other buildings. The result is a loss of space, which becomes more important as the game continues. I found this extremely annoying though, and wish it to be a bit friendlier.

Another setback of the system is the limited grid system that forces certain sized buildings to be arranged in blocks, with most being 2X2 squares. In the original Sim City game, this was the case as well, while in later incarnations it became more of a splintered grid system allowing you to designate smaller areas for residential, commercial, or industrial. This had a bit of an impact as over the years I have expected a more tailored style.

Another annoying problem was the game crashing after it loads. There is a common error for quite a few people whom just after starting the game will have the game crash. This mainly happens when there is not a graphics card powerful enough to run the game. If this is so, it will crash the game as soon as it loads, but will not display a reason why. I had to have tech support tell me the reason, which was nice of them to do. I did finally shell out a few hundred to get a top of the line graphics card, but I suppose it was finally time to do that. The odd thing was though that the game ran by playing it through the editor, which was a little mystifying.

Finally, the buildings in the game did not seem to be as diverse as other city builders. Of course this is their first time with this styled game, but still it should have been increased. Luckily the editor does have some upgrades, which is great to see. A feature that pushed the experience over the top is how you can view the game. They allow you the ability to zoom right in, up close and personal with every building in your city, and every person whom walks your streets. This can be handy when you want to see people swimming, or more commonly walking the streets. Overall it allows for a personal, almost intimate experience.

In the end though, this is a fun game once you get it to work. It has renewed the addictive nature I have to build cities. It was something that I thought I lost over ten years ago. While it is a fun experience, it did seem like a few things were missing that I enjoyed in other city builders. While the social system is an interesting new twist, it does not bring enough to separate it from the other builders. At the same time this is a game that the whole family can enjoy. All and all, Captain Gordon gives this game a B+.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? CaptainGordonEdward@Gmail.com