The “City Building” genre has been neglected or at the very least abandoned.  After the absolute tragedy that was SimCity Societies, fans of this type of game have become a little….jaded.  The complete outrage that came with the release of SCS was astounding, people became frustrated.  I had high expectations for the game Will Wright said was going to be amazing.  SimCity Societies was anything but amazing.  It was clear that the SimCity franchise may in fact be dead.  It was a sad time for me.

I have gone on record a number of times explaining I am a complete sucker for a good economy/city builder/tycoon game (ie Civilizations, Anno 1404 etc), actually, I’m a sucker for ANY economy/city builder/tycoon game (I may or may not own Hospital Tycoon)  When Monte Cristo announced Cities Unlimited (the original title for Cities XL) I did a little jig and consumed as much information as I could on the game.  The developers were saying all the right things to woo an angry community.  Buzz words were thrown to the players like candy: “No grid”, “living city”, “curved roads”, “custom content”.  The community sites were enveloped with love from Monte Cristo which was reciprocated with love in return from the community.  Cities XL became the Messiah for City Builders.  Now that Cities XL has passed through the gauntlet of Closed Beta and come out the other side, I’ll share my thoughts on if this game is really the promised land or not.

Gameplay

I’ll share right away that I am a “city builder”.  I take my SimCity 4 very seriously and have built multiple custom regions.  I have custom content CD’s from a well known community site that I actually paid to have.  This review is going to take a look at Cities XL from the perspective of a person who cared deeply about its development, and continues to care deeply about its future.

Right from the start of CXL you can tell this game is different.  First off – you have to log in.  The game checks for updates and connects to the servers that host it’s “Planet Offer” (more on that in a second)  I find it a little odd that you have to connect to the game before you play it, especially a game that “should” be a single player game first, but I see the value in a game updating automatically before you play, so I haven’t dwelled on it that much.  Cities XL comes with a fully featured “avatar generator” which goes in line with the game being classified as a hybrid mmo/city builder.  The avatar creator is robust and fully featured.  I find the characters look a little too “cartoony” for my preference, but you can design your avatar to your hearts content, trying to make it look as much like you (or Mr. T) as you like.

You are presented with 2 modes of play in Cities XL, the online MMO mode called the “Planet Offer” and a single player mode that is more in line with the traditional city building game.

Single player mode allows you to build as many cities as you like, on all the maps that come in the game.  Most of the rulesets that exist in the online game are shared with the single player version, including your need to trade tokens of what you don’t have for tokens that you need.  Tokens, are Cities XL’s unit of measure for resources.  Everything in the game is attached negatively (need) or positively (surplus) to a token.  In both the Planet Offer, and single player, your main task is generally the fine balancing of your various tokens to ensure your city is always operating properly.  In the Planet Offer, as part of the MMO concept for the game, you trade your tokens with other players.  Monte Cristo has developed a token market (the city builders auction house if you will) to facilitate this trading.  At release the market was still quite clunky and certainly one of the least developed features of the game.  At the time of this review the market is a little better but certainly doesn’t seem to be launch ready.  In single player mode you can only trade with the AI.  The prices for trade in single player I find to be completely outrageous and need to be balanced.  I have found it very difficult to develop any other city except a “jack of all trades” type in the current single player trading environment.  Monte Cristo’s idea that you will be able to develop “specialist cities” while in theory is true, in reality is very very difficult.  When the price to sell a “clean token” such as office resources to the AI nets you 5 cash tokens, but the cost of buying a “dirty token” is 100 cash tokens, you can see how difficult to manage this system could be.

There are a number of other core features of a city builder that are either missing entirely or not functioning the way you would expect a next generation city building game to function.  Mass Transit (buses, trains, subway) are nowhere to be found in the game.  And according to Monte Cristo they will not be available to players who only bought the game for the single player mode.  In order to access the Mass Transit features if/when they are released, you will HAVE to be a Planet Offer subscriber.  The bus system is slated for the 3rd content package, there is no actual ETA on when that will come out – they haven’t released the first package yet, so I would expect to not see Buses for a number of months.  Subways and Trains have been given no ETA.  Keeping core city building features like mass transit away from solo players is a one way ticket to alienating your core fanbase.  There’s gotta be a rule in game development about not doing that somewhere.

The road building system, while coming a long way since early closed beta, is still requiring some serious revision.  At certain angles, roads cannot even be built.  Highways take up a considerable amount of space on your map and the intersections where roads meet, does not always function or look proper.  You can build up your buildings in a number of ways, by dropping individual zone blocks, or by framing a certain zone in either a rectangle of 6 units or a free form area bordered by roads.  The free form tool underwent some extensive work in closed beta and functions rather well to place units within your road design as best as possible.  While the tool isn’t absolutely perfect, it does the job well for such a complex idea.  There is a decent variety of buildings and there is functionality in place to “plop” specific buildings down so you can create a neighborhood type environment.  The building detail is commensurate with expectations, Cities XL certainly spared no time or expense with the designing and development of their buildings.

Overall Cities XL does play like a city simulation.  The core functions: traffic, city services, utilities are all there.  I find it very very difficult to ignore the pieces that aren’t in place though, and how Monte Cristo intends to deliver them.

Graphics and Sound

The landscape detail in CXL is second to none, they have really stepped up genre quite a bit when I comes to the city maps.  Being able to go right down to street level and see the water, trees and hills, and appreciate the immensity on 10 square KM’s is a great experience.  When in the city, street level gets you right into the heart of your community.  You can follow your citizens around as they move from place to place or drive your city streets (hopefully not getting stuck in traffic along the way!)  The balance that Monte Cristo has put in place when it comes to game performance versus game looks is very thoughtful.  At certain zoom levels you can see the cars in perfect detail, and as you scroll back for example, the cars become smaller, then simply shadows, then you can no longer see them.  When zoomed so far back (generally the default zoom for building) the processing power it would take to render all those vehicles would be overwhelming.  I feel the game experience is enhanced by not bogging down the gameplay so you can see little cars zooming around.

One other great visual treat in Cities XL is the Day/Night sequence.  As time passes, you see the shadows of your buildings creeping across your city until the sun sets.  When night sets in your city takes on a whole new life.  The buildings all turn on their lights and you seem to look at your city again for the first time.  It’s a screenshot waiting to happen in a lot of cases.

While obviously not catering to everyone’s tastes, I found the music to be quite well done.  When I first plyed the Closed Beta it was really one of the things that struck me first about the game.  The music is custom, and it is quite good.  I don’t find I am distracted by it, I certainly don’t turn it off as I do with most games eventually.  I feel the music in CXL definitely added to the experience of playing the game.

Value

I am really struggling with finding reasons to continue playing CXL at the moment.  I find that in single player mode I am forced to continuously build the same type of “generalist” city, and in the Planet Offer I find myself even more disappointed as I continue to wait for additions and addons which are supposed to be coming so I can make a city that is different than the others I made.  Any experienced SimCity 4 player, should find Cities XL too restrictive (even after the ability to unlock all buildings was introduced just before the end of Closed Beta) and certainly not promoting originality and out of the box thinking.  While from time to time you will see the odd great, original, concept city, I don’t see CXl in its current form promoting the freedom they once claimed the game would provide.

I will acknowledge that Cities XL’s Planet Offer is considerably cheaper than other MMO’s – at just under $19.00 USD for 3 months, I feel they have earned the right to have me subscribe for 3 months to see what they give me in that time.  But they need to keep this in mind: People don’t pay for 3 months expecting that to be a “float”  Just like any other MMO, Cities XL needs to put up the goods, and quick, or they face losing whatever subscriber base they have.  Detailing what is to come, and releasing it are two different things, and the prior is simply not good enough in today’s very cut-throat MMO market.

I also feel they need to change their approach to still unreleased core game mechanics such as mass transit.  There is currently absolutely no value in the single player option now, or in the future if Monte Cristo decides to limit required core city building features to subscribers only.

Conclusion

After all my ranting and raving, I am a subscriber of Cities XL, and I think that says how much I care for the city building genre, and how much I want this game to be amazing and everything it was supposed to be.  Monte Cristo have a lot of work to do.  They need to get their Mass Transit out the door – it needs to be an absolute priority, before GEM’s (mini games the plan to release for purchase) or anything else they do other than improving the engine and code.  If Monte Cristo releases another cash grab opportunity, before giving players the important features the game requires, it will be a slap in the face to an, up until now, devoted following of city builders.  This game has amazing potential, but sadly at the moment all that they have offered is a shell of what could be, I hope they finish what they started.