Hands On: City Life
Build a new life. You may need one.
Tags: City Life Categories: PC Previews, Previews
Posted by Darren on May 25th, 2006
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If I asked you to think about games where you build your own city and watch it grow, I would bet my house that you would say SimCity. That original concept has come a long way since the 8-bit days, but recently it has gotten bogged down by meaningless details which diminished the enjoyment of the game. City Life has taken that original concept, shaken the dust off it and given it a new shiny coat of paint. Is this the new breed of city building games? I think it might well be.
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In City Life, you don’t start with a rock and a stick to your name in the Stone Age, instead you start slap-bang in the 21st Century with all the mod-cons we have these days. It is then your job to create your own city and make sure it runs as smoothly as possible. In real life, we encounter countless different people, all with different personalities and different preferences. City Life mimics this to perfection. All in all, there are 6 types of city-dweller; from the Blue Collars to the Elite. Different groups prefer different housing and shops, and you know that your city is THE place to be when the Elite start pouring in. This is the thing that SimCity never had: People. This gives a whole new dimension to this type of game, and it’s been a long time coming.
Managing to run your little city can be a very delicate matter, as you need to make sure that the different groups of people are all happy; and also that the various ‘ghettos’ are kept far enough apart from each other to prevent violence and other crimes. (Some social groups in the game don’t get along).
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Your first task as architect of hopefully the next great city is to choose where your city will sprout from. City Life features various terrain types, each with its own characteristics and strengths. Once you’ve found the perfect spot for a fledgling city, it’s time to build a town hall; the focal point from which your city will grow. After you’ve done that taxing job, you need to create an infrastructure; but don’t think you can just randomly place buildings with no thought. You need to tactically place roads and electricity pylons in order for your loyal citizens to get around.
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City Life has in abundance what all of the best ‘tycoon’ games have: Addictiveness. Once you start playing, you can’t stop. Upon building a town hall, you then want to see your city get lots of people living there. Once that’s happened, you want to play on to see it grow into a bustling metropolis. It just never ends. City Life is nowhere near as complex as SimCity is, but there is still absolutely plenty to do. There are goals to achieve, in the form of medals. Bronze goals are fairly easy to achieve, but Gold are extremely difficult.
City Life’s graphics are very good, and the 3D modelling is extremely well done. Graphics are nice and sharp from the highest view above your city, to the up-close view when you are travelling out and about with your citizens. Incidentally, the control system is very easy to understand too; from zooming to placing buildings. Obviously the graphics aren’t as crisp and impressive as games like Half-Life, but comparing games like that is like comparing chalk and cheese. In the context of city management games, the graphics are extremely good.
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Technically speaking, City Life plays more like Rollercoaster Tycoon than SimCity. You have to make sure your citizens’ needs are met constantly, but not with roller-coasters, rather with adequate facilities and good infrastructure. There is always something to keep you occupied, whereas in SimCity, once you’ve got a successful city there is nothing else to accomplish. However, in City Life new things come up all the time; just like in real life.
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When I played SimCity 2000, I thought there would never be a game made to knock this rather portly King from its throne. Monte Cristo though have created a winner here, more than worthy of challenging SimCity for the title of best city-building game. However, there is one gripe I have, and that is with the CD piracy protection software that they have chosen to use: StarForce. You may not have heard of it, but it is a device used by some misguided software companies in order to stop piracy by screwing up their customers’ computers it would seem. It hasn’t happened to me thankfully, but I have heard too many stories of the system destroying CD drives and computers alike. Please, don’t use Starforce……Other than that, City Life is an absolutely fantastic game full of juicy goodness.
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Tags: City Life
Posted by Darren on May 25th, 2006 and is filed under PC Previews, Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
