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Just judging from the picture, I like it. Nice details on the architecture. The lighting looks excellent, very soft and natural. The depth of field and small focal length effect looks good as well. The grass however is gigantic, I see blades of grass the size of those people.
The best city building game I have played so far was called CityLife.
I played the beta back in January. Very good game. It feels very much like the classic Sim City with a few modern goodies. Laying out road networks was probably the most fun part. You can make curvy suburban areas or gridded urban areas or even circular ones.
Things are still pretty single-use though. Density is determined by road sizes and typically increases the more desirable an area is. They had the option to have your city specialize in a certain industry to draw tourists and residents, but that wasn't available in the beta.
You can also expand civic buildings like adding an extra wing of classrooms to a school or adding squad cars to a police station to make the police more effective. They did away with the circular coverage that they had in Sim City 4 and the effectiveness of your police, fire, an EMS is determined by how many squad cars, fire trucks, and ambulances you have to cover your city and how many can respond to their respective tasks in a given amount of time. Same with schools, buses, and garbage trucks.
Overall, it felt pretty realistic, but there were still some limitations (aside from it being a beta demo), like not having mixed-use buildings and the buildings pretty much being boxes on the lots (don't expect to see Flatiron Buildings in your triangular intersections). Oh and the data views were fun and pretty...and surprisingly informative too (don't build industrial upwind). There was a lot in the game but they only gave you an hour to play and a lot wasn't available in the beta. But needless to say, there's going to be some loss in sleep when this game comes out.
I have CitiesXL. They just came out with an updated version. I really enjoy it, especially because it has a lot of user-created modification and all the buildings are modeled off of real ones, and a lot of them are in Los Angeles.
I have CitiesXL. They just came out with an updated version. I really enjoy it, especially because it has a lot of user-created modification and all the buildings are modeled off of real ones, and a lot of them are in Los Angeles.
CitiesXL is the sequel to City Life. They changed the game mechanics though and I prefer City Life, especially how it dealt with class.
Makes sense, the screenshots look almost identical.
I'm curious about what you think the differences are, maybe I'll try to find the older game for my new computer.
City life is more of a social simulator, the trick was providing what each class needed to thrive and allowing them to live as close as possible to each other to provide for the businesses which each need a specific mix of different classes to operate, while not letting them cause problems for each other and start riots and unrest.
CitiesXL moved away from the social aspects and more in depth to micro managing city services, zoning, traffic, etc.
City life still had city services, zoning, traffic etc but not as in depth.
CitiesXL still has classes ( unskilled workers, skilled workers, executives, and elites) but doesn't have the more complicated left/right social distinction.
City life is more of a social simulator, the trick was providing what each class needed to thrive and allowing them to live as close as possible to each other to provide for the businesses which each need a specific mix of different classes to operate, while not letting them cause problems for each other and start riots and unrest.
CitiesXL moved away from the social aspects and more in depth to micro managing city services, zoning, traffic, etc.
City life still had city services, zoning, traffic etc but not as in depth.
CitiesXL still has classes ( unskilled workers, skilled workers, executives, and elites) but doesn't have the more complicated left/right social distinction.
Interesting, I think I prefer the more detailed city planning, though the social aspect does sound fascinating too.
I played the beta back in January. Very good game. It feels very much like the classic Sim City with a few modern goodies. Laying out road networks was probably the most fun part. You can make curvy suburban areas or gridded urban areas or even circular ones.
Things are still pretty single-use though. Density is determined by road sizes and typically increases the more desirable an area is. They had the option to have your city specialize in a certain industry to draw tourists and residents, but that wasn't available in the beta.
You can also expand civic buildings like adding an extra wing of classrooms to a school or adding squad cars to a police station to make the police more effective. They did away with the circular coverage that they had in Sim City 4 and the effectiveness of your police, fire, an EMS is determined by how many squad cars, fire trucks, and ambulances you have to cover your city and how many can respond to their respective tasks in a given amount of time. Same with schools, buses, and garbage trucks.
Overall, it felt pretty realistic, but there were still some limitations (aside from it being a beta demo), like not having mixed-use buildings and the buildings pretty much being boxes on the lots (don't expect to see Flatiron Buildings in your triangular intersections). Oh and the data views were fun and pretty...and surprisingly informative too (don't build industrial upwind). There was a lot in the game but they only gave you an hour to play and a lot wasn't available in the beta. But needless to say, there's going to be some loss in sleep when this game comes out.
Thank you animatedmartian
Your description of the game sounds awesome! I use to love sim city. I was really disappointed with sim city societies, but this one sounds fun.
Bad thing is it will be online-only. It will not have the single player experience of the previous games. I don't think they learned anything from SimCity Societies. Bottom dollar and appealing to today's kids is more important than satisfying fans of the original series.
They also have very small map sizes. The largest is the size of a medium city in SimCity 4. The intention is to force specialization. Instead of giving us a quality city simulator, Maxis is giving us a social game.
I won't be buying this one and I was a huge fan of SimCity 1-4.
Cities XL 2012 is the best modern city simulator available.
Last edited by bchris02; 02-12-2013 at 05:29 PM..
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