By Kyle Krueger

Having covered cities, planets, farms, ant colonies, theme parks, helicopters, and more, Wil Wright’s massive Sim empire has long been the king of the genre. Yes, yes, there are imitators, and some might point to the expansive Tycoon franchise, but anyone who has played simulation games extensively will tell you that there is simply no contest. This year, however, French developer Monte Cristo is trying their hand at dethroning the long-time king with their city-building sim, Cities XL. However, unlike other clones that simply remade Sim City and hoped that people would bite, Cities XL takes the genre into relatively foreign territory by including massively multiplayer online play.

In some cases, pushing a genre into the world of massively multiplayer gaming can be good for it, resulting in new horizons opening up for the industry. City building, however, doesn’t seem to take to the transition well, and struggles a bit in the online world.

From the onset, Cities XL is a bit of an exercise in frustration. Between a slow-as-molasses registration website and a slavish data entry system, it probably took me a half an hour after install to get the game to launch. I can forgive this, however, as many MMO games force you to sit through a lengthy registration process before unlocking the game’s content. Most, however, have a sizable amount of fresh content to offer once that registration is done. Cities, however, was somewhat lacking in that regard.

The game starts by dropping you into the avatar creator, an incredibly bloated and horribly designed character customization screen. My first thoughts involved me wondering what exactly I would need an avatar for in a city building sim, but I went with it. Changing a value on the various sliders caused my machine to hang for a second or two before the changes were reflected on my avatar. After several minutes of tinkering with the controls, I realized that there was nothing I could do to make my horribly ugly avatar look attractive at all, and I began to simply click “random”. Let me tell you, the characters in this game are just hideous. The avatar art direction is horrid; these are the things of nightmares.

After choosing a ridiculous character with a purple mohawk, a business suit top and athletic shorts, I chose to play in “planet mode,” the online version of the game. I was taken to a gigantic planet with thousands of plots, where I was told to choose a spot for my city. Although the vague descriptions of each available plot were wholly unhelpful, I was able to choose one in short order and begin building my city.

Any seasoned simulation gamer will notice immediately that the game is much, much more forgiving than Sim City. When you mess something up, say, place too many retail plots and too few residential plots, the citizens don’t simply up and leave; they become dissatisfied with you and a small notification informs you that you need to try harder. In my time playing the game, I spent about 5% of the time with negative revenue, and even in those times, solving the problem was as easy as placing some new housing plots to create tax income. As your city grows, the economy becomes a little more volatile, but overall, the game feels like a free ticket to the end of the tech tree. This gives the game a sort of ‘sandbox’ feel, which, while unattractive to seasoned city-building sim players, makes the game very approachable for people new to the scene. This also, however, means that the online portion of the game is more or less pointless.

The online functionality includes a global chat window, the ability to view other players’ cities, and the ability to send your avatar to ground level to walk around in said cities. This, however, seems to be almost an afterthought. The avatars move around in response to mouse clicks. That is, sometimes they walk, sometimes they simply teleport. It seems to be arbitrary as to which. The game also chugs to a crawl in this mode, even on a high-end rig.

You can also trade resources online with other players, while in the single player mode, you can only trade with the computer, who makes a point to rip you off. However, the resources that players demand and the resources that players have a surplus of are almost uniform across the board. This means that the things you are trying to buy are sold out, and the market is saturated with the things you’re trying to sell. So, even online, you’re reduced to trading with the computer.

Playing the online mode also removes the fast-forward ability that is present in the single-player mode, meaning you have to sit through every last day of your city’s life. Don’t think you can leave your computer to simply idle as your city grows, either. If the game receives no input for a certain amount of time, the game pauses, so you more or less have to be playing the whole time. An option to disable this might have been nice.

There are also a number of frustrations. The grid-based plot laying only allows you to use the absolute smallest paved road, meaning that traffic ties up far too easily. If you choose to lay your own roads and fill it in with plots, the game’s very precise angles for laying roads ensures that you will, nine times out of ten, run out of room for the buildings you want to place. The citizens also seem to be unable to drive more than a mile away from home to get to work. If your citizens demand new industry when you’re sitting with a field of empty industrial plots, it may be because no one wants to work more than walking distance away from home. The game is vague on this, and it took some trial and error to realize. It all adds up to a very annoying and tedious system of city planning.

Graphically, the game is solid. You can zoom all the way in to street level and move around as though you were driving (or flying, as it were) about the landscape. Everything is fairly crisp, and the engine scales way down for older machines. The sound, however, is very lackluster. Weak music and almost no sound effects leave a lot to be desired.

For all the bad with the game, however, there is still a fair amount of good. The economy is visibly dynamic, reacting to changes and quickly reflecting the merit of your decisions. The tech tree is large and ever-expanding, and the mechanics all seem to work in spite of the odd hang ups. You can build a very large city without resorting to cheat codes, and when you mess up, the game understands and grants you some leeway. Don’t come in to this game expecting a new beginning for the genre, but if you’re looking for a fun and good-looking time sink, you could do worse.

Cities XL is a solid city building sim that could be a decent introduction to the genre for new players. Veterans, however, would do well to stick to the Sim City series, and there is almost no reason to fork up the 9 dollars a month they ask for online access. Try the free week, get bored of it, and move on. The game definitely needs a few more wipes with the polishing rag, but for a first stab into the world of MMO city builders, it’s not bad. Not revolutionary, not great. But, not bad.

6/10

This review is based on a review copy provided to Life Inside the Box by the game’s publisher.