Cities XL... half empty or half full?

[Tommo 0]

 Hi,

i tried the demo these days, and i was enough satisfied... then i read there that most of users only wait the release to unleash destructive reviews on this game.

Personally, i'm a gamer that looks to the "feeling" the game gives (being somewhat a casual xD), more than the sheer number of features... and i must admit that CXL gave me the "simcity" feeling for the first time after SC4.

I'm just entertained building cities that bend over the terrain, trying to make beautiful landscapes, even wasting space!!!

Anyway i do see the point behind the frustration: while i like to do such things, the game barely reacts to achievements.

It's brain dead easy as you need at most to place roads, and to balance job demand and offer...

on top of that there's a bunch of pointless design choices:

*why there's nothing that can scare my citizens? Any malus like traffic/smog/waste/commute is just irrelevant to the people!

I made a test city up to 22.000 with no services AT ALL, thriving with an income of 27.000$ in the end.

*Why all the blocks are squared and identical? It just ruins the feeling!

*why i can't build square zones over a really small slope?

*why the camera can't tilt? (or have a free fly mode)

*why there isn't pause/speedup?

*Why there isn't a way to replace a zone with another? destroying a whole zone (with all its streets) only to upgrade to medium is plain stupid.

*heck, you can't reduce the funding of things! if you can't afford the hospital (wich, in the end, is useless) you have to destroy it completely.

*it lacks too many transportation options.

Anyway, after this horrific list of disadvantages, i'm still convinced that this game could be a great game; the gameplay basics are just there, they only didn't notice (quoting from another topic, MC is no Maxis).

Because except the last one, everything is a matter of a small fix, or just a need to adjust some values.

Just adding 10x to the services dissatisfaction would make up for a challenge, for example.

And because it's a 2009 game, and it has that fresh feeling that simcity can no more give me... i mean, it's even slower than CXL on my GT8800!

I hope that the guys at MC don't ruin this one for the marketing... while i'm not sure i'm buying the first version, i think that a "rush hour" could easily solve much of the problems.

What do you think about this? This game can't be better than this and we should ignore it, or it is a matter of time?

[Cleaner475 150]

Maybe we are all being to harsh on Monte Cristo now but I expected more. With all the feedback and and a very good skilled development team I would've thought they'd at least match the brilliance of SC4 when it was laucnhy for the first time. Its the ludicrous online fees and lack of transport that keep me from buying. I'll probably buy it eventually once there is a lot more content.

Richard

[Tommo 0]

Originally posted by: Cleaner475

Maybe we are all being to harsh on Monte Cristo now but I expected more. With all the feedback and and a very good skilled development team I would've thought they'd at least match the brilliance of SC4 when it was laucnhy for the first time. Its the ludicrous online fees and lack of transport that keep me from buying. I'll probably buy it eventually once there is a lot more content.

Richardquote>

Yeah it's exaclty what i think... online fees for a single player static game only to get content that just doesn't belong to online play is crap.

Mass transit aside, playing it a bit more i noticed that what makes it look dull and dumb is the rock-bottom difficulty setting:

nothing influences nothing, services are useless, streets just works, it is really impossibile to lose, and after 10.000 you can amass thousand of citizens with an imperceptible fraction of your money...

Anyway i tried playing creating myself the constraints; like building all the services anyway, zoning under a mountain, avoiding heavy industry and unqualified workers...

It actually works better and provides a good challenge... i think that the gameplay could become WAY better just multiplying all the game factors.

Like, school accounts for 10x satisfaction but traffic is 10x stronger, citizens travel 100x less (they actually go from one side to the another of a big map...) and it should be overall more difficult to get citizens in your town.

But then, you would need mass transit to run the city... i hope that we can edit those values in some ini file.

[flymantang 2]

I missed out on the beta but from what I've been reading, citiesxl is definitely not a day one buy for me now.

I was really looking forward to this game based on the trailers but I've have to wait for the reviews first now.