Cities XL single player hands on impressions

[TomMCityfan2 0]

Originally posted by: deanco

Note: I like Sim City-like games, but am not insane about them.  This is from the point of view of a causal sim player.

OK, got the game yesterday, put in several hours.

First, the good.  The prettiest Sim City ever.  Easy on the eye.  Two, the gameplay seems to be simplified a bit, and for a casual player, that's a good thing.  I just wanna slap the zones down without worrying too much about the details, and this lets me do that.

Now, the bad, in no order:

The login screen doesn't remember your password.  You must type it in every time.

Worse, it appears you can't even play single player if your internet connection is down.  This is hugely bad.  I have the (French) box next to me, nowhere does it say you need a connection to play at all, which in Europe, is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Text and icons WAAAAY too small at 1680x1050.  Even blowing up the UI to 100% in the options doesn't help.

The middle mouse wheel rotate is way too sensitive.  The slightest motion sends it spinning uncontrollably.  Nobody in beta commented on this?  If somebody finds an .ini with this setting, please let me know.

The 2X, 3X etc time speed controls are too tiny, and the display of the time multiplier is covered up by the little clock, making it impossible to see what multiplier you're at half the time.

The info icons to the right, if you click on one that has a lot of elements to it, then click one, it gets bigger, covering up the elements to the top and bottom of it, making it hard to click on them subsequently.

I feel like I'm in the beta, actually.  The above bugs, I didn't even have to go looking for them; they found me.

In terms of the game, it really appears the single player is hugely gimped in favor of the MMO part.  No buses, trams, or trains.  The trading part is the most blatant.  You only have the one guy, his prices are through the roof, and 90% of the time, he doesn't want to trade anyway.  Would it have killed them to have several AI's, insuring you could get the resources you need?  As it stands, if you don't have oil, you may as well forget about manufacturing.

While we're at it, why do I have to go to the trade screen to see the resources I need?  For a game that basically tells me how to play it, couldn't there be a message, 'you need electricity'?  The first inkiling of that is the icons over the buildings.  At any rate, for scarce goods, it doesn't matter, since the AI won't trade.  Finally, in the trade screen, I have -1 of electricity, say.  What do I need to build to get it up to 0?  The description of the power plant: 'produces some electricity'.  That's a big help.

Needs several patches, but mainly, needs to bring the offline game more in line with the MMO part, so I don't feel like I bought half a game.

quote>

Um.. No.

Actually, Cities XL is better than ANY SimCity game ever made...

Maybe it is...

Even This:

City Life is actually almost the same as CXL...

but CXL is better...

[Joetropian1 1]

TomMCityfan2, why don't you provide evidence to support that opinion? Or at least something to convince us that you're rigght and not that huge word wall explaining in detail why it isn' the best Simcity ever made?

[Super Sheep 0]

Paid Troll or a somebody who likes the eye candy too much. Now I know who the REAL target audience MC was looking for.

[MasterN 5]

Originally posted by: Brandon8181

I sent a message to Cities XL /Monte Cristo about do they in the future have any thought what so ever in their head about POSSIBLY adding mass transportation to single player mode, and got no respone from them. Go figure.

Thanks for the review Deanco, really appreciate it

Good luck, Cities XL.

quote>

i also sent the same message( today in fact ^^) and got the answer that they're thinking about it.... let's see....

Originally posted by: SimBurger

Human beings are so funny. One guy is screaming he can't play at all without connecting to the internet. Turns out he didn't activate his product. Another guy is screaming that Monte Cristo "stole his money". Turns out he didn't even give it a couple days to ship to his front door yet.

Others are just saying "Lame" and "Sucks".

You guys kill me. Enjoy the newest and yes - improved - game since Sim City 4. Stop being impossible to please.

Your negativity is going to spread everywhere and a pretty cool game is going to get a bad rap. No different than negativity ruining the honeymoon with our amazing new president.quote>

right now, considered the topic few lines above, the bad rep it gets it deserves... (actually monte cristo deserves it, for not fixing the bugs and leaving the soloplayers to fend for themselves with half the game content)....

[morriswalters 16]

Paid trolls?  I take money can I get some?

Lets see.  Where to begin.  Last first.  Half the content missing from single player?  I don't think so. Your surely missing some things.  You also have some things the planet offer doesn't.  Contracts don't expire, pricing for tokens is better, and MC has modified the unlocks on various things so you get them earlier. Overall the effect is to make the single player experience much better. So if your looking for sympathy I'm all out. 

I expect though, that the constant drone of negative comments is having the effect that you seem to want.  I believe you should keep it up.  Perhaps you'll find something else to do if MC goes out of business.  That way you may leave us who enjoy the game alone.  For all those who say this it to get MC to change their ways, I would say that if you wreck the train nobody wins.  For all of you that don't seem to care about not wrecking the train, have at it.  I wouldn't worry about anybody coming along in this gamespace offering anything better.  As I said earlier today elsewhere, why would they.  No matter what they do people won't be happy.  They want it all and they want it all for free.

[Tuscan 20]

Just going off topic for a moment, Another one of my favourite games is a game called hearts of iron 2, its the most comprehensive and most realistic ww2 strategy game ever made. When CXL/CU was under development, I was also following a new game called "Hearts of Iron 3" it was to be the best thing since hearts of iron 2, its dedicated fan base went crazy when they heard the news. Funnily enough though it followed a very similar scenario to the one we have been following with Monte Cristo ("The fans waited ages, the fans gave the devs their input, the fans waited even longer, the game was released, the game was a big disappointment, the fans said the original game is still superior, the fans argued, the fans waited patiently for patches to revolutionise it") another prime example of game developers ignoring the fans, and we are all still waiting for that patch,. However, a few months back (much to my amazement), the devs released all their official code for their previous title "hearts of iron 2" to the modding community, within a month of releasing that code, look what happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_of_Democracy_(video_game) an official stand-alone game built by the fans and modding community, and the funny thing is, its now actively competing with hearts of iron 3! I wonder why?...

Anyway getting to the point of all this, its modders from the fans that make the perfect game not the game developer. The game developer is just there for the money, and they wil attempt to squeeze as much money as possible out of a product before they throw it in the bin, all those CitiesXL PO subscribers actually fell for it. Even if Cities XL fails and we never see a Sim City 5, im confident the fans will still keep the genre alive, and one day we might just see a single player focused miracle.

[valhum 23]

I just got a copy of the game, call it a demo and I must say i have mixed feelings so far. Been playing it for 3 days now and I dunno, at first i was happy to see that there is not that much micromanagement and you can basically just play around and make a nice city but after a while i do get a feeling of "what is the point", i dunno, odd isn't it. Maybe (correct me if i am wrong) is the fact that you zone for specific wealth levels, not like SimCity were you would zone just RES and if all the conditions were good, it will go from Low Wealth to High Wealth, same with COM and IND, that was a way to make you feel that you were doing things the right way when the city would "turn prettier", know what i mean, instead here in CitiesXL i zone the type of RES i want and then what?!?! they just stay the same (or at least that is how it has been going on with me).

So far that is my view of the game, just make your layout and that's it, no real goal of doing thing correctly so people could "move up", just place unskilled, qualified, executives, etc, etc in a nice road layout and the end.

That so far is what i struggle the most with the decision to actually buy the game, not to mention all the complains about Solo Mode (right now i cannot afford to be paying $10 bucks a month). Also the lack of information when you click on an item AND the super sensitive mouse wheel rotate that Deanco said.

I dunno, this looks like a game to get with a discount, harsh words I know but all day today i started to get the feeling to install SC4 in my PC and play it, so there is a purpose to create a city.

Correct me if I am wrong about the whole just doing a layout of everything hehehe.

[Ndragonawa 37]

 My impressions of Cities XL?

PROS:  Pretty much all the good stuff said in other reviews (graphics, performance, trading, MMOish, etc.).  Pretty much a big leap in the right direction for the city-building genre. Super easy to build tunnels and bridges. The great felling  that something new is around the corner from the developers.  And I also like tracks 1, 4, and 6 in /Data/Sound/music/XL .

CONS:

-No ambient sounds; without music city is pretty quiet.  

-No buses in Solo; not a problem for me now (my cities are small), but will become an issue sooner or later.

-Planet Offer's price-to-value ratio is a bit steep, for now.  

-Upgrading roads in developed areas is a pain.  

-Since there is no grid, roads and lots tend to "not fit" every so often.  

-Building on slopes puts up walls around lot. (flat lawn, wall, then below is street)

-Only coal (s/m/l) and wind plants (for now).

OTHER COMMENTS:

To be honest, I think CXL is harder than SC4.  You got resources to keep track of, more detailed RCI zones (Unskilled, Skilled, Office, Retail, Manufacturing, HT, etc), roads with different widths, and on top of all those things you got no safety grid to keep things in order!  However, SC4 did not have bendy roads, or buildings under bridges, or snow and sand, or controllable beach or ski resorts, or 3D moving-around capabilities .

I also would like to say that I like Solo Mode more than Planet Offer.  I mean, sure, I get buses, but most the time I was barely getting by in my 7-day PO trial.  There just weren't any good offers to buy pretty much anything.  But Omnicorp, evil as they may be, gave me h better deals than I  got from most  human players (with the exception of importing goods).  Call me crazy, but thats my opinion on SM vs. PO.

I can't really think of anything else off the toppa'ma head, so 4 out of 5 eggs!...ermmm... stars! 

[User.2012 0]

Where is the solo mode, I dont' have that option.

[johnb10000 0]

PROS

-Good graphics.

-Roads and bridges are easy to build.

-I like the idea that cities have resources and I hope they add this to the next version of Simcity.

CONS

-Can't trade with my own cities in single player mode and Omnicorp prices are way too high.

-Missing public transit such as buses and rail.

[mentarman 14]

Originally posted by: User.2012

Where is the solo mode, I dont' have that option.quote>

I had this problem and it was because I hadn't gone online to register the game. So go to the web site and enter your key and then you should get the option for solo mode. That is, if you haven't figured out the problem yourself, and if indeed your problem was the same as mine.

I've finally got the game on my own computer to play and have to say I am pretty happy. I think if you let the hard feelings over the development process and expectations that weren't met fade away, there's still a good game underneath there. At least I'm happy so far. The main problem to me is the lack of mass transit. At least we'll get buses at some point and I guess we can hope for rail, subway, other things down the line (though I'm not going to hold my breath.)

[pckiller 1]

Man I am glad I read this thread 1st before even downloading the demo. Sounds like I will wait to see if so=ingle player is improved before I spent any money on this sim.

[YannickSHE 0]

Single player is the only mode available and everything is much better. The fact that the game will be completed with CitiesXL2011 + all the goodies we had in PO (old england, blueprints, etc), I think this game is much better, on every level.

All we need now (hopefully with CXL2011) is full transit system, more maps and region play. That's pretty much about it. And then, if people starts to buy the game (knowing its much better), we'll get (again hopefully) annual content packs with new stuff, new buildings and new maps!

[Tuscan 20]

Originally posted by: YannickMtl

Single player is the only mode available and everything is much better. The fact that the game will be completed with CitiesXL2011 + all the goodies we had in PO (old england, blueprints, etc), I think this game is much better, on every level.

All we need now (hopefully with CXL2011) is full transit system, more maps and region play. That's pretty much about it. And then, if people starts to buy the game (knowing its much better), we'll get (again hopefully) annual content packs with new stuff, new buildings and new maps!quote>

Wishful thinking

[sauced 17]

I honestly love the new singleplayer mode, sure i miss the online trading and friends to share with but other than that singleplayer mode is better than before.

For people who say its not possible with the trading in solo mode, i am personally using the trading system in singleplayer and its doable but not a good way to gain profit, but to survive.

[Livin in Sim 83]

Unpinning this; there is no "single player"now;  it is all one game.