SIMCITY vs CITIES XL

[liegnitz1241 0]

I have a friend that I talk to online sometimes who seems to share my passion for city simulation games..... She's been telling me to try the Cities XL series of games, and I've been telling her to try Sim City 4 or 3000.

I was wondering if there is anyone HERE who has played BOTH series of games? If so, what do you think of each one and how do they compare? I've never played Cities XL, and she's never played Sim City.

[the other andy 0]

I have a friend that I talk to online sometimes who seems to share my passion for city simulation games..... She's been telling me to try the Cities XL series of games, and I've been telling her to try Sim City 4 or 3000.

I was wondering if there is anyone HERE who has played BOTH series of games? If so, what do you think of each one and how do they compare? I've never played Cities XL, and she's never played Sim City.

I own SC4 and CitiesXL2009. I've been a fan of the Sim City series since I got hooked on the original all those years ago. I bought Cities XL not too long after it came out as I was interested in seeing what it brought to the table (and, frankly, SC4 was running like carp on my computer. The crashing was getting to me).

I don't think there's any doubt here that SC4 is a solid game. For some reason though CitiesXL gets a bad rap from many here (probably more to do with the completely effed up launch of the original than anything else). I think that despite it's faults, and there really aren't many, it too is a solid enjoyable city builder. That said, it is a different game.

CitiesXL is much more focused on trade and resources than transportation the way that SC4 is. In order to have a healthy, vibrant city you need to get resources you don't have from other cities (fuel, industry, water, offices, etc.). It's a creative and unique challenge and serves to keep the game from feeling like some sort of knockoff of SC4 (it isn't, despite claims made otherwise).

I've found it just as entertaining as any of the Sim City franchise, and that's a high standard to hold it up to. I should warn you to make sure your system can run it though. It is a modern game and like any it requires a bit of power to run. My computer chuggs along with CXL09 and won't touch 11 or 12.

Hope it helps! Oh, and I have a single-core laptop now that should be able to do SC4 without issue (one of those newfangled AMD Vision cpus). So I'll have SC4 when I'm away from my desk and CXL09 when I'm at my desk