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City Life - Hands On Mini Preview
Chris Leyton
17/03/2006
Monte Cristo attempt to cash in on the continued absence of Maxis' SimCity franchise...
Until The Sims went and spoilt everything and Will Wright became obsessed with evolutionary experiments in the midst of the development of Spore, Maxis was renown for one thing, SimCity. The city-planning simulation became a huge hit through its various manifestations, spawning several sequels across many different formats, in the process enticing the type of gamers who would typically never look at something with "Sim" in the title.
SimCity ultimately went on to inspire a whole range of Sim titles, from SimCopter to SimAnt, culminating in the release of Maxis unfathomably popular The Sims series. Sadly since the 2003 release of SimCity 4 and its expansion pack it seems the franchise has worked its way into a corner, unaware of its own future direction; so it's somewhat of a relief to find Monte Cristo's City Life on the horizon.
City Life begins with the choice of a number of different terrains, each in turn providing 4-5 different landscapes of varying difficulty. Immediately this structure presents City Life as a much more rigid experience then the SimCity series, which seems to be a fair assumption to make at this stage.
Unashamedly modelling itself on the basics of SimCity, City Life is a city building sim that finds players having to manage the expansion of a city from humble dwellings, balancing such issues as tourism, unemployment and civic development. Monte Cristo haven't seen fit to copy the blueprint point for point however, with a number of little changes that look to shift the gameplay quite dramatically. Becoming a successful City Life mayor isn't just about setting taxes and reducing traffic congestion, in this game it's all about maintaining peace amongst the city's six different cultures. Split between the "Have Nots", "Blue Collars", "Fringe", "Suits", "Bobo's" and "Elite", each representing a different set of demands and expectations. Not only will you have to establish sufficient employment for the various different groups (Mechanics for Blue Collars, Videogame Developer for Fringe, Distillery for Have Nots, etc...), but also meet their needs in various other aspects such as Shopping, Healthcare, Security, Education, Surroundings, Leisure Activity and several more. A concern at this stage surrounds the fact that such areas only offer a minimal amount of options to choose from, resulting in a little town of just over 2000 people having countless videogame developers, print-shops and the sheer repetition of whatever else is offered.
City Life is inextricably governed by these cultural classes, districts becoming established based on the density of any one particular group, even the roads seem to show their colours when it comes to the type of people living there. Naturally not all classes get along and much of City Life seems to revolve around careful planning to ensure harmony across all socio-culture groups, and pacifying the situation when you find yourself with a gangland shootout or old boys hitting youngsters over the heads with their walking canes.
At times it does seem that the game's challenge revolves too primarily around this concept, with a simplistic approach to aspects such as taxes, pollutions, utilities and other such tasks, leaving little room for the player to manage the greater economy. In the present build there are a number of strange little quirks, such as one situation where we found ourselves unable to entice anybody but Fringe citizens, largely because new dwellings seem to be fundamentally based on the road their joining up to. Hence an unequal approach at the start can mount to huge problems later in the game, it seems there's a very specific order to follow, initially at least, which involves designating certain areas to different cultures - but surely cultural differences in real life are not this rigid? Ultimately our game became almost impossible, with Fringe districts requiring Hospitals, but not being able to build any because they required Blue Collars to work in them; a particularly nasty case of the virtual chicken and the egg it seems.
Still there is some hope Monte Cristo can fine balance such issues for the final release, as there's little doubt the preview build represented a very unfinished state of code. Text sprawled beyond the borders of the boxes, placeholder menus were common and many little details were sorely missing. Despite this, it was easy to get an appreciation of the sense of scale to be found within City Life, with various different views providing the scope to sample the action from a birds-eye perspective, zooming into a first-person perspective on the streets below. Given the fact SimCity still hasn't been able to offer this, it's certainly a commendable feat and there's something satisfying to walk the streets of your creation - however whether such aesthetic detail can overlook such other concerns we'll have to wait and see.
Desperately wanting a new SimCity, we hope Monte Cristo can iron out the glitches and polish City Life into a worthy alternative. From a technical point of view City Life excels, with a stunning replication of a metropolis in progress, however the underlying structure doesn't appear to gel particularly in the tutorial-lacking build we've been playing.
One to certainly keep an eye out for if you're a fan of such titles, let's just hope the final code doesn't disappoint...
