Before I received this title, I decided to fire up my a copy of SimCity 2000; so I installed DOSbox and away I went.
It brought back memories of sitting behind my Windows 95 PC, building cities and then sadistically destroying my poor Sims with natural disasters and Godzilla – incinerating them into nothing more than extremely large pixelated dust.
Simcity 2000 was the benchmark, and no Sim game has even come close for me.
This is the part where I’m supposed to say “until now” but sadly, er, no.
In the eye of the beholder
Cities XL 2012 is a good game – not great, not fantastic, but a nice way to waste some time if you’re suppressing latent town-planner tendencies.
It could have been absolutely mind-blowing, but sadly due the fact that Focus Home Interactive might be stronger publishers than developers, there is some poor quality in certain key aspects of the game.
The game has one cool feature which allows you to zoom into a “Sims-like” one-to-one view; the thing is, whether you’re running max graphics with full anti-ailiasing, or just running on stripped-down software mode, the ground view almost looks the same – barring a few rather undetailed textures.
To call this game resource intensive is a gross understatement – to call it a resource *insert derogatory term for prostitute* is still being kind.
I’ll concede that I don’t have a state-of-the-art PC that could put a render farm to shame – however when the game’s minimum system requirements is a single core 2.5 GHz CPU with 1GB RAM and a 512MB GFX, one would think that I could easily play this game on a mid-range setting with my setup.
But it would appear that this assumption, much like being a Springbok/Arsenal/Sharks/Mercedes supporter, is very, very wrong.
Getting started
The in-game tutorials section is rather entertaining. It provides a thorough overview of the game’s basic and advanced features – and I did not find myself being frustrated by not being able to complete tasks.
You are introduced to a rather stereotypically useless mayor and his over-worked, under-credited assistant Kevin. The two of them guide you through the 10 different tutorials giving you a decent overview of the game and a detailed enough guide to be able to enjoy the game without being too deeply challenged.
While the tutorials are not compulsory, I would suggest you complete them to better understand the interface and where everything is found.
Once you’ve conquered these challenges, and impressed the mayor and Kevin, you can move on to the main game.
Building buildings
Once you’ve clicked on play, you are taken to a rather interesting-looking planet; this planet only has three continents, all of which have a Pangaea-like appearance.
There are 64 building points, enabling you to build 64 different cities. Each of these barren landscapes have been divided into four main areas, namely: oil, fertile areas, holidays and water.
Each of these sub-factions all have a rating out of three stars – the higher the rating, the more prominent that particular resource is in the area. Choosing a piece of land that is prominent in a certain area, determines what kind of city you are going to build.
You can still grow crops on a map that is designed for oil refining – it’s just a hell of a lot easier to do this on a map that is on fertile land. Once you’ve chosen your location, you move onto the actual game.
You must first build your town hall and Utility Centre from which you can start developing your town. From there on in its all about zoning.
In the Zone
There are nine zoning factions which each have their own sub-factions. Each of these sub-factions are unlocked as you progress further into the game. In order to unlock these levels you have to achieve certain population quotas a la SimCity style.
Some of the sub-factions are further divided into three density classifications – low, medium and high. As you play through the game these classifications become more and more important as you run out of space, and you have to destroy old low-density areas and create new high-density areas so that more people can move in.
The higher-up the food-chain your citizens are, the more demanding they get. So elites have certain needs. The advantage of this is pleasing the elites seems to please all.
The game is all about keeping the citizens happy and balanced. Doing so requires a little effort and micro-management – but once you understand the game cycle, this becomes rather easy and it’s rinse and repeat; just on a larger scale.
All the rest
Cities XL 2012 was originally designed to be a MMO – however, the development complexity proved to be too challenging for Focus Home Interactive; which is kind of sad because that is what could have made this game absolutely epic.
One of the key aspects of the game, which separates it from other SimCity clones, is the ability to trade resources with other cities. This is where an MMO would have been awesome!
Cities XL 2012 could’ve been huge, but this is where it all falls apart.
While it is fun, building multiple cities and trading with yourself; the time it takes you to do this is horrendous – not because the game advances too slowly, no – but because the game sucks your PC dry.
It slows you down to less than a backwards sprint.
Focus Home Entertainment had the recipe for the perfect SimCity game, but instead of plugging all the holes in Cities XL 2011 – they just re-skinned it, gave it a few new buildings, and re-sold it.
The modding tools look awesome, and important to note that if this game reaches its full potential, the community really could come up with some awesome designs.
The game’s sound is really not impressive – you will not be running to fetch your earphones while you’re playing. The music is not annoying, and serves its purpose – but really isn’t anything new or special.
In the end
Cities 2012 XL is a large game that is quite entertaining – it’s very easy to pick up and has a rather simple game mechanic. It’s just such a pity that this entire game is ruined by memory-sucking performance, and the lack of a decent multiplayer experience
