Watching the melting pot of genius games design that was SimCity 2000 gradually dilute with each new iteration has made the part of us that loved it so much die a bit more each time. So it came as a relief that City Life 2008 Edition picked up the slack where SimCity Societies had left off, inspiring hope for the future of city-building sims – especially when the concept of an MMO version was hinted at. Think of the single-player mode of Cities XL as a ‘SimCity plus’ – very familiar gameplay with a different skin and all the kitsch systematically replaced by improvements to the design, with no advisors and definitely no UFO invasions.

The differences are subtle but have fairly major implications, like the zoning system, which falls into the same industrial, commercial and residential categories as SimCity. But you can lay the designated zone out into any shape you like, giving you more efficient use of space when building on unforgiving terrain and allowing for a much more Europeanlooking city. Similarly, roads and can be built with significantly more ergonomic curves rather than compulsory 90-degree angles. Joining them up is like the freehand line drawing tool in Photoshop and Monte Cristo has built in a certain amount of AI to ensure you’re not spending hours simply trying to get a ring road to match up to its other end.

Cities XL features a limited city budget which grows in direct proportion to your population and beyond standard city builders, it has a day/night and weather system, different climates and hugely varied terrain (which directly affects the resources available to your city) and the Citizen Profile Complex. Every one of your citizens is given a number of variables that includes age, wealth and education, which affects their spending power and where they put their money, ultimately changing the landscape of your city. There’s optional player mode if you like, but you’d be missing out on one of the most curious innovations in game design this decade.

As soon as you consider Cities XL in MMO context you can understand why the option of including disasters was dismissed early into the concept phase; it’s beyond unfair to bring a city to its knees with an act of God just because the player was logged out at the time. Neither are your initial few hours the make-or-break balancing experience that the SimCity series was, though zone juxtaposition, sizing and other architectural choices still play a key part in how fast your city grows. The plan is that every server on Cities XL will be represented by a planet, with thousands of pitches available on each for new players to start a city.

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