Asking yourself what an MMO could offer in a single-player mode would be a perfectly reasonable question before picking Cities XL up off the shelf, and raises the further question as to whether or not it’s even an MMO if it’s just as playable on your own, and offline. But that last question is on the semantic side of the argument fence, and we’re not going to tackle it here.

What we are going to do is test whether or not Cities XL does indeed work as an offline, single-player game. Our first reaction is to suggest we’ve seen lots of city building simulators in the past, but actually, once you discount SimCity, it’s a sparsely populated landscape. That said, Cities XL is going up against a prolific, powerhouse PC gaming franchise in SimCity, and figuring out how it compares is undoubtedly the best way to fathom its worth as an offline title.

Most immediately, it’s the raw landscapes that lay the cornerstone of Cities XL’s individuality. Your city isn’t built into a grid work, and neither can you simply plonk a skyscraper down if the terrain is too hilly, or otherwise unsuitable, to support such a structure. Therefore, choosing exactly the right patch of land on the impressive, planet-size game sphere is a consideration that establishes the scope of development that will permeate the entire experience.

You’re given a choice of buildings and architecture from a library of over 500 different models with which to develop your metropolis, making the early stages of construction difficult not only because of your budgetary limitations, but simply because of the agonising depth of choice.

Beginning construction is no small task either, since depending on the region you chose, you could be spending time terraforming before building. But regardless of the difficulties you’ve created for yourself, the impressively simple and accessible construction system makes it easy to lay the foundations of the city you really want to build.

And it’s not just the city. The four different classes of occupant (unskilled, skilled, executive and elite) also require your attention, and governing works on a very similar graphical interface that seems to effortlessly put just the right buttons at your mouse pointer. While working your way into the shoes of a city-wide architect is undeniably hard work, it’s also massively achievable and an ultimately satisfying task.

To give the single-player Cities XL a little more of an objective-based gameplay component, Monte Cristo has included ‘GEMs’, which set you a specific goal to achieve while piling up the bricks of a metropolis. This could involve building and operating a successful ski resort, for example, which requires a certain level of surrounding inhabitation to support it, though it’s up to you which class of citizen you choose to cater for – a budget-priced family resort and an exclusive, ultra-expensive retreat can equally be considered successful.

The single-player and MMO games are unlikely to knit together particularly closely, but the far-reaching scope of Cities XL will mean any pseudo-civilisation architect will be able to build themselves a dream homeland in this beautiful-looking simulator.