City Life Review

I was pretty excited about playing the City Life Demo.

Developed my German Developers Monte Cristo, the game is essentially a clone of the Simcity games (few of which I’ve actually played) with one major difference, and a few small ones.

There’s probably quite a few small differences, but one I noticed, was the lack of the need to construct power lines and water supplies. You still have to construct the amenities, but it makes the game a bit more accessible and a lot easier to not have to worry about those things. There are probably quite a few other differences like that through the game.

The big difference, and what is supposed to grab the money out of your pocket, is that you can zoom in to your creation. I actually didn’t know about this, so it was a cool surprise when I tried scrolling the middle mouse button. You really have to do it to understand how cool it is. But I’ll try and give you a graphical example.

So at that lowest point, you can move around, look at people’s houses, check out the street’s, the cars and businesses. This would be a gimmick, except that this allows you to really see what your community is like. In the demo, I had mostly blue collar workers, so you could wander around and see what sort of people were walking the streets, the cars they were driving, and how congested the streets are.

Admittedly, all this info is available elsewhere, but seeing it in reality rather than as a statistic adds a lot to the game. I can also imagine that it would be pretty cool when you get to higher stages of the game and can zoom in to your advanced buildings.

Ultimately, I wouldn’t buy it. It’s not a bad game, and is quite addictive but while the ‘zoom in’ feature is cool, it’s not a deal breaker. Not when I can probably pick Simcity 3000 up for $10.

7/10