Since I think I'm screwed with SimCity 4, (lost the code after I uninstalled the game from my comp) I am thinking of getting Cities XL. I am just wondering if the game itself is any good. I just don't want to spend $40 to a game if it's no good.
It's okay. It's not nearly as polished as SC4, and the game has bugs (the game has memory leaks, so it will slow to a crawl if you play one city for more than 3-4 hours, forcing you to quit to menu and go back in). For $40? I don't think it's worth it. $30? Maybe. Crazy Steam sale, absolutely.
Personally, I wish I had instead caught Steam's $9.99 sale on SimCity 4 Deluxe a couple months back.
I have the 2011 version of the game, which introduced some good features like achievements (that you get for just building stuff and hitting population targets for the most part). They also got rid of the online mode crap from the first version of Cities XL and just put in a much larger global landmass for you to play with (and there's also no more logging in at the start of the game as a result).
Coming from a former SC player (I got SC4 on day of release and the Rush Hour expansion the morning it came out, plus I used to be a forumer on Simtropolis), I'd say that Cities XL is a worthy successor to city simulation games. The interface is fairly intuitive, it has great graphics, and there are some features that are improvements on the way SC handled things (for example, bus routes which you can set and customize). There are some things I find annoying like not always knowing for sure if the road I am building is straight and also having annoying road alignment issues at intersections.
Generally speaking, I think that the cities that come out of this game feel a little less manufactured than the ones from SimCity games.
YMMV as to how much it might be worth to you. I picked it up for cheap on a Steam sale.
EDIT: One thing that I wish was better is the trade system in this game. I find it annoying and confusing and I always end up on a map with a fuel shortage and I don't have enough resource credits to trade for it. And on a finance note, balancing the budget in Cities XL is waaaaaay easier than it ever was in SC4.
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"The only thing that gets me through our winters is the knowledge that they're the only thing keeping us free of giant ass spiders." -MonkeyRonin
Coming from a former SC player (I got SC4 on day of release and the Rush Hour expansion the morning it came out, plus I used to be a forumer on Simtropolis)
small world. you see a lot of people from ST back in the day around here.
Anyways, Cities XL 2012 is going to come out soon as well, so maybe its worth waiting to see what features it adds.
I liked SimCity 4 and felt that it was on the right track. It is disappointing that the series had to be cancelled. CitiesXL, could be a viable successor, but I don't think it is there yet. As someone who loved SimCity 4, I bought the newest version of CitiesXL and only played it twice. The game is buggy and the utilities/resource system needs some tweaks. I think CitiesXL is on the right track and I would consider future versions, but the version out now is not something that draws me in for long term game play.
Well with simcity, you can only do straight roads, but with cities xl 2011, you can do roads any shape and kind. but traffic builds up way quicker. Air pollution is a lot more controllable in cities xl 2011. i remember in simcity, after only about 5 minutes of playing, i would have a huge brown bubble of pollution.
DO NOT GET CITIES XL 2012! 2011 is fine but 2012 asks you to build a first harbour when you start a mountain map, or plains map and tells you to build a road connection when your on an island! So with no road connecting, you can never unlock anything and your houses stay unbuilt.
In the video gaming world, I'm think that's called a "bug"...
And it's a bug I've now fixed. Cities XL 2012 is a great game. Street view is amazing and so are the graphics.the main reason I got it is because you could place roads at any angles and shapes. You can do curved roads and bridges. The main downside is that you can't make your own terrain and planets or carve out your own rivers. But you dont need that feature to have fun because there's 60 different maps to choose from.
I only played the Cities XL beta ages ago and was turned off almost instantly. My biggest beef was with how once something was built, it would never transform or grow into anything else. I also didn't like how there was virtually no mass transit options at the time.
Perhaps those issues have been resolved now, but it's left me with a bad impression of the game.
I downloaded 2012 last night. I have one city of 130,000 and another fuel-source city of 25,000.
It's alright, but there are some very frustrating things about it.
Honestly, the roads are one of the game's biggest weaknesses. Basically, if you want to eventually have a large city with high-capacity roads, you have to build them when you have a few thousand people, because replacing roads is an utter pain in the ass. You have to destroy so much shit to upgrade from a small road to a road to an avenue, etc.
There's no variation in zone size; all the low and medium density buildings are one size, and high density is another. The footprint of a sfh is the same as a mid-rise office tower or factory or shopping mall.
Upgrading from low to medium to high density means manually demolishing existing buildings then rezoning.
So far, the biggest advantages over SC4 are the curved roads/bridges, the bus routes (really awesome), and the different kinds of commercial buildings (retail+office+leisure rather than just commercial).
The farms are pretty nice-looking too. And the trading seems alright.
I've started playing SC4 again after several years away. I installed the 3rd party transportation mod that people talk about about (I can't think of the name) and it seems to be a big improvement. I'm enjoying myself a lot. The fact that I've spend so many hours playing SC4 and can still enjoy it is a tribute to the quality of the game.
I've been avoiding this thread as talking about Cities XL is like talking about some estranged family member.... it's a deep and sensitive issue.
I don't even know where to begin. It can be the greatest game but it's usually the worst. Mods giving you infinite resources or traffic reducers help.
It's not as good of a "game" as it can be fun urban creation kit. However, even at this extent it's not very good either. The game's poor performance because of its memory leaks, poor support, and bad software design means there's a lot of pain attached to anything good.
The game's community is much to be desired. The developers seem to be discouraging of a forum community that honestly expresses opinions. There's also very little graphical support for new buildings as such. The game's publishers prohibits the community adding content as they rather you pay them for "vacation packs".
If you're extremely patient and have a good PC and know to restart it every 2 hours of gameplay (alleviates mem leaks) AND know how to mod, then yes, it's worth the $10 download.
In the video gaming world, I'm think that's called a "bug"...
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