Cities XL

{Cities XL} builds on the concept perfected in Sim City. The player takes on the role of mayor and contractor and begins to develop his city from Hicksville, Nowhere, toward a genuine metropolis. The idea is intriguing, because I at least managed to get hooked on Sim City so completely that I never could put it down until far too late - which was usually two hours after school started.

The suffix in the game's title particularly promises big things. I start my stint as mayor full of zest, intending to create the perfect utopia. A city where the streets are paved with gold! Where the elite and the workers live in harmony! Where Godzilla would devour those pesky individuals who dared criticize their benevolent Sun King! Unfortunately it turns out, the L in {Cities XL} stands for ‘lame', not ‘large'.

The basics are sound. City building begins from setting up a functional infrastructure, which in this case mostly means roads. Nurtured with a careful diet of workers and industry, your once puny little village will evolve to support middle class and offices, then elite and higher technology. Industry feeds offices that allow sustaining higher technology, which requires industry for production. The cycle is realistic and functional, as is inhabitants' need for a safe and entertainment-rich environment. Later on another layer is added in the form of oil- and energy production.

And that's pretty much what you get, in single player mode. It's a crying shame that {Cities XL} doesn't allow any kind of micro management. Sure you can finetune taxes and a few other basics - but something as fundamental as plumbing is completely absent, as are more in-depth elements like social security. The mayor has no real say in anything, a city requires three fundamental pieces to function and that's the end of it. The citizens of my three Heikkiland-towns can't even be bothered to riot after I raised taxes to astronomical levels, and not a single natural disaster has marred my reign.

It's these skipped nuances that are the problem. The current financial situation of the world has made more than one person start things like "If I could decide then I would...!" But {Cities XL} wastes it's potential on a complete lack of anything surprising ever happening. Natural disasters don't exist, citizens are too lazy to riot and no matter how much I hope and wait, there's no Godzilla lurking on the sea, waiting to come stomp around my metropolis. Everything that made Sim City so addictive has been stripped. Though none of those things were what created Sim City's true depth, they supplied welcome changes of pace. Now the only thing the player can lose is money. And not even that, if you use even a little planning and foresight.

The game changes a little when it passes into the MMO-level it was originally meant for. Gameplay doesn't really change, except for the fact that now the player is trading with other real players. Expensive goods like oil can be imported from other cities at a slight discount. A mayor can decide, for example, to focus on exporting technical goods to an ultragreen treehugger commune that swears by a green lifestyle but still needs basic goods. Each city can also build a market place for players, where business can be done into the wee hours of the night.

Unfortunately even the human element fails to give the game the element of unpredictability is badly needs, or to justify the 5€ monthly subscription fee. Since all you can really lose in the game is money, the experience quickly becomes repetitive. That's a shame, because in all other ways the game runs smoothly, without any real hitches.

Monte Christo has promised future updates that should add new features to the basic game. In the mean while {Cities XL} may well entertain die-hard architects who have been dying for something else to set their teeth into since Sim City 2k. Anyone else, though, is better off waiting to see how the game develops, and holding off decisions at least until the game has been updated with the promised social services and deeper infrastructure.