Just got into my radar And the long abandonned Simcity fans might be interested,

<http://pc.ign.com/articles/903/903012p1.html>

"August 26, 2008 - There's been a noticeable gap in the urban simulation genre the past five years, or basically since EA and Maxis last made a SimCity game. Sure, there have been plenty of city-building games that let you place very last piece of a city in place, but there have been very few urban simulations that task you with the handling the bigger picture. The closest to come to SimCity in recent years are the City Life games from Monte Cristo. City Life blends urban simulation with a class simulation that at times has the haves and the have-nots clashing. Not too surprising since City Life is basically French. But with Cities XL, Monte Cristo is going in a completely different direction, taking aim for the urban simulation crown that SimCity has long held. There's a lot to be excited about in Cities XL, so let's take a look.

First, Cities XL is a new franchise with very few, if any, connections to City Life. Forget the class-based warfare; this is an urban simulation in the old school kind of way. What's impressive about Cities XL is that it takes SimCity-style gameplay and melds it with social networking and the Internet in ways that seem completely obvious when you see it in action. For example, this can be a single-player game that you can buy in a box and enjoy playing by yourself, just like SimCity. But it'll also be tied online in that there are statistics tracking and such so you can compare yourself to other players. However, there's also an optional small monthly subscription that gives you a lot more.

You can't build this city on rock and roll.

By going online you can build cities on a globe populated by cities that other players build. And these cities can interact with one another in all sorts of ways. Let's say someone has a prime waterfront city, the kind that's perfect for tourism. It would really suck to have to ruin it by having to build a garbage dump or dirty, polluting factories. Well, in this global economy, another player with an inland city can make a killing by becoming the de-facto garbage dump for other cities; while another player specializes in generating electricity that he can sell to other cities. If you see an opportunity in the game, you can capitalize on it by making deals with other players.

What's more, you'll be able go to other players' cities and explore them. You won't be able to tinker with them in any way, but it opens up a chance to sightsee on a global level. You do so by creating an avatar not unlike the ones you'd create for an MMO. So in addition to the traditional top-down view, you can insert your avatar into the streets of any city and walk around. There are places where players can hang out and interact, much like the public areas in an MMORPG. It's easy to meet up, chat, and hang with your friends. Monte Cristo also plans to release what are called GEMS, or game enhancement modules. These are described as sort of like Tycoon games that can be plugged into Cities XL. Let's say you have a nice mountain town that would be perfect for a ski resort. Buy the ski resort GEM and you'll be able to create a vast winter wonderland, from being able to create and designate the slopes to facing gameplay challenges, like creating a world-class resort.

You have a lot of room to play with.

The level of detail in Cities XL also pushes the boundaries for the genre; terrain looks convincingly realistic, and the buildings themselves are eye-catching and stand out. Zoom in on a stadium and you'll see the players on the field, and you can almost put yourself in the seats and watch them mill about. The creation tools look easy and powerful to use; for example, you "draw" your roads using a mouse, and then can designate those roads any number of ways. You might create a pedestrian-only thoroughfare, or a one-way boulevard, and so on. You can also build grand, arching bridges and tall, strong skylines. The size of your canvas is about 100 square kilometers per city, so there's a lot of room to play with.

Cities XL looks very promising, especially to SimCity fans who have been waiting for years for a new game. This is a game that will let you create the bold cityscapes that you may have made in SimCity, but it also will let you partake in a global network of cities. The online integration should also be familiar to a generation weaned on MySpace and Facebook, right up to being able to create city pages and blogs so you can share your experiences with your friends. The game is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2009, but this should be something that city simulation fans should definitely keep their eyes on."

I know it's kind of old news, but I just saw it and as a big simcity fan, got hyped. F*** you Societies.

looks massive.

Take a look at the pictures in IGN, they look beautiful and huge.

I like what I see. I hope it has a Sim City 2000 feel to it. That is one of my favorite games.

I think i should star to consider a Gaming PC. First Diablo III, now this, PC line-up is getting everyday better.

Looking forward to it, and even the GEM thing might be cool, I mean, it's like those Tycoon spin-offs that came out in the beginning of the decade, but possibly done well and inside a good city simulator game. well, Skate Park Tycoon was awesome, the others I don't really know, but if they were great I THINK I'd know :P

PRE-POST-EDIT: wow, I didn't even read the preview before writing and now I see that he compares the GEMs to Tycoon games too lol

I tried to get a beta key, but they didn't choose me (and I missed the giveaway from Eurogamer)

Hopefully MAxis takes a looks at it and releases a real Simcity 5, and forget once and for all the mistake that it was societies.

I just added the game. And screenshots, they look beautiful. Makes me long for the good old times when Maxis put out good games, before EA bought them.

I'd kill for a new city-building game of Simcity 3000 quality, that game got so many hours of my time. I hope this one's good, I'll be keeping an eye on it

I didn't like Simcity 3000, not much fun, compared with 2000 and 4.