Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I
loved SimCity 2000. I miss SimCity 2000. And given what's happened to that venerable franchise,
I frankly don't want to touch anything SimCity related with a ten-foot pole right now. The
whole thing just kinda turns your stomach to watch. Fortunately, there are other options
in the city-building-gaming arena. That don't require you to have your computer, wallet,
soul, and plumbing hooked up to some megacorp's servers 25 hours a day. Is Cities XL Platinum
as good as the city-building of my youth? Well, it's certainly better at fitting to
the lay of the land, I can tell ya that much.
Anyone who's grown up with games has probably at least drifted by the genre close enough
to get the general idea: You build a city, by laying down roads, describing residential,
commercial, and industrial areas, and then you tend to all the various problems that
cities get into like need for readily-available health care and education services. You are
judge, jury, and zoning board from your omnipotent position up there above the city... though
if you really want to get down to street level, you're more than welcome to zoom all the way
in and check things out yourself. The basketball courts even have graffiti! It's indicative
of the detail Cities XL Platinum, which might show its seams a bit but is generally a solid
simulation, made completely accessible by a series of tutorials that make all the mechanics
of the game plain, down to the little details like adding in subway and bus lines to alleviate
traffic and pollution concerns.
Maybe I'm a bit nostalgic for that green-haired maniac Dr. Wright and those city planners
telling me I WILL REGRET THIS, but Cities seemed to be missing a bit of magic. Perhaps
it was in the momentary bouts of frustration when navigating something particularly tricky
like installing a bridge or trying to make one of the free-form area development tools
work... but that quickly dissipates once you figure out the problem and can lay down your
new housing complex. I guess it's the price you pay for the level of detail available,
up to and including inter-city commerce depending on which industries your flourishing burg
decides to specialize in. From heavy industry to manufacturing to agriculture to more skilled
white-collar work, you'll need to accommodate the spectrum of needs... as well as provide
affordable housing a population that's divided into unskilled, skilled, administrative, and
elite labor pools.
It might not be my city of dreams, but Cities XL Platinum does give me the in-depth, technical
gameplay I'm looking for, with a comprehensive suite of options and data for me to analyze.
The controls might take some getting used to, as it's way too easy to accidentally move
the camera when you're just trying to move through the menus at the sides of the screen.
But add a thriving mod community and plenty of achievements to help break up the massive
process of filling this huge space with urban paradise, and it compiles into a healthy next
step not just for me, but for everyone else in my SimCity withdrawal support group.