Be Excellent To Each Other

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City Life 2008 is a game that I'd never heard of until this week. I knew nothing about it at all. It's an obvious Sim City knock-off, but I don't have any Sim City games that aren't... well, that aren't as dull as Sim City. Frankly, I never enjoyed any of that series much, even the first. So what the hell. Saints Row was vastly better at being GTA than later iterations of GTA, so maybe City Life can do the same.

Plus it was like three quid. Even I find it hard to refuse that kind of price for a game - even a somewhat crap game can be well worth £3.

But enough intro.



Right off the bat (well, actually, right off the bat I'm inconvenienced and very annoyed by the copy protection, which was never a problem when I used to pirate games, still isn't a problem for anyone who undoubtedly has pirated this game, and despite my legitimately purchasing the game, prevented me from actually playing it until I'd installed a tool developed almost entirely to aid piracy. Well done, games industry, you intolerable oafs), I'm enjoying this.

The intro is an in-menu animation gently showing off the game in a way that's simply a joy to watch. It looks lovely, and the relaxed, pleasant music sets exactly the mood I was hoping for when I bought it - pretty and charming, but shy of the Sim series' cheesy schmaltz that tends to leave one after a long session with a sensation not unlike nausea. And it's not in the way, nor forced on you - you can jump straight into the game or fiddle with options as you see fit. A stark contrast to the many games I've bought recently that have half a dozen bothersome introduction and animations from the fifteen publishers who've been flogging the dev team all year.

I elect to play a game with a victory 'card'. This is a scoring system that unlocks stuff if you do well, but seems unconcerned if you don't. Fair enough. Choosing the basic slightly hilly temperate coastline (a flat 2/5 on all difficulties), I set off.

And lo! Oh wait, un-lo. First I'm shown a top-down view of the whole map and given a choice of several areas to start on. About half are locked for now, but there are several that look rather nice. Picked!




Either screenshots came later, or the village was founded on an unusually convenient rock formation. Who can say?


And re-lo! It's really rather pretty. I must place my city hall. Apparently it will have 'an effect' on the surrounding area, so I should choose carefully. I assume this effect is not a mutagenic one and so whack it in the middle of a nice big floodplain.




Ignore everything that is not a City Hall.



It's at this point that I discover something very odd. Pressing escape brings up a menu, as is standard. But er... there's no way to get to the options menu again. I have to save and exit to the main menu to change, say, the music volume. A schoolboy error, guys, and this is City Life 'Deluxe', so... what the hell? How did this not get patched in? 2% off and we're not even started yet.

Speaking of the interface, we have the building tabs on the left, cash and population at the top, and various statistics and such at the bottom. There is also a tips/info window in the bottom right. It tells me to build housing, and hovering goes into more detail (I believe it was "build housing, so that people can actually live in your town, you fool"). I OBEY.

Right now we can build single family houses (you choose buildings directly rather than 'zoning' a la Cim Sity, although houses can and will be claimed and upgraded/shabbied up by whoever moves into and out of them), and a few basic services. Also, four types of road. FOUR TYPES OF ROAD. Now *this* is why games exist. Fuck space marines; I want dual carriageways all up in this bitch.

Roads must connect to existing roads, and the game will automatically connect a new building. However I can and will directly place the roads myself first - it can choose some dodgy paths, so be careful. I'll look for an option to switch auto-roads off later (SPOILER: Bruce Willis is a ghost who can't switch off auto-roads), but for now, I start up a wee neighbourhood off to one side. Houses spring up, and I stick a corner shop, clinic and a few cheap businesses down nearby, and explore the menus a bit more.




One menu allows the Mayor to stalk anyone in town. Boris is onto you, London.


I am losing money, as surplus waste disposal or electricity is automatically sold, and deficits automatically paid for. This removes the tedious wrangling of the last Tsim Tsity game I played, and prevents the periodic dive in happiness when you reach capacity. I cautiously approve. And build a power plant, I doubt wind farms will work about two yards above sea level (it's a very indistinct building, oddly, included in the above image). I don't quite know how we're selling the excess without a power grid, but I like to imagine that we charge our customers for convincing them that the electricity was in their heart all along. In any case, we're now making a modest profit, and are ready to expand.

Then, drama! "CULTURAL CONFLICT!" Oh no! Our happy hamlet is a hotbed of hate. The "Fringes" are apparently putting pressure on the "Blue Collars", and... what's this? A video plays in the corner. Several men dressed in red are beating up the one guy in town who wears blue. Bastards! There goes my dream of recreating the Village with Three Corners.




Communist insurgents or draconian fashion police? I've got 3:10 on "both"


So, the blue dudes and the red suckers don't get on. It turns out the population counter at the top is broken into six sections for a reason - each one is a "sociocultural group" with specific requirements and dislikes, and the two groups I have are not on friendly terms. In a town with a populaton only slightly greater than most student houses, this might present a problem. I decide to do what I excel at: ignore it until it goes away. Billy Blue Hat will just have to grow some stones.

Or move out. Which he does. Um. That doesn't count as government oppression, right? Well, no matter. It's time to implement what I'm sure history will thank me for - segregation!

The red groups are the 'Fringes'. Presumably these are the radicals, students and generally disenfranchised, but not utterly downtrodden. The guy who I imagine woke up to a burning sickle on his lawn is a "Blue Collar".

I stick a few 'blue collar' businesses a bit further away, as the game tells me they produce a lot of waste, but are more profitable than the Fringes (and I'm not even going to try building 'Have Not' businesses, which barely break even and these people have not, so I can't tax the marrow from their bones tolerate such economic oppression).




It works! And by "works", I mean "is strictly enforced by savage mob justice".


Blue collars can work in the power plant and waste disposal place. These pollute, so they're on the other side of town. So, I build some Blue businesses there, shove some houses a polite distance away, and demolish the blue stuff over on the left side of town, replacing them with red Fringe ones. Reds are on the left in their scruffy flats and hippy low-waste businesses that generate mostly lint, and Blues are on the right in their surprisingly attractive detached houses, their profitable businesses vigorously fisting mother nature, as is their wont. I didn't plan it like this, but it works, so it'll stay.

I think that's enough for now. Screenshots will be better next time, as I discovered the photo-taking tools a bit later. They're not perfect, but you can explore your town freely, add time of day filters, and zoom as far in as this:




ALERT. LOVE WAGON DETECTED IN SECTOR 6D, DESIGNATION "FOUNDING STREET". ALERT.


Now, personally I think this is impressive, and rather pretty. You may disagree, but consider that (a) this was released in 2008 ("2006 and then expanded" - Wikipedia-savvy Ed), (b) This is only at the medium video settings, (c) you can see individual people milling around even a few levels up, and (d)...




Humanity 1 : Nature 0


This isn't even the whole map.


Next time on the Beplayening: Stability promotes growth. THRILL! To the sight of detailed urban planning. CHEER! As the town opens several breweries. ROLL UP YOUR WINDOW! As the first "have nots" arrive.

Good review with some quality writing. Needs a score.

Not sure those graphics inspire me but the game was cheap. Is it really worth playing over Sim City when you can probably get that game cheaply anyway?

What's the normal RRP?

I tried to love Sim City 3000. It was slow, crashed alot and really didn't grab me. However I seem to be in a minority in that opinion. 2000 was great but it got to a point where you could just leave it running forever and it would be fine.

982 Bananas for the review.

Excellent stuff! I look forward to reading more!

Nice work Mr Agent!

Nah. Scores are for people who's attention spans aren't long enough to read the review. Fuck those guys.

Excellent writeup - posted to bits.of.Beex.

That's some excellent writing!

That was a bloody brilliant review. I mean, wow. 'Dual carriageways all up in that bitch' and Bruce Willis making me guffaw.

Cheers for the comments, folks. This isn't a review - it's far too limited for that, and more would be too long. I'm basically giving a running commentary on the game as I play it. Except later on. Once I'm done, I'll give a summary that could be used as a review for the unbothered/busy, but I've not played it enough yet.

It appears that it was a bargain indeed - I've seen it going for £25, so I'll have to keep that in mind when recommending. As it stands, for what it's worth, I certainly wouldn't buy it for that, but then I wouldn't buy any game for more than about £15.

It remains to be seen whether it's ultimately worth that much, though. I would say definitely pick it up if you see it for a fiver or less, as it's solidly entertaining.



I found sim city 3000 extremely dull. I'd throw myself into it with gusto, and get bored within an hour or two, and irked by lots of little complaints. You never really get to enjoy building a city, as you're too constrained by balancing budgets. Plus there's no real joy in building, as all you do is zone and stick the pipes and such down. Then all the advisors would constantly pop up to tell you their budget was empty seconds after telling you their coffers were overflowing, and then keep doing it ad infinitum.I never got anywhere with it. And I never liked the original either - it was even more boring and un-involving. I've not played one since.

City Life is much more about keeping your people happy. The sociocultural group thing is a major element, and a kind of tech tree as well - your better educated groups demand more advanced infrastructure, but are a much more efficient source of tax money, as well as a requirement to unlock things.

I haven't played it enough to give it a fair hearing, and I've not played SC for so long that I can't say. But I like the feel of it. It's limited in some disappointing ways (I don't think you can terraform, which unless I'm just being dim takes a massive bite out of its longevity, although there is some kind of editor), but it's very enjoyable and relaxing. I love touring even my tiny little hamlet, so a full on city should be loads of fun.

More is coming. I am editing and choosing screenshots. I will say that this starts slowly, as I struggled for ages to get a few thousand people to come. Then the town exploded, doubling in size and density and welcoming more people than Canterbury. I stopped playing yesterday just as things started to fall apart.

City Life 2008: The Beplayening, part two.

Photo hosting courtesy of http://www.flickr.com*

*And if you know of a good alternative please let me know as I'm low on space.


I've learned that while businessses and entertainment venus are staffed and used by specific groups, houses will be filled by whoever wants them, and people want areas based primarily on what jobs and amenities are nearby. I won't be able to build things to attract the more profitable groups with modestly successful businesses the reds and blues are running until I increase their numbers. So, my goal for now is to extend my two distinct neighbourhoods, and oh man, you can zoom right into the street!




And make it all dusky, like the red Fringe neighbourhood here. I immediately forgot about this function, obviously.


There are several levels of zoom, and two are right down with a bird's eye view. Cars pootle merrily along, people wander about the streets occasionally greeting each other in gibberish, and you're free to take a little scenic tour of your town as it goes about its day. Even at moderate zoom levels, you can see the people mooching up and down. Lovely stuff.

It's true that the seams are visible here and there - people fade out of view at the end of half-streets, that kind of thing, but it's not a problem. There are people carrying shopping and men pushing buggies - men, not women, I noted with some respect. I saw a man fall down dead at one point, and passers by ran up and tried to help him. It's not amazing, but considering there's no practical purpose to being up close and you'll spend most of the game zoomed far out, it's a welcome detail. You can also click on any citizen you see for a tracking first person view as they move.




Babies? Pah! The women have more important things to do. Excellent work, miss.


A few hours flit by. I'm by nature a rather cautious expander, prone to inexorably taking over and consolidating, then lashing out opportunistically, typically regretting it within moments. This is why I lose at chess, but am excellent in bed (sub please check). It's also why I almost lose the game minutes after I build something expensive, but let's not get a head of ourselves. For now, taking over! Inexorably! Prone!

Both settlements are doing well, though I get frequent whinges from a few literal fringe houses that they're too lazy to walk another 50 yards up the road to get to the shops (they can shove it), and some Blue Collars complaining that there aren't enough fancy businesses they can climb up the ranks in (they can shove it further).




"Billy dear, why don't you come inside now? They won't find us here. You're scaring the Joneses."


For a village of 400 with three profitable breweries, these people sure are demanding. I've built the fanciest stuff I can for now though, so they'll have to put up with it. They really should have anticipated this kind of thing when they moved to a brand new town with a mayor so hopeless he hasn't even named the place yet.

A fire station becomes available, as do a few scenic things like parks and gardens. I notice that you can upgrade and downgrade existing roads instantly for a cost, which makes managing traffic much more convenient (though pricier - anticipating heavy use will pay off, as laying a major road is far cheaper than upgrading an existing one). It appears that you can't terraform, however, which could be a major dent in the game's long-term appeal. I also build some moderate-density houses, which I put down in both zones, for which the game congratulates me, and the grateful townsfolk expand my City Hall. Tum tee tum.




A bombing attempt by the Ghanaian People's Front meets its first and most passive resistance.


Having grasped the basics, I continue to expand until the game decides I can have some more toys. This comes in the form of a few businesses and loads of schools and universities. Being a massive literary ponce, I immediately build a university in the middle of town. The building is so excruciatingly dull that it's outdone by both the neighbouring grocer's and a block of nearby flats, so don't expect it to be pictured. More importantly, I also fail to notice how expensive its upkeep is, as the sudden presence of good education attracted the first of an elusive sociocultural group, the "radical chic", and I got all excited.




You too could live in a neighbourhood by Crayola.


Immediately, a bunch of yellow Radical Chic buildings became available. I set up a new neighborhood with a vegetarian restaurant, an architect's, several design studios and an R&D business south of city hall, and Johnny and Jennifer Yellow Hat came flooding in.

Now, as you can probably guess, the Radical Chics are basically massive ponces who love education and have all sorts fancy notions, making them harder to please than the Reds and Blues, but their sense of style and earning power can make City Hall a much keener profit than the proles. They are more educated than Reds - indeed, with sufficient education, Reds can turn directly into Yellows, and they can live happily among the Reds without the kind of unpleasantness we saw earlier.

The downside is that they are fussy. They demand educational buildings near their homes, and more variety in basic services - A clinic or hospital alone will only please them for so long before they demand both. In a bid to please them, I spent money. A lot of money. And my modest £2,000 income plunges into an £8,000 loss. Ulp.

As an aside, we also get our first 'have not' resident, who moves into the new area. The Chics respond by calling the police, who react with exactly the kind of reasonable force we've come to expect from our police when dealing with poor people who have the temerity to exist in the same vicinity as them.




"You are hereby charged with being wilfully poor in a public space. Please put down your human rights and step out of the building."


They don't last long.

Right now I have bigger problems. My budget is catastrophically lopsided. It's time to Tory up the joint. I demolish the university and steal milk from some children close down some leisure services. This isn't enough, and without knocking down the schools that are keeping the chics happy, I won't break even. My finances are well into the red, so there's nothing I can do.

City Life doesn't have any budget sliders. You can't adjust tax rates or assign cash to services. The only way to make cash is to build profitable things and make sure they're fully staffed or occupied. Businesses make a loss if they're understaffed, and I simply don't have enough of them right now. I can't afford to do anything, so the only option I have is one I don't think I've ever taken in a game before: A loan.

Seriously, I don't "do" loans. In real life hard times my attitude has always been to simply eat less often, buy packing tape over shoes, and enact the occasional heist. In games it's always been to start again or cause as much mayhem as possible to see what happens. But not this time. This is my town, damn it, and if I have to run it off imaginary space money from the moon, then by god it shall run.




Patricia Knowles was last seen walking through Commietown alone, carrying several bags emblazoned with corporate logos. Police are baffled.


Finances are extremely simple in City Life 2008. Indeed, the game makes very little use of statistics and numbers, with information in its menus presented very simply and clearly, and the finance screen itself directly showing you the most and least profitable buildings in town, and takes you to them with a single click. There are no monthly charts, and a loan is handled simply by giving you a limit and letting you choose a number below it. I end up taking the entire £100,000 that's available (for context, a house costs £25, a road about £1, and a high-earning Chic business costs £8,000 and turns over a maximum of £1,000).

I slap down loads of the most profitable business (R&D specialist), and dozens of mid-level houses nearby to work them. Despite some frustration as Reds insist on taking the houses instead at first, they're soon tempted away by some more houses and 'creative software' companies closer to their neighbourhood - turns out that after employment, services and entertainment, residents are tempted to move into neighbourhoods with others of their kind. With a few Blue factories to help out, pretty soon it all works out, and even with the loan repayments (which you can't renegotiate or pay off early. A little disappointing, but it's a minor complaint), we're making a respectable profit. The result is that we're not only saved, but now living in something that's actually worth calling a town:




Optional icons inform you when a house is under-occupied or its residents unemployed. Feedback is generally hard to fault.


Let's have a closer look at Yellowton, with its residual patches of Redborough:




Yellowton, yes. They only look orange because they use same launderer as the Reds, to be more real, you know?











Meanwhile, our happy Blue suburb I don't have the heart to replace with flats:




You can almost hear the tutting disapproval of anything fun.


And their higher-density housing fills up, forming a district with a rather unexpected, and rather tasty classical style. I can't get a good close shot of these as they're too densely-packed, and camera controls are limited to preset zoom levels - there's no vertical rotation, which is rather annoying. Sorry. I'll try to get one later.




I like to imagine the builders cackling as they put up the flats in the perfect spot to block out the sunlight for the neighbours. I know I was.


Each time I reach enough cash to build a profitable business, I do so, and add a few houses. After doing this several times, I'm making a big profit, so expand like an actress's bust on poster day, linking the Reds and Yellows and building a satellite village for the Blues, who are in danger of being cornered. Thinking it'll save on the traffic that's starting to appear, I connect the new Blue town to Yellowton, which in turn links to a Red neighbourhood that's been threatening to turn into a slum for Have Nots.

I will regret this much later.

On the plus side, I find out that leisure activities will provide for everyone, but be most attractive to specific groups. Plus, rather than being a burden, they will in fact generate a profit if they're surrounded by houses of the correct culture. I trash the Irish pub in Redborough for this reason, and build them a concert hall downtown.




Ugh. Bass Drum? Their last two albums were wet poppy crap. Sellouts.


Blueville for its part get a pub and restaurant, and the new area by the sea a rollercoaster, none of which which stops them whinging about wanting to move up in the world and become "Suits"; the fourth population group and counterpart of the Chics. These light blue types are investors, accountants and businessmen, who want a bit of education like the Chics, but are far more interested in security. They wants lots of very expensive cops and fraud investigators milling around to protect the piles of money they want to roll around in from the people they extorted it from, all the while guffawing about the suffering of others.

I don't much care for the Suits, incidentally.

We won't see them for a while yet though, as the buildings they need to work in are all locked, and I couldn't please them anyway as the non-tiny police buildings are all absurdly costly.




We don't need no po-lees no how, ah tell you what.


So, for now, it's a case of steady expansion of each group, focussing on the Blues' heavy industry and the Chics' laboratories and pretentious hobbies, most of which involve being charged £95 for a couple of moist sticks and some vaguely Oriental chanting.

Meanwhile, I've been told I can open cheap hotels for the hundreds of people lining up to visit. These are straighforward and aren't an additional, complicated industry like in Tropico - all you need is to place the hotel somewhere safe and attractive, with entertainment nearby. Put the cheap places with the Blues and Reds and they stay full, earning more profit. Easy money. I'm putting down a fourth when I'm told that the Reds are banging out so many sprogs that they want to tell the world about it.




"Brik" reportedly won the name vote by a narrow margin over "Dwat" and "Quetin".

And so, with the population swelling and money piling up fast, both by tens of thousands, I leave you for today. We have pulled our toes from the fire, and after a slow and clumsy start, are about to plunge into the sexy waters of success. I leave you with this long-range shot of the beautiful place we're slowly killing:




If you look closely, you can already see the very earth itself begin to blacken. Progress!


Next time on the Beplayening: Rich people arrive, and I find out just how much everyone secretly hates each other. GASP! As skyscrapers loom over town. QUAIL! As organised violence erupts in the streets. SHAKE YOUR HEAD! As the Mayor again bends over for newcomers and bankrupts the town.

Good work SA, looking forward to the next part,

Excellent stuff!

Picasa, probably. Or a premium Flickr account if you'll use it enough to justify the modest cost.

Grnrgrgrnhhhfshhckk!

Population shooting up. Cash is starting to pour in. People are lining the docks to get into my beautiful city of 400,000 people and rising. I've just got the quality to attract all the groups.

And the game won't let me save, because of some kind of bug.

Not. Happy.