Product Reviews

If you're a fan of city-building games, Monte Cristo's City Life has a lot to offer. It's in the same vein as Sim City, with the main objective to build a happy and contented, sprawling metropolis. But that's just the objective; how you get there is the fun part, and City Life has loads for you to do.

Things get off to a slightly shaky start. Most simulation games ease you into the action with a simple tutorial mission that tells you how to build and how to plan. City Life's tutorial is a set of screenshots with a bit of explanatory text. If you're new to the genre, it's quite a steep learning curve; if you've played this type of game before, you'll pick up the basics, but there's still a lot to learn. Fortunately, the paper manual is pretty good and there's even a quick-start guide that gives you the basics. The main game is also littered with onscreen help, so you can learn as you play.

City Life starts by letting you decide which type of terrain you want to use. Each terrain has a set of missions that you can play. The harder ones are locked until you complete the earlier ones. There's a lot of game to play through.

While the basic purpose stays the same, each map has its own set of objectives that range from raising the population to a certain level to reaching a specified financial level.

So far so easy, but the range of character types complicates things somewhat. Each city has six urban groups: Elite, Suits, Radical Chic, Blue Collars, Fringe and Have Nots. Their expectations and required standard

On top of this, there's the usual problem facing any city builder: catering for people's needs. A set of icons shows the facilities each housing estate needs, such as shopping, so that you can build it. You have to be considerate and think about what people don't want, too. So building a big coal factory to produce electricity might solve people's power needs, but it won't make them very happy about the environment. A good balance is important. This may sound like a lot to take in, but if you put in the necessary hours, City Life will prove to be a lot of fun.

One of the main elements of a game such as this is building. As with any other city-builder game, your starting options are limited and basic. As you start to attract more people to your city and start earning more money, though, the range of buildings to which you have access grows. Building is pretty easy and City Life will even put down a road automatically for you if you place a building outside the existing infrastructure. We wouldn't rely on this method too much, though, as it can lead to a very untidy city that's hard to plan around.

The graphics are neat and in full 3D, so you can zoom down to street level, swoop around your city's roads and spin the whole town around. There's a nice feel to the cities and just enough hustle and bustle to make it feel real. It's not quite as good as Tycoon City New York, though, which got it spot on and even has events such as Halloween parades.

Tycoon City is a lot easier to pick up and its clear, set objectives make it a better choice for novices. If you're a big fan of the genre and think you can build your way out of anything, though, City Life is a great game. It's hard to learn and just as difficult to master, but if you persevere you'll get a lot out of it.