Game Review: City Life : Executive Overview

05:19 - Wednesday 23 August 2006 by THG Reporting Team
Source: THG – Keywords: city, life, uk

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It's a city. And there's life. Next question?
Genre City Building / Management
The plot/hook Build a city, with more emphasis on financials than bread and butter road building
Graphics Excellent for a city building game. Lighting, reflective surfaces. One can even zoom in to pedestrian level to follow citizens around their daily business.
Sound & Voice Acting Sounds are generic but realistic. Elevator music features. It goes through your skull and makes your ears bleed after a short while.
Controls Point-and-click.
Interface Simple interface with building menus to the left and information tabs along the bottom that show all relevant financial and services data.
Learning curve Medium to steep, about an hour to learn the basics as there's no real in-depth tutorial. Once you've cracked the game formula, however, you pretty much have the game down forever.
Mechanics Bring in various social groups, which fit into various pigeonhole jobs and interests. Put one group in one neighbourhood, build businesses for the new arrivals and collect taxes. Give them leisure activities to entertain and serve them. Rinse, repeat, and you have City Life in a bland nutshell.
AI N/A
Game Play Once you've cracked the formula for building areas, the biggest concern is the terrain you build it on.
Replay Value Being a city building game, you'd think there's a lot. In reality, after you've cracked the magic formula of city building, the game gets boring, unless you really (really, really) like doing the same thing time and time again.
Multiplayer N/A
Summary No character, no flare, not even giant stomping robots. Just a balance sheet and a straightforward way to keep it in the black. A solid, but ultimately uninteresting, city building game.
Score 3.0/5.0

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