In fact, after an hour of it, you're likely to turn it off completely and turn on your iTunes. Also familiar are the picture-perfect 3D graphics and the not-so-perfect music, which in its easy listening somnambulence, might lull you right to sleep. For Cities XL veterans, all of this will be extremely familiar, as will the way the menus and trading window function (although without multiplayer, now you can only trade with your own cities or the money-grubbing Omnicorp). If you're still unsure what to do, the game gives you clear (toggleable) hints like "build more residences" or "unemployment has struck skilled workers". When clicking icons for things like security, fire services or job vacancies, you can assess the health of homes and businesses by their color (green for good, red for bad and yellow for so-so) and act to improve them. Beyond the extensive tool set and building constraints, the most useful thing about the interface is the way it uses at-a-glance color coding to communicate the happiness of your citizens. The city building whiz kids out there won't like that, but they can still unlock all the buildings in Expert mode for those of you just learning the ropes, it's probably best to keep things simple by leaving them locked. Another holdover from the previous title is the way most buildings are locked until you reach a certain population level. Fortunately, you'll find the many tools for building the necessary amenities to be intuitive in much the same vein as Cities XL. Whatever skill level you are, you'll soon realize that a successful city is dependent not only on industry and natural resources, but on the happiness of its citizens. It's pretty hokey, but once you've learned the basics of road building, zoning and trading, you get to leave it behind and check out the map listing and the empty globe that's just waiting to be covered with successful, sparkling cities. Right away you realize the mayor's something of a lazy, incompetent boob and it's up to you and the mayor's much savvier assistant to fix his mistakes. In it, you're cast as an intern in a fictional city's mayoral office. Thankfully, tutorial chapters can be revisited at any time- if you can stand to revisit the tutorial's goofy storyline that is. The game's extensive range of button icons across the left, side and top of the screen, not to mention the many hidden sub-menus can be off-putting at first.īright+lights,+big+city. Good thing too, because if you're new to the genre, you're going to need a lot of guidance.
In light of that, Cities XL 2011 offers an extensive chapter-by-chapter tutorial that gives you as much or as little guidance as you need. The main barrier to city building games is that they can be tough to learn. Unfortunately, aside from some additional structures, maps and transport options, the game plays much like its predecessor, minus the multiplayer.īefore talking about the game's issues, let's talk about the things Cities XL 2011 gets right.
The result is Focus Home Interactive's follow-up Cities XL 2011, a game which eliminates the multiplayer element entirely, in favor of a more refined single player game.
Hampered by interface issues and low server population, the online portion, which gave players the opportunity to trade with and tour other players' cities, ultimately failed. The supplementary Teacher's Guide includes: ¥ A chapter guide of additional information, trivia, historical facts, and more to help teachers be "Experts!" ¥ Activity ideas that make the book come dramatically to life for young readers! ¥ The author's additional comments and thoughts about the subject ¥ Some reproducible activities ¥ Great out-of-the-box ideas for activities.Developer Monte Cristo made an ambitious move in 2009 by taking its city building game, Cities XL, online. Each Teacher's Guide turns you into the expert-we've done all the research for you! This comprehensive resource enhances the many dramatic learning opportunities students can gain from reading this mystery by Carole Marsh. The corresponding Teacher's Guide is a page-by-page supplementary resource that gives you additional activities to enhance the student's learning opportunities by using cross-curricular materials including discussion questions, reproducible vocabulary, science, geography and math activities.