City Life

The Basics:
Platform: PC
Developer: Monte Cristo
Price: $39.99
ESRB rating: E(Everyone)

Summary: City building near its best.

Note: Parents need to know that CITY LIFE has many educational aspects, and can teach kids some of the basics of city planning, economics, etc. Riots, acts of arson and other forms of violence-including organized crime, can appear when tension between social classes gets to high.

Families who play this game may want to discuss how games can simplify complex tasks (like running a city) and major problems (like class conflict) into gameplay elements. Do you think making real-life problems part of a game make those issues look less important or does it call needed attention to them? Does it make a game more realistic or too complicated?

Further Breakdown:

Overall rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Best for ages: 7+
Playability: Medium. Easy to play, can get repetitive.
Graphics: High. Beautiful cityscapes in full 3D.
Reading Level: Heavy. Reading is necessary to understand how the city is developing.

Ages 3-7: Green
Ages 8-12: Green
Ages 13-17: Green
Violence Amount: Green
Fear: Green
Illegal/harmful: Green
Language: Green
Nudity: Green
Sex: Green

Review:
City Life gives players a chance to build, grow and run a city. Managing the city's finances and city services, keeping an eye on pollution and traffic, and assigning plots of land for development work pretty much the same in this game as other city builder types of games, such as SimCity.

Growing the city, and keeping the city in the green can be a bit of a challenge, but what really makes City Life different from the other games of this type is the idea of social hierarchies/classes.

Social development is a critical component of the game. At the bottom are the "Have Nots"-content with the most basic of necessities, this group does typically does the city's dirty work, like cleaning up parks and running the town dump. Slightly higher on the social ladder are the "Blue Collars" and the "Fringes", who with the proper city resources and job availability can turn into "Suits" and "Radical Chics". The City Life snob is the "Elite". This group is at the top of the heap, and while they can bring in serious cash to the city's coffers, they also require a multitude of city services to keep them happy.

Keeping the citizens happy is important, because if they are not, social tension between the groups can occur. If social tensions rise too high in an area, riots and acts of arson can occur. A lengthy social struggle can lead to an infestation of organized crime, requiring the skills of an expensive SWAT team to root out.

The game looks beautiful and since the graphics are fully 3D, players can look at the city from almost any angle, even going into a first-person mode to take a stroll. It's also possible to view the city from a variety of times of day from the twinkling lights of night to the hustle and bustle of the daytime.

A few minor imperfections reduce the polish of the game, but don't affect that gameplay that much. The game isn't always easy, but after a while it can get fairly formulaic, reducing the interest in long-term play. Sloppiness with text and dialog boxes make it appear as though the game may have been a bit rushed through development.

All in all this game is structurally sound. Kids and adults looking for new challenge to playing mayor will find it with City Life.