SirTwat

So… I was lucky enough to get a beta key for the closed Cities XL Beta.  If you don’t know what it is, it’s supposed to be a MMO SimCity game. So far it’s starting to shape up to be a badass game.  First, lets hit the bad stuff.

Picking the right location.

I didn’t know how to actually “create” a city when I started.  In turn I decided that a quick review of the tutorials might help.  Well, they weren’t finished so it never actually took me to how to “create a new city”. I ended up figuring it out.  Right now there is only 4 servers to choose from to create your city, and since I got on the beta bandwagon a little late, all the good places are taken.  Once a spot on the map is taken, no one can take that spot, and theirs only so many spots available per world (server).  So, I ended up choosing a medium difficulty location that wasn’t “that” great.  Mostly desert… bums.  I expect that in the public release there will be several servers opened up with several locations available, but I don’t know.

This game is complicated and difficult.

This is a very intricate game with several different options, things to track/monitor, build etc.  I was a little overwhelmed at first, and if you’ve never played a SimCity game before it might be a little much too take in.  The tutorials provided a good overview, and were completed relatively quickly.  A few were missing, so I’m not sure what else their going to add.

Not really an MMO.

I was wondering how they’re going to make a SimCity game an MMO.  Well it turns out, they don’t really know either.  All of the locations on the map only have certain resources available, so you have to trade with different cities in order to get good prices on everything.  This seems more of a hassle than fun.  I don’t want my success in a game to solely rely on other people.  What if no one else is on?  There is only 3000 spots.  What if everyone else is new, and there’s no resources to go around.  I don’t know, I just don’t like the idea I guess.  The only MMO like feature was the chat bar that was located at the top left, which displayed what everyone was saying (server wide).

The Good?

Well the good news is that there’s a shit ton of good stuff in this game.  I just don’t think that I’m far enough along enough to explain it all… but overall the gameplay is very addictive. I started at 9PM and a few minuets later it was 1AM… oops.  Time flies.

There is defiantly more to this article, this is just a part I.  I will be posting more stuff as I progress in the game.  If you want to know anything specific, please let me know via comment(s) and I will try and take care of you.

Thanks for reading!

Here is a preview that I put together for your watching pleasure.  It’s HD, so please make sure you select it.

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