City Life 2008 Demo

The SimCity series managed to create an entire genre by itself and it is still one of the most highly-acclaimed video game releases of all time. There were plenty attempts to replicate its success, but the original titles are still being played even now, despite their age. Moreover, today’s developers want to simplify the matters too much, in order to make the product appeal to all sorts of people.

City Life 2008 gets on the spin off train and tries to emulate SimCity’s methods, while also adding a bit of originality into the mix, to make the experience slightly more appealing. However, the mechanics are basically the same as they were in the original game developed by Maxis, which means that the end goal is to build a city from the ground up and make it thrive under your supervision.

Building the actual city is not the difficult part, though, because it is simple enough to click on the desired buildings and watch them sprung from the ground in a matter of seconds. The difficult part is when you have to make everything work together, as well as pay attention to the infrastructure, in order to make sure that everyone has access to public transportation and the basic utilities.

The original element comes into play when you get down to the people living in your city, since they are split into multiple ‘societies’. Hence, when these different groups happen to intersect, all hell breaks loose, which means that you need to keep them separated at all times, using careful planning. Otherwise, fights and fires are bound to happen, which can quickly ruin your entire work.

Another interesting feature is the fact that you can jump on the streets of your city and walk around it as you would in a first-person game, which definitely does wonders for the atmosphere. This way, you can experience your creation from a closer perspective, as well as gaze at beautiful buildings while you’re at it. Speaking of which, the graphics engine is quite decent, but it certainly doesn’t impress when it comes to textures and shading.

All things considered, City Life 2008 has a few ups and downs, but it doesn’t come close to the game it tries to emulate, especially not when it comes to depth and complexion. Hence, in case you are on the lookout for a slightly more casual experience, then this is definitely the way to go.