City Life is a town planning sim from Monte Cristo. Think Sim City, but with a lot more depth, and far, far nicer graphics.

There are too many tycoon games and sims out these days, so when this arrived, it was not greeted with much excitement. It was a nice suprise, then, to see that City Life looks to be a very polished, entertaining, and engrossing sim.

The preview code we viewed was far from complete, which left me cursing the PR guys that sent it, as they’ve left me desperate for the full version.

In the version we played, you were limited to the sandbox mode, and only a limited selection of maps, and a limited selection of buildings also. It was, however, more than enough to get very, very into the game.

It is deceptively simple to start off with, and very intuitive. It took only a few minutes to get a feel for the interface, and to start off building the first few houses and industries.

A nice feature of City Life is the way it handles social aspects. Different social groups, such as the Elite and the ‘Have Nots’ like to live, work and socialise in different areas. You have to take care to structure your city in a way that gives each social class access to the facilities they need, whilst also keeping groups that are too different apart. If you end up placing the wrong things too close together, then not only will those groups become unhappy, they may even start fighting in the streets. The full version of the game has several missions to help you get used to the fickle nature of your citizens.

The cities you create in City Life feel alive, and I found myself often taking time out to pan the camera around the city, looking at the landscapes from different angles, and zooming in to watch people bustling around.

The game ran very well on both systems we tried it on, one being a high-end system, the other a more mid-range one with a GeForce 5900. That is quite impressive considering the cities can become very big, very fast, and they are wonderfully rendered for your full, 360 degree viewing pleasure.

Even if you are not normally a fan of tycoon games, I do recommend this one - it is hard to describe the pleasure of building a full, thriving city, and keeping everyone happy, healthy and entertained. The pride in solving the unemployment problem, or providing healthcare for the poor is almost enough to make you want to be a politician yourself.

Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Longevity: 9/10
Interface: 9/10
Game Play: 9/10
Overall: 9/10