City Life 2008 Edition

by Paradox

Product Features

• Play in Scenario or Free mode and explore 37 maps in five different environments
• 360° camera rotation and zooming
• Six unique subcultures share the city
• A complete map editor. Over 360 buildings are at your disposal.
• A powerful building creation tool that contains 166 construction kits for more than 3,000 available elements

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0019LL4KE
• Item Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: July 18, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,925 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

City Life 2008 Edition provides total freedom of construction. From superb villas in residential neighbourhoods to imposing skyscrapers in the financial district, design, construct and develop the city of your dreams. It´s up to you to manage this city efficiently - you are the architect, mayor, and business mogul.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great city building sim, September 18, 2008

By 

Quasimodo (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: City Life 2008 Edition (DVD-ROM)

Being a fan of city/empire building sims and considering SimCity 3000 was the first game I ever purchased I thought I'd give this one a try. If you enjoyed SimCity without all the heavy financial wrangling then this game is just right for you. The graphics are high end and very detailed. You can actually get right down to 'street level' and tour your city. In addition you also have a ability to 'tag' citizen and follow them in their lives throughout the game. I haven't really figured out the purpose of this but its a nice feature in any case.
You start out the game by choosing one of many landscapes that come with different 'difficulty' problems such as tourisim, road building, etc and place your city hall. From there you construct residences for your soon to come populace.
The interesting twist to this game is that there are five or six different socio-economic levels of citizens that will eventually populate your city. You start out with Blue Collar workers and Fringes. These citizens can only work specific jobs in factories or business available to you to build as well as utilities and services. By building certain services or businesses that employ the next level of citizenry (Suits, Radical Chics and Elites)your Blue Collar workers may advance to the Fringe level and the fringe to the Suit level, et al. Fail to provide and they can drop to the "Have Not" level. As poor as poor can be.
Your main job as city administrator is to advance and keep harmony in your city. Have Nots and Blue Collar folks get along just fine. Blue Collar and Fringe do not which leads to disruption in the neighborhoods and if allowed to go for too long, rioting.
Only persons who enjoy multi-tasking and constructing cities that run (almost) like clockwork would find this game enjoyable and satisfying. The game allows the player to follow scripted scenarios or play sandbox mode.
Your citizens pay taxes and certain businesses generate income. The higher class and more educated the employees the more money the business generates for your treasury. Naturally services like police, fire and the like drain your coffers.
Finally this game runs fine on my Dell XPS 2000 Gen 4 desktop. Make sure that you ensure your system requirements meet the specs or you'll be sorely disappointed.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great game for all former SimCity Players, September 30, 2008

By 

midnight821 (Kentucky) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: City Life 2008 Edition (DVD-ROM)

I have been a Maxis/EA SimCity player for years. However, with their introduction of SimCity Societies and the new style of play I opted to give another game a try: City Life 2008. I'm glad I did. The graphics in the 2008 edition are very good with special features like reflections in the water that make it a little more special than the SimCity games.

I found the game itself to be very quick. Keep in my mind I have a very good machine (Dell Precision M4300 with 4GB RAM), but I suspect it will perform well on most machines. The one area where the game lags is during the installation and loading of the game. The installation seemed like it took forever! It also takes a minute or two to load each time you play it. Maybe the slow load time is where the game is loading into memory, etc and makes the game play more smooth and quick.

I loved the ability to zoom in to the street level and look around at the city. That's awesome! The zooming in and out is much quicker than any of the SimCity games. The ability to build roads and other items in a "freestyle" mode is also an excellent feature. Initially, the number of buildings seems adequate, but after playing the game for awhile you might wish it had more.

The "society" part of this game can be a learning curve for some users. You do have to build the city with all citizens/cultures in mind (blue collar, rich, etc). However, after a few tries you easily get the hang of it. I know SimCity Societies has the same concept, but I felt limited in the SimCity Societies game play. City Life 2008 offers more of the traditional "city building" that I am used to.

I recommend this game to anyone that wishes to get into the city simulation game world, as well as any previous SimCity user. The great graphics, added building features, and street level zooms put it above SimCity. Give it a try, you won't regret it!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars awful, December 17, 2009

By 

R. H. ulrich - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: City Life 2008 Edition (DVD-ROM)

what killed me was the amount of effort it took for me to even play this game. My graphics card was apparently not good enough,. Mind you, this computer is able to run professional 3D modeling software, professional music production software and pretty much any other game ever installed on it, including all of the SimCity games.

so I installed this and it simply would not run under any circumstance. I thought it was because of Vista but it turned out to be the card. So when Cities XL came out I finally broke down and bought one of the recommended cards for my system and installed it, at which point City Life 2008 began to work.

The intro and the menus for this game were beautiful. I was really happy when I opened it, I loved the industrial appearance of it and I was looking forward to playing the game.

I opened it up and could not have been more disappointed. It was so ugly and there were like 150 of the same little creepy person walking around, like a creepy zombie army. They congregate in groups, too, so you'll have a group of clones all just standing there facing a wall or something.

The actual texture mapping is palling. Like a plant is just a sphere with a flower map on it.

Anyway, it's really not a good looking game and I didn't get far enough into it to care about if it was "fun" to play because for me most of the fun of building a city is to have it look real, and look COOL and this game does not do either.

So what I don't get is why it took a video card upgrade to play a game that looks a fourth as good as SImCity and a tenth as good as Cities XL?