City Life 2008 Edition Critic Reviews

City Life is a quality simulator that can easily absorb hours upon hours of your time if you let it. If you're a fan of city-building sims, there's no excuse for letting this one pass you by.

No great shakes, but an awful lot better than "SimCity Societies."

The inclusion of simple stats and the clever use of newsreel clips to highlight problems make this a superior sim.

Pretty absorbing.

It's still worthy of purchase to those that haven't played the original, but to any who have, just play the original for the same experience.

A decent, if not wonderful, city management game - there are some elements that really shine and the most impressive is the management of subcultures within the one city - adding a wonderful real city feel and a welcome innovative twist to the genre. Not as outstanding - but still high quality - are the graphics and level of detail.

The content is solid and the gameplay fun, and the inclusion of social strategy planning is innovative. However, for an expansion, there isn’t a whole lot new or different.

It’s fun, addicting, and satisfying, but nothing about 2008 Edition makes it a substantial update or upgrade.

Although this is the best version of City Life, if you own the original game the additions made here do not warrant a re-purchase. That said, this is an accessible city sim for the uninitiated. But, for the initiated, be warned. While the gameplay mechanic is solid, the formula hasn't really changed since the early 90s, and things feel a little stale.

The game is good, the editor not so good, but there doesn’t seem to have been any real development from the original. The game hasn’t taken a step forward; it’s where it was when it was first released.

The latest addition to this family of innovative city-building games leaves you wanting more, mostly because it offers so little that is new.

City Life is a game that took social generalisations and completely sensationalised them to the point of an unrealistic nature and made them unworkable with the concept of the game.

Those who own previous incarnations of the game won't find it a worthwhile upgrade, as it merely adds some new scenarios (which aren't much different to the old), a fresh dollop of buildings and an editor that allows for importing satellite maps. Nothing to get too excited about, really.

All successful cities tend to necessitate more or less the same choices, which in turn leads to City Life's biggest problem: lack of replay value. Expansions are typically created to remedy that issue, but 2008 Edition just doesn't. And that's a shame, because the solid city-building engine still has legs -- just nowhere to walk.