Picture this: As a blue collar kind of guy, you work long hours at the foundry just trying to make ends meet and put food on the table for the wife and kids. You drive home in your blue collar car to your blue collar home to watch the Blue Collar Comedy Tour on your blue collar TV. This day is going just like all the rest as you pass all of your blue collar friends watering their blue collar lawns. Out of nowhere you stumble upon the one sight that can upset your perfectly dreary day, a new resident that is not of your same socioeconomic class. That's right; a member of the fringe has the audacity to move into your neighborhood with hopes of finding a job and raising a family! Obviously this outrage cannot stand, so you and your other blue collar friends do the only thing that there is left to do: terrorize and bully him into vacating their newly purchased residence.

It's like SimCity 4 with conscience

 As the title of the game aptly describes, City Life puts the player in the position of Christof from The Truman Show. As the self-proclaimed mayor of a brand new development city, the player decides every aspect of how the city is to be run. Everything is in the hands of the player, from where to put each and every house to which kind of highway should go in which location so as to optimize the flow of traffic for the residents. This game plays much like any game out of the SimCity franchise (with which it is not associated), but do not fret, this is not necessarily a bad thing. As a member of the "play architect and erect your own city" genre, there are only so many variations in the controls the player can have.

While not groundbreaking, the controls are solid in this socioeconomic adventure of life. Aside from having all of the basic components that any SimCity game contains, the development team at Monte Cristo implemented a diagram of society that Karl Marx himself would be proud of. As the mayor, not only do you have to worry about zoning and waste management, but you must also tend to class tension. If a "blue collar" worker moves into a neighborhood made up entirely of the "have nots" then the equilibrium in that area will be upset, causing the "have nots" to react violently. The name of the game is segregation; otherwise things will escalate to riot level, leaving your residents dissatisfied.

Playing God never looked so pretty

Graphically, this game is top notch. Not only does the standard "hovering a quarter mile in the air to survey your territory and conquests" view accurately in depict the individual characteristics of each building, but also viewable are the cars driving along the road and the people strolling along the streets. Monte Cristo was not satisfied with just one view to play their game, instead they implemented a feature where you can take a first-person perspective and stroll along the streets seeing everything that is going on from accumulating trash to traffic violations. Nothing is more gratifying in your own city then watching a perp being busted by the 5-0 or an ambulance saving the lives of your most beloved citizens.

1) Life is a Highway 2) I Wanna Ride It 3) All Night Long

If there were one aspect of this game that fell short, that dishonor would go to the sound. The music throughout the game consisted of roughly two songs, one of which could be found in a hotel elevator and the other in a Jenna Jameson video. You will not find an inspiring theme from John Williams in this game, instead you get the monotonous sounds of every day life coupled with a rioting crowd if the whole "zoning" thing does not go too well.

Art Vandelay would have been proud

The single greatest thing this title has accomplished is that it is just flat out fun to play. This is a game for anyone who has ever been stuck in traffic and wished the city would widen the roads. It is for anyone who thinks electricity is too expensive or public transportation needs an upgrade. This game is for the budding architect who just did not quite make it thought all those gross calculus based physics classes. Building a city and watching it thrive via computer monitor is almost as good as influencing your city council for more public recreational money!

This game does not have a difficulty setting, rather you are judged on how well your city does in terms of a bronze, silver and gold medals, achieving each by reaching different (and progressively more difficult) goals. This aspect lets the player go through the game at his/her own pace, building and destroying however he/she sees fit.

When the buzzer sounds, turn city 90 degrees, stir, repeat

The one thing that really stuck out in this game over all the other city building titles out there is the socioeconomic aspect they put into it. Making six different economic classes each with their own businesses, leisure activities and jobs in communal necessities (hospital, grocery store, public park) makes for a delightfully challenging conundrum on how to go about planning your city. Keep in mind that if you get two communities of different classes too close together there will be cultural tension, however if they live too far apart and cannot effectively get to their common place of employment. If this happens, then the hospital (or whatever it is) will not function at 100% efficiency. This aspect of play shows its true form when you are trying to expand your city beyond the safe nest of your initial centralized location.
 

The possibilities reach as high as the sky itself…

City Life is definitely a winner. The responsive control scheme mixed with the intuitive camera variations with a touch of an amazing graphical display make this city builder well worth the cost of purchase. The socioeconomic focus helps the player connect with the people that inhabit their budding empire and the message "Peace reigns in our city!" comes with a certain sense of accomplishment for the Truman Show wannabe sitting behind the monitor. Even though the sound is a bit lacking, that is easily fixed by playing some of your own favorite tunes with your ipod video that you all scrambled out and purchased along with your 360. This game is a great distraction in the wait for SimCity 5, and is well worth the money.