SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - CitiesXL demo available

Pretty crappy demo. At least I got to play some of the game.

Just wanna ramble a bit. Personal nitpickery and whatnot. I'm mostly complaining about the demo and the game's presentation rather than the gameplay. That's a good thing ;) So far, I've had no real problems with the gameplay.

It's been a long time since I've played a demo. I gave up on em' because they almost always suck. This game's demo however, has done a smashing good job of reminding me why I don't play a demo anymore.

-Incredible! Multiplayer-only demos are where it's at. Having to create an account of some sort just to play a demo is fun fun fun.

-By Cracky! Blue and white everything reminds me of default XP theme (sucktastic). I hate it. This was actually something I wanted desperately to change in SimCity 4. I'm dead serious here. Please give me an option to change it to a darker theme.

-Fantastic! I can't quite describe it, but I get the lame sensation that I'm playing an MMO. The game starts up much like an mmo client. It updates and you login. Awesome. There's also some sort of create-a-character thing. THis threw me off. I seem to be playing the game as Gary Coleman? Anyway I pick a server and then stare in awe at the planet full of lines and dots. Then wonder wtf I should do and where I should do it. The planet almost seems like it's already taken! I don't see a way to close the chatbox of random requests and other text, so I just drag it off the screen (classic mmo strategy).

-Outstanding! At 1920x1080 the buttons are misaligned. I have to click so many pixels underneath what I mean to click on to do anything. At lower resolutions this doesn't seem to be a problem. This makes the game pretty much unplayable at my native res. It continues to be annoying because every time I start the game up the settings get reset. So I get to play the 'change res and turn on aa' minigame before playing the real game.

-Brilliant! This game doesn't seem to be using both cores of my processor...wtf? One core is 100% while the other does nothing. Doesn't seem to run very well either....

-Magnificent! Apparently only...10%(?) of the game is actually in the demo. I dunno about you guys but 10% of a game shouldn't be a working game eh? Great way to show off your frackin product. It's called a demo for a reason. It's supposed to demonstrate to me what the game will be like. At least, that's the way I always looked at demos.

-Tour de Force! Having a time limit (7 days) on your demo guarantees success for your product. It also guarantees that I have to go out of my way to make sure I gave it a fair chance.

-Magnanimous! When you try to exit they try to make you visit their website or whatever to pre-order the game. Standard demo bs. Also guarantees success (and annoyance).

+Awe-Inspiring! There is one thing they did right though. They included tutorials in the demo. This be the downfall of many a demo, but they actually came through with this. I gave up on many potential purchases in my time because the demo had no tutorial.

Anyway, as for the gameplay itself. It looks pretty damn promising. Yay!