The city-building simulation genre really isn't one that sees a lot of moving and shaking when it really comes down to it. Nearly everyone has heard of SimCity and of it's numerous sequels but past those titles the genre is largely devoid of new releases if not stagnant altogether. City Life: World Edition is the latest title to grace the genre and is essentially a deluxe version of the original City Life with new areas to build your city on and new buildings with a more worldwide theme. While the title is arguably one of the best city simulation games to date, at the same time it does have its fair share of rough edges that make it a bit less accessible than other titles in the genre.

The premise of City Life: World Edition isn't one that fans of the genre should be unfamiliar with. In the title players fill the shoes of a newly appointed mayor tasked with founding and nurturing a city from a mere small town to eventually growing into a booming metropolis; all the while guiding your city past the issues that plague all cities every step of the way. An interesting aspect to City Life: World Edition is that there are six different types of citizens instead of simply one big mob of people, and one of the big challenges and frustrations of the game comes with trying to woo the various types to move to your city and then keep them happy, healthy, and employed while they live in it.

The six sociocultural types of citizens in City Life: World Edition are the Have-Nots, Fringe, Blue Collars, Radical Chic, Suits, and the Elite. Starting off only Blue Collar and Fringe citizens are interested in moving to your small town, and to woo Suits, Radical Chics, and Elites to your growing citizenship you must first establish many aspects of your city including an attractive education system, the establishment of powerful corporations and industry in your city, and overall making your city an incredibly attractive place to visit and live. Some of the sociocultural types get along decently with one another such as how the Suits don't mind the presence of Blue Collars or Elites as their neighbors and how the Radical Chic relate with both the Elites and the Fringe.

Of course, some of the sociocultural types of citizens really don't get along well with members of certain other types such as how generally speaking no-one likes the Have-Nots, the Suits don't care for the Radical Chic, and there's bound to be bad blood in between neighboring houses of a Fringe family and a Blue Collar family. When a family of one type has a home that is next to the homes of a type that directly clashes with them violence can ensue; the scale of which is quite often exaggerated to the point of frustration on the part of the player. For instance it's not uncommon for just one family to move into the neighborhood of an opposing type and prompt the rest of the neighborhood's inhabitants to resort to physical violence almost immediately. If left unchecked these clashes between the neighboring types of citizens in your cities can explode into almost civil war with the type that has the advantage of numbers beginning to burn down the homes of members of the opposing type.

Thus one of the biggest challenges City Life: World Edition has in its gameplay is not only keeping your citizens happy and productive but at the same time building your city around keeping them separate so that they don't kill each other. The problem is that many businesses require one or more members from various types of your citizenry and must be placed in an area that isn't too incredibly far from a neighborhood of each type. Once your city grows and space becomes a premium opposing neighborhoods must be built closer and closer together, which in turn makes it even more difficult to keep the peace.

Past the socio-cultural aspect of City Life: World Edition the gameplay is largely a very entertaining and compelling city simulation. When you found your city you must first build your town hall followed by a meager smattering of single-family homes and a few small businesses. Since your town is only a small one only the Have-Nots, Blue Collars, and Fringe citizens will be willing to move in at first. While you cannot directly choose what types of citizens move into your homes you can easily influence them by building businesses that cater towards employing the intended type. For instance, to make an area of housing more attractive to the Blue Collars you could build a Blue Collar business across the street from a small neighborhood and to visually signify the dominant type attraction in the area the street sidewalks will then automatically turn blue in color. City Life: World Edition uses this to great effect, making it easy to see what type of citizens a particular area caters to by simply glancing at the colors of the streets. Building homes in an area of a specific type will likely end up being inhabited by a family of said type, so the expansion of a neighborhood is almost as easily as cycling between building businesses that cater to the type then building housing immediately nearby while also keeping homes of one type away from homes of another.

As your city grows you will first gain access to upgrades in the form of larger housing units and bigger businesses for each of the three initial types of citizens. As your population count increases your small-time medical offices and grocery stores can be replaced by the more wide-reaching hospitals and supermarkets, expanded fire and police services can be constructed, and the addition of hotels to attractive areas of your city can herald the start of a booming tourism industry. Improving your city in the form of certain key areas such as education and industry will begin to lure new types of citizens to your city or convert lower types in the hierarchy to higher types (Fringe to Radical Chic, Blue Collar to Suits) with the eventual goal of converting some of those citizens to the Elite type of citizen.

One thing that City Life: World Edition does win a lot of points in is that the title requires very little in the form of the tedious micromanagement of city utilities. You don't have to worry about manually stringing power lines to each of your buildings; simply construct and staff a power production facility of some type and the game just connects it to the grid just as it does for any building you make regardless of the distance involved. Other city aspects that you must provide and monitors include waste disposal and traffic flow, and the game handles the latter in an incredibly easy and elegant way. Say your city has a stretch of road that sees a lot of traffic congestion; rather than forcing the player to demolish and rebuild the road to suit the heavy use you can simply click on the road and then upgrade that stretch to a two lane street, or three lane highway. Doing so costs money of course and can reduce the quality of nearby housing due to the noise and pollution, but the tool makes it quite painless to upgrade individual stretches of roads temporarily while you construct a three lane highway off to the side for faster travel, and then bump the more residential streets back down to quiet one lane roads.