April 2013 Video Games Report

EricMesa

- 2 minutes read - 295 words
Cities XL - Trio - buildings up close

Cities XL - Trio - buildings up close

In addition to the game I played this month, I’ve decided from now on to  include a running total of the top games to see if/how they change with time. For example, when I wasn’t paying attention, Saints Row: The Third made the Top 7.  (Which, raptr, is a weird number.  Usually these things are multiples of five)

Cities XL (19 hrs) - I thought I was just going to move on to playing Quantum Conundrum, but I really wanted to try out one more city in Cities XL. This time around I decided to do more of a Manhattan layout, mixing commercial and residential zones. Unlike the previous city in which I had a separate commercial zone, I was curious to see if this would help traffic and sprawl. I also tried to design the blocks so that when I changed to high density zones I wouldn’t have to destroy any streets. That’s why you can see in the image below that the houses and buildings are on the corners of the blocks.

I’m still going to play a bit more to work on getting high density to see how well it works.  I also learned that a bunch of commercial zones can’t exist near air pollution so I’m keeping that all the way on the corner of the map.  That way a bunch of the pollution radius is not affecting my city.

Cities XL - Trio - Residential and Commercial Sector

Cities XL - Trio - Residential and Commercial Sector

Top 7 Games on Raptr

  1. Civilization V (177 hrs)
  2. Plants vs Zombies (123 hrs)
  3. Team Fortress 2 (105 hrs)
  4. Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (104 hrs)
  5. Final Fantasy X (56 hrs)
  6. Saints Row: The Third (53 hrs)
  7. Warcraf III: Reign of Chaos (38 hrs)