Fans of the Sim City series may enjoy City Life: World Edition, which takes city building on a global level. World Edition is a simulation builder game by Monte Cristo and the expansion to City Life. However, unlike most expansion packs, you don't need City Life to run World Edition.

Like its predecessor, the objective of World Edition is to create a great, successful, bustling city. You can decide if you want to play towards a goal (Scenario Mode), or not keep score (Free Mode). You start out by choosing the site on which to found your new city and erect a City Hall. After building houses to attract people to live in your city, you'll need businesses to keep them employed. Naturally, your inhabitants will also require access to services such as shopping facilities and hospitals, and perhaps a family restaurant or other forms of leisure to keep them happy. As your population grows, so do your responsibilities. Build fire and police stations to keep your citizens safe. Use bridges and highways to decrease traffic. Windmills and waste treatment centers help improve the quality of life.

World Edition boasts a powerful 3D engine. You can have a god's-eye-view of your city, or zoom in to observe your citizens going about their daily business. You can also view your city from all angles by rotating the in game "camera." The details are amazing when you're close up. For example, some houses will look nice and neat with a children's swing set in the backyard. Meanwhile, run-down apartment buildings will have graffiti scrawled on the walls. Even the overhead shots have intricate details, for you can see cars zipping down streets and highways.

City Life: World Edition adds many realistic touches in managing a city, the most prominent relating to the balance in the six major socioeconomic classes of the residents: Elites, Suits, Radical Chics, Fringes, Blue Collars, and Have-Nots. Some classes get along well with each other, such as the Blue Collars and the Have-Nots; other classes don't get along, such as the Elites and the Fringes. Therefore, you must take this into consideration when laying out residences and other buildings for your city. Otherwise, cultural tension may occur, or certain class groups may leave the city if they don't feel welcome. When you first start out, only the latter three groups will want to live in your city. To attract the more educated and affluent classes, you'll need to build businesses and leisure places that will appeal to them.

World Edition improves upon City Life with many new, added features. One notable feature is that, as the game's title suggests, players can now build famous world landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, The Kremlin, and the Statue of Liberty. These international landmarks are part of the 100 new buildings available, bringing the total to 300. World Edition also features an in-game building editor, which allows players to modify existing buildings and then share with the City Life online community. Players can also generate their own city maps.

I was pleased to see that World Edition is on a DVD-ROM, because having to install a game using four to six discs is a pain in the neck. However, ease of installation ended there, as I had problems from the very beginning. Trying to install resulted in a crash. Attempting to reinstall would freeze and then crash. Frustrated, I finally used the "Run" function on my computer to manually install the game. I wondered if I just had a bum disk, until I read on Wikipedia that this game was prone to startup problems.