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SimCity The reboot of Maxis’ popular SimCity franchise has the displeasure of having what is considered the worst video game launch in the industry’s history. The game was riddled with bugs, crashes, unavailable servers and many regarded the always online component of the game a slick way of incorporating consumer-punishing DRM. It’s been a year since the release of this controversial game and I feel now is the appropriate time to give it a proper review. Many game bugs have been corrected and the gameplay mechanics have been balanced and tweaked while servers have been implemented to ensure every player has full access to the online components of the game. Offline play has been added for those antisocial players who can’t be bothered playing with other people and an expansion pack titled Cities of Tomorrow was released to generally favorable reviews. So is the newest version of SimCity worth your time and money? The short answer is yes. While there are still a few bugs remaining to be worked out, the core of the game has been drastically repaired and reworked and the game is now, finally, at the state it should have been when released. If you can find SimCity on sale it’s certainly within your interest to grab a copy and see where this beloved computer game simulation franchise is heading.
Score: 8.5/10Developer: Maxis
Released: 2013 Genre: Simulation, City Building, Strategy Official Website: SimCity |
Graphics:
The graphics of SimCity are wholly very well represented; cities start off as blank canvases onto which you paint your roads, residential, commercial, and industrial zones and drop down city services such as fire stations, hospitals, and police stations. As the game sends out the signal that your city has zoned land available, your Sims start to gobble up plots and claim their homesteads. The beauty of SimCity is the organic feel of the development of your city. Your residents start off living in ramshackle shacks, small one family suburban homes or, if you’re catering to a certain wealthy lifestyle, sprawling mansions. Each building has nice visual flare when viewed up close. Homes have various accouterments on the lawn like above ground pools, gazebos, and other such little trinkets of human life. The homes themselves look exactly like something you would build in another wildly popular Maxis title The Sims 3. The entire look of the game is knitted so perfectly your eyes never run out of things to consume.
As your city grows in population your buildings too grow in size and stature; tiny bungalows slowly turn into apartment walk-ups and condos replace suburban houses. If you’re able to keep your Sims happy enough they’ll eventually begin to build high rise skyscrapers that cram in as many citizens as they can hold. It’s wonderful to watch your city grow from its small foundations to a full-fledged city. As you place your first zones building trucks flood into your city limits and you can watch your buildings rise up from nothing. It’s really quite something to behold and you are immediately invested in your little Sims lives and happiness as you watch them build up your city. Buildings are stretched up as floors are added and watching each project progress is mesmerizing.
As your Sims begin to move in traffic arises and flows onto your streets and avenues. Each car is an individual Sim processed by the game with a purpose such as finding work or someplace to shop. Automobiles and mass transportation are visually appealing. Cars are modeled with nuance and buses and trains have a certain sleek visual. Watching your roads and mass transportation shuttle your residents around the city is just more graphical eye candy. You can zoom your game camera out to see your city in its entirety and zoom right down to the street level to watch individual Sims depart the bus and walk down the street to find a place to shop. Sims themselves look a little strange; they’re stilted and have a vaguely human appearance but look more like LEGO people than real humans. There is a certain amount of whimsy though in the animations of your Sims as you watch them mill around factories or watch children run around on the lawn of their home.
Where the graphics falter is in the overall look of your city as it begins to consume more and more land. You’ll see buildings repeated throughout your city and by the time skyscrapers start to pop up you’ll be disappointed to see they almost all look the same based on their associated land value. Low income businesses are cloaked in drab brick facades with nondescript signage and high wealth apartment buildings are nothing more than glass faced structures. A little more variety in terms of appearances would do a world of wonder for the game as each city would look distinct and filled with buildings of all colors, shapes, and sizes. There is also a visual filter called “Tilt Shift” that artificially expands the depth perception you experience when viewing your city from street level. The foreground is displayed in crisp, bright detail while the background is blurred and hazy. It makes your city feel much larger than it actually is, but when you realize that this effect is all for show your city limits feel cramped.
“Ploppable” buildings are generally enormous city services structures that take up huge amounts of space in your city. Fire stations, hospitals, and event centers are nicely detailed even though they take up large amounts of real estate. Zooming in you’ll see nice touches around these buildings just like everything else in the game. Parking attendants point cars into parking spaces when the event center is operational and casinos generate groups of gamblers and pit bosses alike. Your Sims, animated in such an odd looking fashion, force you to stretch your imagination to get the full effect of all these graphical flourishes. Additionally, these “ploppable” buildings come with upgrades the player can add on as the city requires more services. Added ambulances and police cars pull out of parking lots and roam the city looking for problems to solve complete with flashing emergency lights. Event centers put on a spectacular fireworks show as the event comes to a close. Even though these facilities take up enormous real estate they’re modeled well and really make your city’s landscape pop with life.
Overall the graphics in SimCity are dazzling to behold. Your city thrums with life as you watch your Sims walk the sidewalks or drive their cars to and from work. The buildings look distinct in terms of wealth but it’s a shame they begin to look the same as your city expands and grows. The different information panels display most information as color overlays so armchair mayors can quickly identify problems such as crime or traffic congestion via a graphical cover as opposed to slogging through reams of text and menus. Sims look like stick people but their strange movements add a visual touch that’s comical and whimsical. For a game that requires a generally powerful machine to run well these are minor quibbles about its graphical presentation, but some cheap implementation mars the visual experience. Cars pop into and out of existence as do Sims. As they enter or exit a building or cars Sims simply disappear into an invisible space. Likewise buses, trains, and other modes of mass transit don’t have fine working details. Doors don’t open to let passengers off and on and those methods of transportation that run on rails pop over to the other side of the tracks if they need to switch direction. You’ll also find a lot of empty space in your city if you don’t get the road dimensions just right. The game doesn't seem optimized fully to maximize space. None of the graphical hiccups ruin the game, and hopefully they get filled in as the game continues to age and more fixes and optimizations are implemented.
The graphics of SimCity are wholly very well represented; cities start off as blank canvases onto which you paint your roads, residential, commercial, and industrial zones and drop down city services such as fire stations, hospitals, and police stations. As the game sends out the signal that your city has zoned land available, your Sims start to gobble up plots and claim their homesteads. The beauty of SimCity is the organic feel of the development of your city. Your residents start off living in ramshackle shacks, small one family suburban homes or, if you’re catering to a certain wealthy lifestyle, sprawling mansions. Each building has nice visual flare when viewed up close. Homes have various accouterments on the lawn like above ground pools, gazebos, and other such little trinkets of human life. The homes themselves look exactly like something you would build in another wildly popular Maxis title The Sims 3. The entire look of the game is knitted so perfectly your eyes never run out of things to consume.
As your city grows in population your buildings too grow in size and stature; tiny bungalows slowly turn into apartment walk-ups and condos replace suburban houses. If you’re able to keep your Sims happy enough they’ll eventually begin to build high rise skyscrapers that cram in as many citizens as they can hold. It’s wonderful to watch your city grow from its small foundations to a full-fledged city. As you place your first zones building trucks flood into your city limits and you can watch your buildings rise up from nothing. It’s really quite something to behold and you are immediately invested in your little Sims lives and happiness as you watch them build up your city. Buildings are stretched up as floors are added and watching each project progress is mesmerizing.
As your Sims begin to move in traffic arises and flows onto your streets and avenues. Each car is an individual Sim processed by the game with a purpose such as finding work or someplace to shop. Automobiles and mass transportation are visually appealing. Cars are modeled with nuance and buses and trains have a certain sleek visual. Watching your roads and mass transportation shuttle your residents around the city is just more graphical eye candy. You can zoom your game camera out to see your city in its entirety and zoom right down to the street level to watch individual Sims depart the bus and walk down the street to find a place to shop. Sims themselves look a little strange; they’re stilted and have a vaguely human appearance but look more like LEGO people than real humans. There is a certain amount of whimsy though in the animations of your Sims as you watch them mill around factories or watch children run around on the lawn of their home.
Where the graphics falter is in the overall look of your city as it begins to consume more and more land. You’ll see buildings repeated throughout your city and by the time skyscrapers start to pop up you’ll be disappointed to see they almost all look the same based on their associated land value. Low income businesses are cloaked in drab brick facades with nondescript signage and high wealth apartment buildings are nothing more than glass faced structures. A little more variety in terms of appearances would do a world of wonder for the game as each city would look distinct and filled with buildings of all colors, shapes, and sizes. There is also a visual filter called “Tilt Shift” that artificially expands the depth perception you experience when viewing your city from street level. The foreground is displayed in crisp, bright detail while the background is blurred and hazy. It makes your city feel much larger than it actually is, but when you realize that this effect is all for show your city limits feel cramped.
“Ploppable” buildings are generally enormous city services structures that take up huge amounts of space in your city. Fire stations, hospitals, and event centers are nicely detailed even though they take up large amounts of real estate. Zooming in you’ll see nice touches around these buildings just like everything else in the game. Parking attendants point cars into parking spaces when the event center is operational and casinos generate groups of gamblers and pit bosses alike. Your Sims, animated in such an odd looking fashion, force you to stretch your imagination to get the full effect of all these graphical flourishes. Additionally, these “ploppable” buildings come with upgrades the player can add on as the city requires more services. Added ambulances and police cars pull out of parking lots and roam the city looking for problems to solve complete with flashing emergency lights. Event centers put on a spectacular fireworks show as the event comes to a close. Even though these facilities take up enormous real estate they’re modeled well and really make your city’s landscape pop with life.
Overall the graphics in SimCity are dazzling to behold. Your city thrums with life as you watch your Sims walk the sidewalks or drive their cars to and from work. The buildings look distinct in terms of wealth but it’s a shame they begin to look the same as your city expands and grows. The different information panels display most information as color overlays so armchair mayors can quickly identify problems such as crime or traffic congestion via a graphical cover as opposed to slogging through reams of text and menus. Sims look like stick people but their strange movements add a visual touch that’s comical and whimsical. For a game that requires a generally powerful machine to run well these are minor quibbles about its graphical presentation, but some cheap implementation mars the visual experience. Cars pop into and out of existence as do Sims. As they enter or exit a building or cars Sims simply disappear into an invisible space. Likewise buses, trains, and other modes of mass transit don’t have fine working details. Doors don’t open to let passengers off and on and those methods of transportation that run on rails pop over to the other side of the tracks if they need to switch direction. You’ll also find a lot of empty space in your city if you don’t get the road dimensions just right. The game doesn't seem optimized fully to maximize space. None of the graphical hiccups ruin the game, and hopefully they get filled in as the game continues to age and more fixes and optimizations are implemented.
Sound:
The sound in SimCity, like the graphics, is outstandingly pleasing. The sound track as you open the game is soothing and subtle, a compliment to the relatively easy and relaxing gameplay you’ll experience. An orchestral swell greets you each time you open the game and the music is so delicate and unobtrusive that it relaxes you into the game rather than blare sounds at you to let you know you’re going to be entering an awesome experience. Most of the sound effects in the game are just as subtle as the music and it’s soothing as you build up your city.
Sound effects in the game are handled well and everything sounds exactly in place. Busses have pneumatic brakes that hiss as they roll up to a stop and trains blare their horns as they pull away from the station. If you’ve ever walked around a major metropolis you’ll hear everything represented well in SimCity. The music and sound effects blend into each other perfectly and no sound overbears anything else playing. Sirens wail in the distance when zoomed out and up close you hear the murmurs of Sims chatter, industrial buildings buzzing with mechanical activity, and car engines humming as they travel down the street.
Most of my reviews lambaste some aspect of the sound engineering or design and it’s an often overlooked aspect of video gaming. SimCity has sound that’s so absolutely perfect and natural that you barely notice it’s there and that’s a sign that this facet of design received a lot of attention from the developers. The sounds of SimCity will subconsciously blend right into your altered perception of reality while you play and the soothing music and expertly leveled ambient city noises fully envelop the player as they fool about with their construction toolkit.
The sound in SimCity, like the graphics, is outstandingly pleasing. The sound track as you open the game is soothing and subtle, a compliment to the relatively easy and relaxing gameplay you’ll experience. An orchestral swell greets you each time you open the game and the music is so delicate and unobtrusive that it relaxes you into the game rather than blare sounds at you to let you know you’re going to be entering an awesome experience. Most of the sound effects in the game are just as subtle as the music and it’s soothing as you build up your city.
Sound effects in the game are handled well and everything sounds exactly in place. Busses have pneumatic brakes that hiss as they roll up to a stop and trains blare their horns as they pull away from the station. If you’ve ever walked around a major metropolis you’ll hear everything represented well in SimCity. The music and sound effects blend into each other perfectly and no sound overbears anything else playing. Sirens wail in the distance when zoomed out and up close you hear the murmurs of Sims chatter, industrial buildings buzzing with mechanical activity, and car engines humming as they travel down the street.
Most of my reviews lambaste some aspect of the sound engineering or design and it’s an often overlooked aspect of video gaming. SimCity has sound that’s so absolutely perfect and natural that you barely notice it’s there and that’s a sign that this facet of design received a lot of attention from the developers. The sounds of SimCity will subconsciously blend right into your altered perception of reality while you play and the soothing music and expertly leveled ambient city noises fully envelop the player as they fool about with their construction toolkit.
Gameplay:
SimCity came under heavy consumer fire when it was announced that it would launch as basically a city building MMO hybrid. Players were required to log into the EA servers and it was explained that the game was designed around intercity relationships. No city in the game could exist on its own and other players, or at the least an entire region controlled by one player, would be necessary for the game to function as anticipated and the cloud was needed to compute the supposedly vast amounts of data. After a year of bug fixes and patches, EA and Maxis have finally added an offline mode that allows players to store saves on their local machine and roll back saves if the player experiences some sort of city catastrophe and would rather return to a previous game state. Online mode has remained largely unchanged and once a region is founded all game data is saved to the servers and cannot be rolled back. In rare instances now, game data may get lost inside the cloud but this doesn't seem to happen much anymore.
Offline play, though feverishly demanded by many players looking back to the roots of the franchise, is a lonely experience and in my estimation more frustrating than fun. Since cities depend on each other to provide necessary services and ensure the flow of goods and people between each other, offline play requires you to constantly switch between cities in your region to balance out each need of your individual cities. In online mode, as long as you find the right group of people who don’t bail out on your region, which admittedly is no easy feat, you’re instantly connected to a group of players who can work together to build up a balanced region. While this same city switching was present before offline mode was introduced it does provide rollback saves but this one change doesn't seem quite enough to get me to fully invest.
Because cities need each other to thrive, heavily industrialized cities, for example, can supply the entire region with advanced fire trucks to battle the fires that break out in more complex buildings leaving your city’s payroll free to focus on something else. Large factories require special hazmat trucks to extinguish the flames and, because all services can be shared with neighbors, your city can provide one service to every other connected city while receiving what you lack from someone else. If you build a casino empire in your city you may find yourself dealing with the massive influx of crime via the police precinct which houses many criminals, rehabilitates them faster, and has a huge lot for patrol cars and upgrades that help you and your neighbors prevent crime before it even happens. This interconnected gameplay is nuanced and necessary to fully enjoy the game and shuttering the online mode is more of a hindrance than a relief. While it does thwart the DRM and opens up the game to the modding community to create new and exciting content, it seems an unnecessary step to me and in the long run may actually damage the entire concept of the franchise as it moves into the future. Time will tell and hopefully this doesn't set the franchise back or alienate or deter players just coming into the game if the original concept of intercity dependency goes missing or becomes more difficult than it actually should be.
Once you chose your region based on the amount of cities and “Great Work” sites it contains, you’re free to choose any plot of land and start building your city right away. City size is still a point of hot debate among players and the developers have stated more than once that this cannot be changed due to restrictions of the game engine. While this may be true you will wish your cities could be just a tad larger in terms of breadth. An infant city feels right at home in this small space and the cozy atmosphere makes small villages and towns look quaint. As your city grows, however, the buildings will butt up against the edges of your plot and when you zoom out to view your entire region cities look more like islands in a sea of open grassland or forest. Plots of buildable space close to one another look like something you may see in real life, but most regions are wide open areas of empty space just begging to be filled up with homes, businesses, and factories. City plots are fixed on the map, cannot be moved, and the highway entrance to your city, the main form of transferring goods or services, is also permanent. It adds a bit of challenge trying to figure out how to set your infrastructure up but since there is no undo button you’ll have to survey your plot and plan carefully as reworking your city is expensive and tedious.
Once you have your first few roads laid out, zoning for residential, commercial, and industrial is as easy as painting these zones against the road area. Your Sims will take care of the rest and will begin to build up your city automatically. Unlike every other entry in the series so far, zones must be placed against a road to have access to the city; SimCity 4 with its wide zones packed with buildings this is not, but the mechanic in SimCity works well even though buildings seem to have trouble making the most of the space you give them. The roads also serve as the city’s main thoroughfare for power, water, and sewage. Unlike SimCity 4 where the mayor had to lay pipe work and power lines, SimCity simplifies this and maybe a little too much. Part of the charm of the franchise up until this point was having a high level of control of the look and function of your city. SimCity 4 also had the added benefit of interconnected cities but it required the player to manually switch between each plot of land in a region to fix problems between each town and the loading was insufferably long. That game also had regions where every bit of land was prime real estate and if players were really good at balancing their budgets they could build some wonderfully packed regions full of millions of people that would look something like the New York metropolitan area as seen from space. SimCity lacks this high level of control and it is missed, but if you can find a few friends to play with you’ll quickly forget about having to manually place power lines or water mains as you chatter away about sharing services and figuring out who is going to supply what to the region.
Cities must invest in a specialization in order to be fully functional and provide the most expensive and exclusive services to the region. Casinos and tourism, via landmarks for your visitors to visit and spend their cash at, generate huge hourly profits but increase crime that may spill over your borders and affect the other players in your vicinity. Mining and oil drilling usually run your city’s budget into the red but trading those resources on the “Global Market”, the online resource exchange that allows players to buy and sell materials they need, can fill the city coffers with millions of Simoleons. Each specialization requires planning and forethought in order to make them effective and the challenge of making each specialization work requires a different approach to playing the game. With such a limited set of specializations the appeal wears off quickly as each new city you start begins to follow a formula. Draw your roads, get some people to move in, then aggressively pursue your specialization. After a while it becomes a little lackluster. No matter the specialization you choose your city should be able to generate massive amounts of cash in order for you to expand your city and keep your residents happy. Gone too is the monthly budget cash-in; each in game hour will deposit into or subtract from your city’s coffers keeping you quite mobile while playing. You’re not forced to suffer through a game month in order to get paid and this quick cash generating pace ensures you've got the funds to always do just one more thing you've been anticipating.
The main draw for multiplayer gameplay is the building of “Great Works”, huge construction projects the entire region takes part in putting together, supplying materials and workers to see the project to completion. There’s the Arcology, a gigantic housing complex that supplies the region with workers so residential zones can be replaced with other city services or zones, the Solar Farm which will supply the region with huge amounts of nearly free electricity so nuclear power plants can be closed to avoid radiation accidents, the International Airport which will be a boom for cities focusing on tourism, and the Space Center which increases the technology and education of the region providing cities with high tech industrial. Each one is built in a specific area and will only benefit cities that are connected to it. They’re a great joy to watch their construction and it gives players a real sense of purpose as they work cooperatively towards a common goal. The four that are included with the game are each unique in look and function, but more variety would be nice. Hopefully as the game is expanded more “Great Works” will come into existence. Once you've built them all you’ll be wishing you had something else to do or some new toy to try out to see how it affects your region.
While it’s easy to get your city powered, buildings hooked up to the water main without having to fiddle with wonky pipe laying controls, and carry away the waste structures produce to the treatment plant, there are a few omissions to the game that are missed. Subways would have been a nice touch to shuttle people quickly around the city. As it stands everything must be processed via a street or avenue so street cars take the place of underground subways. They’re fun to watch as they travel the middle of the wide avenues you build but they’re just not as satisfying as building an underground network of trains. Vehicles are also lacking in diversity and you’ll see the same three or four car models navigating your roadways. While using the streets to supply everything your city needs certainly works within the constructs of the game, it really feels a little flat after a while. As long as you don’t see your power or water icon at the bottom of the screen turn yellow or red, indicating a problem with supply, you won’t ever really have to do much actual work to keep your city going. This keeps you focused squarely on working cooperatively with your friends and benefiting your region but being able to work the way your city looks to your liking would add a nice touch. Even if the game engine automatically threw up a few power lines spontaneously just to add visual flair would be something lovely. As your cities grow they do begin to feel a little flat and more dramatic visual changes based on your city’s specialization would really make all your work that much more satisfying.
Commercial diversity and the inclusion of a more complex goods service is something you’ll also find yourself wanting. Sims just go to any store to increase their happiness. Sims don’t have to visit specific stores to purchase necessary goods or services and with a game that can be so much more than it currently is I hope this gets added, and soon. It would be nice to have the game drill down into the deep layers of what’s possible. Sims should have to supply their houses with food, purchase a new car, or otherwise add something valuable to their home and the city should somehow be able to supply these needed resources whether by importing these goods or making them yourself somehow. This mechanic wouldn't have to rely on a city specialization necessarily; your Sims could manage it on their own. Factories could produce clothing, food, cars or anything else the developers can include and it would add an even deeper layer to the game and introduce some much needed variety to this otherwise lackluster area. As it is Sims just produce nondescript “goods” that don’t really affect your city in terms of look or functioning.
With the cloud saves and the inability to roll back cities in online mode, the charm of building up a major metropolis only to unleash horrifying disasters upon your unsuspecting folks is gone. Random disasters can be turned off when you set up your region but if you leave them on be prepared to have your city become crippled in a matter of seconds. Depending where the disaster epicenter is you may have critical income generating buildings destroyed and if you’re not making sure you keep some money in your treasury your city may spiral into a debt you cannot escape. It is fun to watch meteors rain down from the sky or a giant lizard rampage through your streets as long as these, and other, disasters only destroy Sim-built buildings. Sure hundreds may have perished but your Sims get over the carnage quickly and will rebuild almost immediately. Money is what makes your city flourish and the game really challenges players to critically think about road placement, mass transit optimization, and building location to ensure the city isn't snarled in traffic or broke and unable to sustain itself. Should you run out of cash the game will pause every few seconds until the balance sheet is in the green; if you can’t get your city back up to par you’ll be forced to resign. The real challenge of SimCity comes from working within constricted city sizes, the massive cost of some services and specialization buildings, keeping cash rolling in either by the trade of goods on the “Global Market” or by hourly taxes, and a deep understanding of the game mechanics in order to build successful cities and flourishing regions.
SimCity came under heavy consumer fire when it was announced that it would launch as basically a city building MMO hybrid. Players were required to log into the EA servers and it was explained that the game was designed around intercity relationships. No city in the game could exist on its own and other players, or at the least an entire region controlled by one player, would be necessary for the game to function as anticipated and the cloud was needed to compute the supposedly vast amounts of data. After a year of bug fixes and patches, EA and Maxis have finally added an offline mode that allows players to store saves on their local machine and roll back saves if the player experiences some sort of city catastrophe and would rather return to a previous game state. Online mode has remained largely unchanged and once a region is founded all game data is saved to the servers and cannot be rolled back. In rare instances now, game data may get lost inside the cloud but this doesn't seem to happen much anymore.
Offline play, though feverishly demanded by many players looking back to the roots of the franchise, is a lonely experience and in my estimation more frustrating than fun. Since cities depend on each other to provide necessary services and ensure the flow of goods and people between each other, offline play requires you to constantly switch between cities in your region to balance out each need of your individual cities. In online mode, as long as you find the right group of people who don’t bail out on your region, which admittedly is no easy feat, you’re instantly connected to a group of players who can work together to build up a balanced region. While this same city switching was present before offline mode was introduced it does provide rollback saves but this one change doesn't seem quite enough to get me to fully invest.
Because cities need each other to thrive, heavily industrialized cities, for example, can supply the entire region with advanced fire trucks to battle the fires that break out in more complex buildings leaving your city’s payroll free to focus on something else. Large factories require special hazmat trucks to extinguish the flames and, because all services can be shared with neighbors, your city can provide one service to every other connected city while receiving what you lack from someone else. If you build a casino empire in your city you may find yourself dealing with the massive influx of crime via the police precinct which houses many criminals, rehabilitates them faster, and has a huge lot for patrol cars and upgrades that help you and your neighbors prevent crime before it even happens. This interconnected gameplay is nuanced and necessary to fully enjoy the game and shuttering the online mode is more of a hindrance than a relief. While it does thwart the DRM and opens up the game to the modding community to create new and exciting content, it seems an unnecessary step to me and in the long run may actually damage the entire concept of the franchise as it moves into the future. Time will tell and hopefully this doesn't set the franchise back or alienate or deter players just coming into the game if the original concept of intercity dependency goes missing or becomes more difficult than it actually should be.
Once you chose your region based on the amount of cities and “Great Work” sites it contains, you’re free to choose any plot of land and start building your city right away. City size is still a point of hot debate among players and the developers have stated more than once that this cannot be changed due to restrictions of the game engine. While this may be true you will wish your cities could be just a tad larger in terms of breadth. An infant city feels right at home in this small space and the cozy atmosphere makes small villages and towns look quaint. As your city grows, however, the buildings will butt up against the edges of your plot and when you zoom out to view your entire region cities look more like islands in a sea of open grassland or forest. Plots of buildable space close to one another look like something you may see in real life, but most regions are wide open areas of empty space just begging to be filled up with homes, businesses, and factories. City plots are fixed on the map, cannot be moved, and the highway entrance to your city, the main form of transferring goods or services, is also permanent. It adds a bit of challenge trying to figure out how to set your infrastructure up but since there is no undo button you’ll have to survey your plot and plan carefully as reworking your city is expensive and tedious.
Once you have your first few roads laid out, zoning for residential, commercial, and industrial is as easy as painting these zones against the road area. Your Sims will take care of the rest and will begin to build up your city automatically. Unlike every other entry in the series so far, zones must be placed against a road to have access to the city; SimCity 4 with its wide zones packed with buildings this is not, but the mechanic in SimCity works well even though buildings seem to have trouble making the most of the space you give them. The roads also serve as the city’s main thoroughfare for power, water, and sewage. Unlike SimCity 4 where the mayor had to lay pipe work and power lines, SimCity simplifies this and maybe a little too much. Part of the charm of the franchise up until this point was having a high level of control of the look and function of your city. SimCity 4 also had the added benefit of interconnected cities but it required the player to manually switch between each plot of land in a region to fix problems between each town and the loading was insufferably long. That game also had regions where every bit of land was prime real estate and if players were really good at balancing their budgets they could build some wonderfully packed regions full of millions of people that would look something like the New York metropolitan area as seen from space. SimCity lacks this high level of control and it is missed, but if you can find a few friends to play with you’ll quickly forget about having to manually place power lines or water mains as you chatter away about sharing services and figuring out who is going to supply what to the region.
Cities must invest in a specialization in order to be fully functional and provide the most expensive and exclusive services to the region. Casinos and tourism, via landmarks for your visitors to visit and spend their cash at, generate huge hourly profits but increase crime that may spill over your borders and affect the other players in your vicinity. Mining and oil drilling usually run your city’s budget into the red but trading those resources on the “Global Market”, the online resource exchange that allows players to buy and sell materials they need, can fill the city coffers with millions of Simoleons. Each specialization requires planning and forethought in order to make them effective and the challenge of making each specialization work requires a different approach to playing the game. With such a limited set of specializations the appeal wears off quickly as each new city you start begins to follow a formula. Draw your roads, get some people to move in, then aggressively pursue your specialization. After a while it becomes a little lackluster. No matter the specialization you choose your city should be able to generate massive amounts of cash in order for you to expand your city and keep your residents happy. Gone too is the monthly budget cash-in; each in game hour will deposit into or subtract from your city’s coffers keeping you quite mobile while playing. You’re not forced to suffer through a game month in order to get paid and this quick cash generating pace ensures you've got the funds to always do just one more thing you've been anticipating.
The main draw for multiplayer gameplay is the building of “Great Works”, huge construction projects the entire region takes part in putting together, supplying materials and workers to see the project to completion. There’s the Arcology, a gigantic housing complex that supplies the region with workers so residential zones can be replaced with other city services or zones, the Solar Farm which will supply the region with huge amounts of nearly free electricity so nuclear power plants can be closed to avoid radiation accidents, the International Airport which will be a boom for cities focusing on tourism, and the Space Center which increases the technology and education of the region providing cities with high tech industrial. Each one is built in a specific area and will only benefit cities that are connected to it. They’re a great joy to watch their construction and it gives players a real sense of purpose as they work cooperatively towards a common goal. The four that are included with the game are each unique in look and function, but more variety would be nice. Hopefully as the game is expanded more “Great Works” will come into existence. Once you've built them all you’ll be wishing you had something else to do or some new toy to try out to see how it affects your region.
While it’s easy to get your city powered, buildings hooked up to the water main without having to fiddle with wonky pipe laying controls, and carry away the waste structures produce to the treatment plant, there are a few omissions to the game that are missed. Subways would have been a nice touch to shuttle people quickly around the city. As it stands everything must be processed via a street or avenue so street cars take the place of underground subways. They’re fun to watch as they travel the middle of the wide avenues you build but they’re just not as satisfying as building an underground network of trains. Vehicles are also lacking in diversity and you’ll see the same three or four car models navigating your roadways. While using the streets to supply everything your city needs certainly works within the constructs of the game, it really feels a little flat after a while. As long as you don’t see your power or water icon at the bottom of the screen turn yellow or red, indicating a problem with supply, you won’t ever really have to do much actual work to keep your city going. This keeps you focused squarely on working cooperatively with your friends and benefiting your region but being able to work the way your city looks to your liking would add a nice touch. Even if the game engine automatically threw up a few power lines spontaneously just to add visual flair would be something lovely. As your cities grow they do begin to feel a little flat and more dramatic visual changes based on your city’s specialization would really make all your work that much more satisfying.
Commercial diversity and the inclusion of a more complex goods service is something you’ll also find yourself wanting. Sims just go to any store to increase their happiness. Sims don’t have to visit specific stores to purchase necessary goods or services and with a game that can be so much more than it currently is I hope this gets added, and soon. It would be nice to have the game drill down into the deep layers of what’s possible. Sims should have to supply their houses with food, purchase a new car, or otherwise add something valuable to their home and the city should somehow be able to supply these needed resources whether by importing these goods or making them yourself somehow. This mechanic wouldn't have to rely on a city specialization necessarily; your Sims could manage it on their own. Factories could produce clothing, food, cars or anything else the developers can include and it would add an even deeper layer to the game and introduce some much needed variety to this otherwise lackluster area. As it is Sims just produce nondescript “goods” that don’t really affect your city in terms of look or functioning.
With the cloud saves and the inability to roll back cities in online mode, the charm of building up a major metropolis only to unleash horrifying disasters upon your unsuspecting folks is gone. Random disasters can be turned off when you set up your region but if you leave them on be prepared to have your city become crippled in a matter of seconds. Depending where the disaster epicenter is you may have critical income generating buildings destroyed and if you’re not making sure you keep some money in your treasury your city may spiral into a debt you cannot escape. It is fun to watch meteors rain down from the sky or a giant lizard rampage through your streets as long as these, and other, disasters only destroy Sim-built buildings. Sure hundreds may have perished but your Sims get over the carnage quickly and will rebuild almost immediately. Money is what makes your city flourish and the game really challenges players to critically think about road placement, mass transit optimization, and building location to ensure the city isn't snarled in traffic or broke and unable to sustain itself. Should you run out of cash the game will pause every few seconds until the balance sheet is in the green; if you can’t get your city back up to par you’ll be forced to resign. The real challenge of SimCity comes from working within constricted city sizes, the massive cost of some services and specialization buildings, keeping cash rolling in either by the trade of goods on the “Global Market” or by hourly taxes, and a deep understanding of the game mechanics in order to build successful cities and flourishing regions.
Final Thoughts:
Despite a rocky start and a launch that nearly brought the game and the franchise to a screeching halt, SimCity has been thankfully fixed and is in prime position to take over the city building simulation market. Many players are still left with a bitter taste in their mouth and the franchise continues to suffer from the aftershocks of the problems that plagued it out of the gate. EA and Maxis have really shown a spectacular dedication to their product and fan base, and even though EA is the video game company we all love to hate, they have shown a soft side that corporate America doesn’t give out much these days. They really do believe in the longevity and success of this product and despite the horrifying launch of the game they have worked hard to really turn it around and take their players concerns and comments seriously.
The game does fall into a trap of monotony after a while unfortunately. Small city sizes and a lack of new content restrict a game that many players want to see explode with diversity and flair. There is downloadable content available such as the expansion pack Cities of Tomorrow which adds a futuristic sensibility to your city and comes with mega towers, which allow you to expand up rather than out and that can become self-sustaining ecosystems, and a maglev train to ferry passengers around your city. There are also smaller packs that contain English, French, and German buildings styles to change the look of your city and an amusement park pack to add a further city specialization. However the asking prices seem rather inflated and many cash strapped players may roll their eyes at having additional content locked away behind pay walls. They are probably worth the money to add more content to a base game that is relatively sparse, and EA has tossed players some freebies along the way but they’re not much in terms of quality and quantity. If you enjoy the base game then you should certainly look into cherry picking the packs that interest you to help support a game you inevitably will become highly invested in. Asking for money for essentially new building skins in the English, French, and German packs seems a tad like highway robbery. They may give you a few new buildings but the current asking price of ten dollars each seems steep.
From a video game loaded with crippling bugs to something much more refined than we all ever anticipated, SimCity is now the crown jewel in the franchise and shows just how forward thinking Maxis is being. As the game continues to morph and mature and content is added SimCity will become a video game that defines the genre and inspires developers to refine this new formula. For those gamers who have patience, their virtue has certainly paid off for waiting to dive into SimCity. They’ll be avoiding the frustrations that haunted the launch of this game and can easily slip right into the flow of building up their cities and working cooperatively with the large player base to tackle great works. If you’re a fan of the SimCity franchise or city building simulations in general this is a purchase you won’t soon regret.
Despite a rocky start and a launch that nearly brought the game and the franchise to a screeching halt, SimCity has been thankfully fixed and is in prime position to take over the city building simulation market. Many players are still left with a bitter taste in their mouth and the franchise continues to suffer from the aftershocks of the problems that plagued it out of the gate. EA and Maxis have really shown a spectacular dedication to their product and fan base, and even though EA is the video game company we all love to hate, they have shown a soft side that corporate America doesn’t give out much these days. They really do believe in the longevity and success of this product and despite the horrifying launch of the game they have worked hard to really turn it around and take their players concerns and comments seriously.
The game does fall into a trap of monotony after a while unfortunately. Small city sizes and a lack of new content restrict a game that many players want to see explode with diversity and flair. There is downloadable content available such as the expansion pack Cities of Tomorrow which adds a futuristic sensibility to your city and comes with mega towers, which allow you to expand up rather than out and that can become self-sustaining ecosystems, and a maglev train to ferry passengers around your city. There are also smaller packs that contain English, French, and German buildings styles to change the look of your city and an amusement park pack to add a further city specialization. However the asking prices seem rather inflated and many cash strapped players may roll their eyes at having additional content locked away behind pay walls. They are probably worth the money to add more content to a base game that is relatively sparse, and EA has tossed players some freebies along the way but they’re not much in terms of quality and quantity. If you enjoy the base game then you should certainly look into cherry picking the packs that interest you to help support a game you inevitably will become highly invested in. Asking for money for essentially new building skins in the English, French, and German packs seems a tad like highway robbery. They may give you a few new buildings but the current asking price of ten dollars each seems steep.
From a video game loaded with crippling bugs to something much more refined than we all ever anticipated, SimCity is now the crown jewel in the franchise and shows just how forward thinking Maxis is being. As the game continues to morph and mature and content is added SimCity will become a video game that defines the genre and inspires developers to refine this new formula. For those gamers who have patience, their virtue has certainly paid off for waiting to dive into SimCity. They’ll be avoiding the frustrations that haunted the launch of this game and can easily slip right into the flow of building up their cities and working cooperatively with the large player base to tackle great works. If you’re a fan of the SimCity franchise or city building simulations in general this is a purchase you won’t soon regret.