Title: SimCity
Developed By: Maxis
Published By: Electronic Arts
Based On: SimCity Series
Console: PC/Mac
Genre: City Building Simulation
Classification (AU): This title has been rated G – although the experience can change online
Review Conditions: Australian Edition, PC, Physical Media
Special Thanks: Electronic Arts Australia for kindly providing a review copy of this title
More than twenty years after the SimCity series first launched and more than ten years since the highly successful release of SimCity 4 – Electronic Arts and Maxis have answered fans demands and released a brand spanking new installment in the franchise for the PC and Mac. Featuring multi-city play and a brand new “Glassbox Engine” which they claim would effectively micro-manage many aspects of the game to provide enhanced simulaton – SimCity was set to be the game that fans desired…. after they managed to log in that is. Unfortunately while it is still a pretty fun game to play through, riddled with bugs and always-online gameplay mechanics, to me the title underwhelmed what I was hoping to be a perfect upgrade from my long-running SimCity 4 region.
Upon logging into the game you are presented with several options. Rather than split up an entire region into squares, you are able to develop an entire region of between 2 and 16 plots – each spread out and split between vast and expansive forests and hillsides which you as a mayor may never touch. Upon proclaiming a region, each of which are unfortunately rather small in size you can start developing… and at its core it is pretty much the same as you would have come to expect from any SimCity game: you build roads, zone residential, commercial and industrial plots, supply power networks, water networks and other amenities to service the Sims every whim while you wait at your desk for the simoleons to roll in from the hourly taxes. Zoning is now attached to roads rather than land and its wealth more or less comes down to what sort of park you place in the neighborhood. Irrespective of anything else however, the game at its core remains sneakily addictive and can take up several hours of your day before you even notice.
So what do you do with each of the regions? While you are able to build the regions and cities however you want as mayor (Minor the odd omission of farms), each of the regions have different resource supplies which can be adapted into a number of different markets amongst other things. Do you have a region rich of ore? Make it a mining town. Do you have nothing all too special? Make a city that thrives on education or gambling and import supplies from other regions. A number of services and utilities can be imported or exported to other regions for a price, making the world feel more integrated. Irrespective of what direction you decide to take your city – it isn’t a matter of just plopping down a few buildings and leaving it at that. Provided you leave the space for them, you can extend the buildings with extra storage, extra vehicles, extra space and so forth, allowing you to expand your services without taking up as much room as a full building. Services can be used by sets of up to four regions to build “Great Works” which supply even more services for the region
On the matter of room, assumingly to cater the Glassbox Engine each of the regions are considerably small and does not allow you to build the expansive metropolis you were able to build in the earlier SimCity installments (Such as SimCity 4 which was essentially a map split up into different zones by lines). It hampers the experience when you hit the invisible borders of the region, looking over the empty landscape which you as a mayor are unable to touch. Size restrictions aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but with big worlds and a lot of empty space – more would be better (and I am sure the major SimCity fans would have no problems with regions of more than 16 plots).
The Glassbox Engine from the outside looked very good and unless you don’t dig into the games specifics too much should work like a charm. From generating a visual representation where your Sims poo was going after leaving the house to aiding your decision on where to put that next Wind Power Generator to simulating your Sims and the Cities everyday life it works like a charm. Unfortunately it never seems to have issues – for example despite my University city having individual clinics in every second street they still were clamoring to my City Hall demanding better Health Services and complaining about germs. While you will find many reviews and comments by players result in different experiences, what it comes down to is that they needed more time to really refine this system to ensure it provided the experience it was supposed to.
For the first time, SimCity comes with official online functionality via the Origin network. Personally for this review I only had a brief experience playing with someone else and it was an okay system to use – essentially the same game with chat functionality and multiple cities being controlled at once…. and many more debates between mayors. That being said, a more “live” experience in terms of data being provided to other regions would have been nice…. and I am still left wondering if incorporating always-online functionality was worth it for this mode.
Small cities, bugs and all of that means that SimCity is far from the days of SimCity 3000, SimCity 4 and even the earlier titles which offered more experience for your buck, but SimCity is still fulfilling in its own way gameplay-wise and scrapes through as a decent game in my books.
When I first heard that SimCity was announced in development, I was personally hoping they would go down the track of being even more realistic than before while still retaining some of the Sim charms that we have become acquainted with over the last decade and a bit. While it may not have ticked my box in terms of realism, visually SimCity is impressive and especially when you have your (albeit small) metropolis it does look as you would expect from a city building game of this generation. Featuring a number of well designed buildings as well as a wealth of customizable buildings and parks you have lots of potential to make every city something unique.
On the downside, the design of the actual Sims are underwhelming especially considering their environment and there are moments when the visuals do suffer from bugs such as disappearing roads, roads that should go together not and roads that simply plow their way through buildings (Those that are actually there or “ghost buildings”).
Final Word
Overall, aside from the specifics of the game that are not up to the standard I think they could have been… SimCity is still a highly addictive game that can easily take up many hours of your day. I look forward to seeing their next plans for the series, as there is quite a lot they could work upon with these foundations for future updates or expansions. But unfortunately when it comes to this game in comparison to its predecessors, the single-player installments win by far. If they were to take some of these concepts and bring them to an offline SimCity with less restrictions… I think it could have been a notable installment in the series for the right reasons.
FINAL SCORE
Storyline/Character Development: N/A
Design: B
Music/Voice Acting: B+
Gameplay: C
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: C
Overall Score: C
If you are after a more individualized Sims experience, don’t forget to check out my review of the ninth expansion pack for The Sims 3 – UNIVERSITY LIFE.
