The basic idea of all the SimCity games is that you build a city and then run it. It is a simulation of a city (hence the name). There are some scenarios you can play to give yourself some tasks (like make people happy or increase the tax revenue this and this much) but I find the most enjoyable part of these games is simply building a small village and turning it into a succesful megacity.
It might sound simple, building houses and roads etc. but it gets more challenging once you have to start dealing with budgets, power shortages, air pollution and all the other issues that we face in the real world as well.
Back in 1993 (when we still had a ancient intel 386 computers) I remember installing SimCity 2000 in dos (c:/cd simcity.exe ... *pulls hairs, how did these commands go again!!?? c:/Format c.*.*!!!!!!)
 |
| SimCity 2000 |
10 years later (This time already in the Windows era - I believe it was either Windows 2000 or Windows XP I had back then) I installed the shiny new SimCity 4 on my PC.
 |
| SimCity 4 |
The launch of this game has been widely criticized and Amazon even stopped selling the game for a while because people were buying the game but weren't able to play it at all. I had my concerns, but I decided to make up my own mind.
So I got home that evening and began my mission....
Installation:
The game was fairly quick to install. I already had an Origin account because I have been playing Sims3 through them, but my boyfriend made a new account for himself and it took maybe 5 minutes, including the installation of the Origin Software to his laptop.
The unique thing about this new SimCity is that you play the game online. It's not really a multiplayer game but you have the option to play with friends (will go into detail later).
As great as this feature is, it also has it's setbacks; you require a constant connection to the internet to play the game - even if you want to play on your own. And THIS is the thing that was causing so much trouble for Maxis - sorry EA, who runs the show nowadays for SimCity.
Ok so, once the game was installed I was already itching to start building my city, however I was a bit mortified when I saw the "now on queue for 30:00 minutes" note on my screen.
Well, at least I had time to have some dinner!
I managed to get to the main menu of the game when the little sign of major annoyance appeared on the upper left corner of my screen "Servers are down!" And then this lovely thing appeared on my screen:
I starter to understand the frustration of all the angry people on Amazon reviews...
I was determined to play the game so I kept on trying. I changed to another server (Europe East 3) and after few pulled hairs and several swear words later I managed to make my way through the tutorial!
After that, I don't know what magic tricks EA did to the servers (well besides adding a LOT more servers) as I had no issues loggin on what-so-ever... and for the whole weekend I was completely sucked into the world of SimCity.
Playing SimCity:
So, you start with a piece of land which has no buildings, only a road leading to it and if you are lucky, train tracks going through it.
You have no goal what to do, if you want, you can just sit there and admire the countryside.
First task on your list is to make roads, build residential houses and add some industrial buildings so people have somewhere to work.
The way it happens in SimCity games is that you draw "zones" which determine which kind of buildings the little Sims will build to the area as they move into your village.
You don't really have to worry about people moving in, it seems that they have been queuing to move in to this area at least as long as it took you to queue in to build it for them.
The thing I really like about this SimCity compared to the old ones is the level of detail you can go in with every Sim that moves to your town. You can actually see their little van driving down from the highway, unloading the materials to the empty slot and start building their house. They have a name and they have feelings, you can see what they are thinking and what makes them happy/sad by just clicking them.
As the Sims move into your village they soon start to request some basic things that we take for granted, such as water and electricity. You need to quickly build powerplant and water towers (But what about sewage and rubbish collection? - well... yes, you need to take care of that too!!!).
In the old SimCity you had to draw the electricity lines under the ground, same with waterpipes, you had to take care of them and fix any broken bits - luckily in this new version this task has been removed and as long as you have a road leading to a building they will have all the services.
As you see your village get bigger the money that was given to you in the beginning (50 000 Simoleons) starts to shrink with alarming rate. It costs A LOT to build roads and provide expensive services to the growing demand from everyone moving in.
I soon realized what the goal (at least for me) in this game was... I wanted to make a lot of money! But it turned out to be a lot more difficult than I first had anticipated.
There are many different routes you can take. You can make your city a tourist hub with all the sights around the world (such as Sydney Opera house and Big Ben), or turn it into the new Las Vegas with massive hotels and casinos. Your city can find success in becoming the educational hub of the region, specializing in building high-tech items. Or you can mine ore and coal or drill oil and sell the goods by trading them to the rest of the region. Which ever route you take, there are always negative side effects to the choices you make and finding the right balance can be quite challenging.
My first city was very chaotic. I wanted everything. I built all the services, educated my sims, gave them parks and once I started to struggle for money I increased the taxes which made everyone mad at me and soon I felt like starting over (doh!)
My 2nd city was a bit better, I decided to go for the educational route, since afterall educated sims recycle, commit less crime and get sick less often, I can only win, right?
Wrong.
Educated Sims also refuse to work in factories and mines, they demand expensive parks and public transportation for less pollution... I had more wealthy Sims but my industry was struggling to find workers and people started to move out. All I was left with snobby upper class who didn't want to pay such high taxes and all they wanted to do was walk their poodle in a overpriced boulevard.
When I created my 3rd city I had a battleplan in mind. I was not going to educate my Sims at all and if they wanted to spend all their days shoplifting they were free to do so, I would just ignore it.
I chose an area with a lot of ore and coal to mine and started a little village that was only concentrated on mining.
I kept my Sims stupid (sounds pretty harsh...) so they happily kept working in my mines and earning me big bucks! In no time I had so much money that I didn't know what to do with it.
I had a massive problem with not being able to provide enough houses for everyone who wanted to move in and soon I was faced with a problem of running out of space.
Now, all my 3 cities were in the same region, one was a chaotic "a bit of everything town" another was full of snobby upperclass elites with high education and the last one was a massive mining city with rednecks living in trailer parks... Sounds pretty realistic to me!
Sometime on Saturday my boyfriend decided to buy the game as well and he joined my region. He built his massive metropolis around gambling and tourism. People from my cities went to visit his city for shopping and gambling while all the criminals from his city came to my snobbyville to loot their upperclass cutlery.
And this is the thing about playing SimCity online I quite like. You can share resources and plan how you want to rule the region. If one city can't support itself for some reason, another city can provide much needed funds. Or like for example my hillbillyvillage was able to collect all the rubbish from the fancypantsland so they didn't have to have a garbage dump in their neighbourhood. And my police officers went to my boyfriends city to catch all the arsonists and murderers that were planning to move to my cities.
 |
| My miner town with its trading port in front and my boyfriend "New Las Vegas" in the horizon |
Conclusion:
After the little hickups to actually log on the game, I found SimCity a very pleasant experience. I am a seasoned SimCity fan so it was nothing revolutionary, but I had forgotten how addicting it is to see your city grow bigger and overcome all the obstacles. You can easily spend a day playing around with different options and layouts for your city - so much that I actually forgot to have lunch on Saturday!
Having said that, there are some things that this newest addition to the SimCity series left me a bit cold with.
Like for example, In the old SimCity you had newspaper articles pop up from your city, which I found really interesting because it gave you tips on what you should be doing differently.
Yes you have your advisors saying "You have a worker shortage" but it took me a long time to actually realize that certain level of wealth in the neighbourhood led to people not wanting to work in low paid jobs (I know, quite self explanatory in real life but when you are playing a game you don't really think that way).
Also EA removed the "cheetah" speed (for now) which makes the game really drag sometimes. Often you need to collect taxes to be able to build something and if that something is for example a recycling centre that costs 65 000 and you are earning 500 per game hour you can go to the shop and back and your city is still collecting the money for it.
Furthermore... living in London I have to ask this... if there is so many people demanding for public transportation why there is no underground network?! We demand the tube!!!
Would I recommend it?
Don't buy it just yet (but buy it in the future!)
Not because the price is still high - I am sure the price will stay high for a long time because this is one of those games you can pick up one rainy afternoon even 5 years from now and still enjoy it as much as you did the 1st time - but because the servers are (at least at the moment) still a bit buggy.
It's not one of those games that you play months and months (or years) like you do with some RPGs. I played it one Saturday and now I probably won't pick it up for a week or two - but I know when I pick it up I will hear myself say "just a bit more..." and end up going to bed at 3 am still wondering how I could have prevented the people moving out from my city after a zombie attack...
No comments:
Post a Comment