SimCity Review

SimCity is a name that can make just about anyone who has played computer games before excited. The previous full installment in the franchise was ten years ago, so the older gamers remember it, and the younger ones hear tales of it. You start with a plot of land, and then you build a city. It is creation at just about its purest form, and the only thing more fun than watching an empty field turn into a thriving metropolis is watching it all fall down. This latest SimCity game captures the essence of that creation, and adds in a few new ideas, largely centered around online play with other people. Some of these ideas work, some do not, and some are just mind boggling. However this is still a SimCity game, it just might not be the one you were expecting.

Allow me to dive straight into the hot topic. This game, much like last year’s Diablo III, features always on DRM, meaning that you must always be connected to EA’s servers to play. And much like Diablo III, since release there have been severe connectivity issues. Since I live in the UK, EA had a few extra days to sort out some of these issues before release, and indeed, the servers seem a lot more stable than the initial launch. There is the occasional problem still though, and obviously, it is very frustrating to not be able to play a game that you have paid for through no fault of your own. Publisher EA and developer Maxis have issued apologies, and insist that they are working to improve performance round the clock. Anyone who bought the game will also be granted a free EA game after March 18th. It is likely that soon servers will be stable for anyone who wants to play. It is just a shame that these problems came so close to ruining everything for a game that, under the surface of all these issues, is still pretty good.

The mechanics have been slightly simplified from previous games. Power, water, sewage and so on now flow underground beneath roads, so you do not have to worry about them. There are three separate zones for you to take advantage of. Residential zones are where your Sims will live. Commercial is where they will shop, and they will go to work in industrial zones. You map out these zones along roads, and buildings will start appearing within them. In order to make your city grow, you will need to increase the wealth and land value. Placing parks and amenities like police stations and hospitals will keep your Sims happy, and they will start to upgrade their homes. To keep up with higher density buildings like apartment blocks and skyscrapers, you will need to be upgrading your roads to accommodate.

With such a huge focus on roads, it is a shame that the road tool is not perfect. It will sometimes inexplicably not let you place a road, even though it seems like there is enough space. It is also very picky about allowing you to place roads near to existing buildings. There are handy grid lines which show you how best to place your roads in order to allow for maximum density. However, this only ever leads to boring, gridded cities. There is a curved road tool, and I did manage to make a successful city without resorting to straight lines everywhere, but in the end there was just not enough room for all of my buildings to develop. Speaking of room, there is simply not enough of it. When you begin a game, you choose a region, with a number of plots of lands which you can start to build on. These plots are not randomly generated; there is level design at work here, which all ties into the multiplayer aspect that I will discuss later. The cities you can build must be confined within these small square areas, and you are not allowed outside the boundaries by even a pixel. This leads to strange situations where you can have a massive skyscraper right next to an open plain of grass. Then, not far away, another city begins. It looks very strange, and you cannot help but feel you are being deprived of all this extra land that you are unable to build on.

The reason that your available area is so small is supposed to be because of the multiplayer. The idea is that you join up with friends, each taking a piece of land, and working together to provide the best possible outcome for the region. For example, one city might be working on industry, mining ore and digging for oil to make money. Meanwhile another city could be a commercial hub, and then the next city could be dedicated to education. Eventually, all the cities can combine together to aid in the creation of a “great work”. These range from an Arcology, to a giant solar array, and even a space center. When everything comes together and works as it is meant to, it is a pretty cool idea, I just feel that it should not have been the only option. The lack of a giant sandbox mode where you can create a city as big as you like is confusing, as I think that this is what most people were expecting when they thought of a new SimCity game. However, this could have proved technically difficult, as even with the small size, the sheer amount of simulation going on meant a high population city did cause some slowdown in performance.

Sadly, there are issues beyond the server connection problems. You have guides which will tell you if there is something wrong with your city, but they are never specific in what can be done to fix it. For example, I was told that not enough children were getting to school in my city, so I should consider buying more school buses. I bought the maximum amount I could, but was still having the problem. When I zoomed down to street level at the high school, I found the problem. My armada of buses were all blocking each other in on the road, and were stuck there twenty four hours a day. The only people getting to the school were the ones who could walk there. There was nothing I could do, and ended up having to demolish the school and start again, at great expense.

There are a lot of things wrong with SimCity, but thankfully, it does a lot of things right. Once you get past the server issues and can finally start playing, it is just as addictive as ever. I even burnt my dinner on release day because I got lost playing it for too long. Playing with other people is great as you work together and figure out who can do what to get the region at its best. Watching your city grow from a glorified trailer park to a metropolis filled with skyscrapers and hundreds of thousands of people is a great feeling. Then you can watch it all crumble by unleashing one of the disasters, such as earthquakes, zombie attacks, alien invasions and so on. It also looks nice, with some good lighting effects reflecting off skyscrapers and the water. However it does not look as great when you zoom in to street level. It also has some decent sound effects when you click on each building, along with some ambient music which helps you build endlessly for hours.

Some of the new systems that Maxis has implemented have improved things, while others seem strange. It is certainly worth playing if you were looking forward to a city simulator. If you can get past the array of problems, SimCity is, as its core, a good game. Sadly, it is just disappointing that it was not better.