New Sim City Announced

[Derek]

It doesn't impress me at all.

[alexjon]

I hate that they're a knock off of City Life

What a horrid game that was.

[waterloowarrior]

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cI...5&sec=PREVIEWS

Previews: SimCity Societies

What does a more casual focus actually mean for SimCity?
By Philip Kollar 10/02/2007
Even gamers generally uninterested in the SimCity franchise have probably heard the faint buzz surrounding its latest evolution, not to mention the complaints from the fansites. Despite the noise, developer Tilted Mill Entertainment has remained open about its decision to slouch towards a more mainstream-accessible city builder with SimCity Societies. All of the zoning and pipe-laying madness that appealed to fans of SimCity 4 is gone, replaced by a slick, easy-to-use interface and a focus on individual residents of the urban empires in the game.

With these points kindly reiterated by an Electronic Arts fact sheet, I sat down to play the latest build of SimCity Societies with a friend. One thing is evident quickly in this late alpha build of the game: Tilted Mill is dead serious about this "mainstream" thing. From the toy house-like graphics to the simple cause-and-effect nature of each building choice, anyone should be able to pick this up without having to sink hours into strategic planning.

In the recently-implemented tutorial mode, you are prompted to build a "Fun City," one of a handful of types that you can mix and match or focus on. All good cities begin with a source of electricity, and for this city type, windmills are the preferred power source. As I watched the virtual blades spin on my three newly-created obelisks, I thought of the real windmills located mere miles from my house and wondered if they too produce 50 Electricity for the town.


SCREENS: Click the image above to check out all SimCity Societies screens.


The tutorial continued to lead us through the slow, early stages of building our own Simtopia, the default name for a city in the game. My friend commented that the game reminded her of SimTown, an oft-forgotten kid-centric SimCity spin-off from the mid-'90s. If that comparison makes Societies sound a bit too simplistic, don't mistake the game's early hand-holding for a lack of depth in the long run. We were quickly introduced to more complex game mechanics, such as Decorations, which produce "social energies," and Venues, which provide city-dwellers with activities and thus increase happiness. In fact, if anything threatens to crush SimCity Societies' bid for the casual market share, it's the nearly ludicrous number of resources that players are required to juggle.

In addition to Simoleons (i.e. cash) and the previously-mentioned electricity, your town creates and spends six social energies while expanding its locale: Productivity, Prosperity, Creativity, Spirituality, Authority, and Knowledge. Beyond that, each building also affects the population, job count, and overall happiness of the Sims occupying your territory. Most of the game's nearly 500 buildings have creation pre-requisites and either spend or produce (or both) any number of the social energies.

For example, a chocolate factory costs eight Creative energy and 2,250 Simoleons, while also requiring that the city has a population of at least 180 Sims, 30 of which must be happy, and less than five of which can be below the status of sad. As a workplace, the factory provides 10 jobs and produces 7,000 Simoleons a week. A pub, on the other hand, produces three Productivity, but costs two Creativity and 900 Simoleons; it requires a total of 13 Productivity and 17 Creativity to be built. The pub's status is Venue, so it will not create any jobs, but it boosts the happiness of any visiting Sims by five, although only seven Sims can stop by at any one time.

You can see where the intricate balancing act with these resources might overwhelm players sooner than bore them. Things are simplified slightly by keeping specific society types focused on certain attributes -- our Fun Town, for example, mostly stuck to Creativity with a teensy bit of Spirituality and mere dashes of anything else. The game seems to get far more daunting when you don't want to adhere to one of these templates, which actually kind of makes sense; it shouldn't be easy to successfully drop a modern day art museum in the middle of a futuristic cyberpunk city, so if you decide to do that, you're going to have to go out of your way.


SCREENS: Click the image above to check out all SimCity Societies screens.


Tilted Mill has also tried to mix the obviously open-ended nature of SimCity Societies and the franchise that spawned it with more goal-oriented gameplay through the use of a trophy/medal system. Reaching various quotas, such as a population of 250, nets you achievement-like adornments viewable on the options menu. These bonuses also unlock new building types -- 173 of the aforementioned 500-ish buildings in the game are locked at the start. With an average gameplay session of a couple hours netting maybe five new buildings, replay incentive abounds.

But we cannot stress Tilted Mill's dedication to the mainstream enough. Don't want to worry about natural disaster or generally challenging gameplay? Set the difficulty to "Relaxing" and disasters to "Never" and sit back. Hate waiting for your city to produce cash? Play in "Unlimited Simoleon Mode" or, even better, "Freeplay Mode," which gives you all the buildings unlocked and no energy requirements in addition to a bottomless wallet. Similar options for increasing difficulty exist, but these super-carebear settings may be too much for the scoff-ready SimCity fanatic.

The system in place in Societies is not realistic nor nearly as complicated as SimCity 4, but it seems compelling in its slightly wacky approach to playing mayor. The only real problems we encountered in our play session involved some major slowdown and missing text -- issues that are almost certain to be fixed in the several months before SimCity Societies hits stores.

The coup de grace of the Fun Town tutorial is a Clown School. In addition to providing Creativity and jobs, this building introduces the concept of special moves through "Mimeageddon." By paying 2,500 Simoleons, an army of mimes flooded the street of my town, cheering up citizens for 24 hours. "I hate mimes; they don't make me happy," my friend remarked. I grunted in agreement as I clicked the bulldozer icon. With the ironic image of screaming mimes running from the collapsing school fresh in my mind, I decided I was more cut out for an Authoritarian city, and I set out to change my Simtopia.

[Doady]

If you don't like this new Simcity, just keep playing SC4, not a big deal.

The PC gaming market has been becoming more and more mainstream, that is why 99% of the games now are FPS, MMORPG, or RTS. This change to Simcity are yet another example of developers catering to mainstream.

That is why I have never bothered upgrading my computer for a very long time: PC is pretty much dead now as a gaming platform. No more traditional RPGs, adventure, flight combat simulation, turn-based strategy, and now no more city-building games also.

[Skurry]

I love the old and I am still excited about the new. Anyone picked it up and played SimSocieties yet? I am anxious to hear about peoples first experiences playing it.

[Buckeye Native 001]

^I've been bored surfing the internet the last few weeks, and finally bought Sim City Societies today for $20 at Best Buy. This thing is like the SCURK for SC2K, only on steroids.

Then again, I like the city planning aspect of the game from a social perspective (since I spent half my college years as a sociology major) and had a hard time caring about piping and electricity and taxes when I played SC4 (yeah, I'm that kind of gamer). You basically have to keep the sims that occupy your town happy by placing random stuff all over the place. Right now, I'm just playing the game on Unlimited (on that setting, you have the freedom to place stuff wherever you want) to get a feel for what works and what doesn't, but I'm tempted to try and create my own authoritarian regime sometime in the future when I'm feeling a bit more evil.

My only complaint so far is the camera perspective. You can't zoom out to view the entire city on your computer screen like you can in other SC games, which gets a bit frustrating when you're trying to check out something on the opposite side of the city. It also doesn't help give you any perspective for where you can expand your city. Otherwise, its an interesting concept, but I can see why your typical SC fanboy would hate it, as it lacks most of the city planning concepts that made the previous SC games so popular.