My first experience of the SimCity franchise can be
traced all the way back to my time in elementary school, a game that was so
different and fun even though it shouldn’t have been to a group of second
graders. It is fair to say that I am invested in this franchise and as such
this becomes a difficult review to write. If you have searched anything SimCity
related recently then you are probably already aware of the crippling issues
regarding EA’s Origin servers. If you haven’t seen anything about that, fear
not I’ll cover that in a bit. I thought about what the appropriate way to
review the game would be; whether the Origin problems and the Maxis developed
side of things could be looked at separately. What I realized however, is that
separating the two is impossible because of the always online nature of the
game. As it stands now (and there is no reason to believe it will ever change)
is that even if the user wishes to play by his or herself, constant connection
to SimCity’s servers are required. Had the game contained completely separate
offline and online modes, I could justify two different ratings but alas I
cannot. So with that in mind…
My frustration with the game came before its North
American release as I had foolishly preordered the game in anticipation for
some kind of pre-load option which has become something of an industry standard
recently with highly popular releases. When this never happened I knew that
downloading the game at midnight would be a disaster, and it was. Despite a
midnight release I wasn’t even able to unlock and download the game until the
next morning. This already had a lot of people upset, but I was willing to pass
this off as just an exercise in poor judgment and move on. That’s when the real
problems began. Just trying to log on was a major chore and even in failure
there was no consistency. Every failure to connect on the launch menu seemed to
produce a different error and more than once, the game would launch and THEN
disconnect in menus. After I finally made it into my city, I was met with
server connections dropping in and out, a terribly laggy region chat, and a
nonfunctioning friends list. Worst of all, complete lack of city to city
communication in a game that had been built around such interaction led me to
utter chaos. As I type this review, the connection issues have improved and
region communication is more stable. However, disconnects are still commonplace
and I can’t even update successfully. The fact that the game centers around
interaction with other cities basically breaks the game and renders it
currently unplayable.
I would be lying if I said the gameplay itself
wasn’t fantastic however. Maybe it stems from the pure joy I receive when I get
just get that 40 minutes of perfect, uninterrupted play, but in that time the
game is a blast. There is a reason that despite the ineptitude of Origin,
people all around the world are still fighting for access. Maxis’ new glassbox
engine truly is head and shoulders above previous engines. Whereas in past
installments, population and happiness were mere statistics that could be
altered by lowering taxes or building a park, glassbox truly simulates a city
and all those people in it. Every Sim the player sees walking around the city
is clickable. That Sim has a house, a job, and a routine. Kids go to school at
the appropriate hours, streets fill with Sims after work trying to beat rush
hour, and Police officers patrol city blocks at night. The whole experience
feels organic and smooth especially when coupled with SimCity’s improved map overlays.
Vibrant, animated, and clear are the most fitting ways to describe the
statistical maps layered on top of your city.
The engine has also streamlined the city building
process is mostly good ways. No longer is the player responsible for laying
down water pipes or electric. As it is in reality these things tend to run
under and along roads so all of the utilities are taken care of for you (you of
course still have to build the water powers, power plants, etc.) This change
leads to much more plausible and ascetically pleasing creations. The ability to
upgrade your buildings and add on modules to improve them is also a much needed
update especially because space in SimCity is at a premium. This brings me to
my next point; there are a couple of downsides to the engine, and presently
they are: 1) city size and 2) lack of features.
I read somewhere that SimCity, which only has one
map size, was comparable to SimCity 4’s medium map. It certainly feels smaller
to me, but I always played on the largest maps. For most people the smaller
geographic space in which you have to work will be felt pretty quickly. Playing
diligently for a day will, it is entirely possible to fill up the entire area
in which you have to work with. The focus then becomes about managing density,
but as of now don’t expect to see any New York sized metropolises. Also missing are some staples of previous
installments like Subways, “God-mode” terraforming, and city ordinances (my
personal favorite) that have been removed. Rest assured, bigger map size, and
transportation add ons are probably coming in the future, but as paid DLC or
expansion packs ala The Sims series.
The one feature that has truly changed the game for
better or for worse is the addition of city specialization. In addition to
building your city, you can now hone in on the areas of ore, coal, oil,
culture, gambling, or education. Each of these tracks grants you access to
special buildings that will guide you down the appropriate path. I have mixed
feelings about it thus far. The idea of specializing a city and carving out a
niche sounds great, but in practice I’ve found it to be too….easy. Some of the
problems may be stemming from server instability, but so far the prices for
goods (like oil) that you can sell on the global market are fixed. Once I
started selling crude oil, the amount of money I was making far outstripped my
city expenses and almost felt like cheating. While it makes perfect sense that
an oil rich city would have the capacity to rake in profits, it probably
shouldn’t be possible to “beat” the game in a couple days by having a maxed out
city with millions of simoleons and nothing new to do. The creators of SimCity
suggest that the object of smaller cities was to get players to make and manage
multiple interdependent cities in one region. That would be ok if: a) There wasn’t
a real threat of being kicked off a server every time you changed cities, and
b) The maximum number of cities in one
region was more than 16.
When I joined a public region for the first time, it
filled up pretty quickly. It already seems like an unwritten rule that it is
impolite to claim two cities in one region while everyone else has one. Within
a week, 16 small cities max out and the region seems to lose its effectiveness.
Maybe it’s from incorrect expectations, but I envisioned joining a region to be
filled with gradual organic growth. As it stands now, any focused region can
run out of things to do, short of demolishing entire cities and rebuilding them
with a different focus. “Running out of things to do” was NEVER something that
I even approached in SimCity 3000 (my favorite of the franchise).
In some ways, this review remains incomplete. As
more servers are added and stability improves I will reevaluate it. However, as
of now, SimCity is only a partially playable mess with interesting new game
mechanics wrapped underneath.
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