Anyone get it yet? I’m usually a sucker for anything Sim City, but they seem to have switched up the formula from past games and are trying something relatively different. (Apparently the Maxis group is working on some little game called “Spore”.)
So anyone get it yet? Good? Bad?
I assume you’re talking about SimCity Societies?
I haven’t played it, but the initial reviews aren’t good. It seems quite different from previous SimCity games. On the other hand, it’s made by alums of the Impressions city-building games, which I’ve liked, so I’ll probably give it a shot at some point.
First things first: As you have undoubtedly read, this is not a SimCity game. Despite the title, which is really just a sales gimmick by EA, there is no connection to SimCity whatsoever. While I am a fan of the old SimCity games, this is fine by me, but I’m really glad I knew that before getting the game. If I had been suckered into buying the game without knowing that, I would’ve been pissed. I suspect this tactic has lead to at least some of the bad reviews it has gotten.
That having been said, the game has serious problems. It’s too easy – and I like this sort of sim to be on the easy side. You just turn it on and go, there’s not really anything to stand in your way as an obstacle.
Also, it crashes a lot. You know the guys that made the game knew this, because it auto-saves every ten minutes. Which is an annoying interruption and takes several seconds with a beginner city and keeps getting longer as your city grows. But it’s absolutely necessary, because you never know when the thing’ll just lock up on you.
On the other hand, it does look nice. I love being able to do free 3D rotations to get the “sims-eye” view of my city streets. I’ve enjoyed playing it for that reason alone. But because that’s really the only reason to play it, I imagine I’ll get tired of it in a month or so and never touch it again.
Ponder: Have you tried making one of those themed cities - the shiny financial city, the dystopian industrial city, the bucolic agrarian city, etc? That’s what the whole “Societies” thing seems to be about.
I’ve played around with making themed cities. Some, like Fun City (which is the tutorial), are really easy; other themes aren’t as easy unless you don’t mind your city not having much variety.
Hm. Maybe they’ll release a patch for it soon to fix that.
You know, that’s one thing the Internet has done against video games: crappy games could be released with a “oh, we can just patch it later” wave of the hand.
I bought this game last week. I have only played the original SimCity and this one looked like too much fun.
The first night I played it, I got really pissy and decided I’d wasted my money. As Ponder mentioned above, the game is too easy. Really, really easy. I mean look, I am not one of those people gifted with the ability to rock video games – there is no reason it should be so easy for ME. There’s basically no conflict in the story line.
Everything is a matter of balancing numbers. For example, if you have 45 open jobs, best be sure you have 45 available sims. But it is the easiest thing to do in the world to maintain that balance. It’s the easiest thing to maintain all the balances. For example, if a shrine costs 8 ‘‘spiritual’’ point to build, then all you have to do is put something else on the map that generates spirituality… like a Buddha statue or something.
Making money in the game is also ridiculously easy (caveat–I have the game set on ‘‘normal’’’; there is a hard mode but I don’t remember what that entails.) As far as I can tell, roads don’t deteriorate and things rarely need repair… and you don’t even have to connect the power sources to the homes with power lines, you just put the Power Plant on the map and it automatically produces energy even if your house is clear on the other side of the board.
I did, however, eventually come back to the game, and enjoyed playing it a second time. I’ll probably play it again at some point in the future, because there are some good novelty things. The best thing about the game is the graphics and how you can zoom in and examine things in detail. Your sims are actually visible and have names and you can click on them to see what they’re doing/thinking and check on their mood.
There are also a ton of different things you can unlock and build… I’ve only unlocked about half of them so far… and the game seems to be getting more complex as I unlock more things. There are lots of cutesy little surprises, like a chocolate factory that generates income, and the fact that your liberal arts college has a 25% chance of generating a hippie (once your sim is a hippie, he takes up unnecessary space at venues.)
The game isn’t really SimCity, but it’s sort of vaguely basically like it.
I haven’t tried to do any ‘‘pure’’ societies… mine right now is super spiritual and super knowledge based, which is kind of the way an ideal one would be for me. There are entertaining things like Propaganda Seminars and giant MegaChurches that produce proselytizers (and money, naturally.) Certain buildings do have unique effects on sims and their mood/behavior. The buildings are all beautifully rendered and the variety makes for a quite interesting landscape.
So really, I think it’s kind of a neat game even though it’s easy.
But I haven’t really decided yet if it was worth my $50. I’ll get back to you.
I haven’t played SimCity Societies, but I’m really disappointed that they didn’t make SimCity 5.
I mean, duh!
Here we have the SimCity franchise, a smash phenomenon with a cult following, and what do they do? They take a massive departure from a proven formula. Good move. :rolleyes:
I know the makers were worried about SimCity because they felt they had painted themselves into a corner with the complexity. But all they would have had to do with SimCity 5 is offer different levels of complexity. The rest would have been a no-brainer: New tile sets. Flowing surface water that follows terrain contours. Weather. Online regions where you work with others. 3D city-viewing capability.
But no, they release SimCity Societies to, surprise, lukewarm reviews. Later they will return to the path with SimCity 5 and say, “Gee, maybe we should have done this in the first place.”, something the fans always new all along.
You know, I really dug Sim City 4 with the Mass Transit Add-on. It was a damned good game. Part of me wishes there was just an upgrade in graphics and UI and such and that’s it.
I like to think of it as the Simsville they promised me and hyped for ever-so-long and then cancelled without warning. I know they incorporated some of Simsville into other titles later, but this game reminds me a lot of the sort of thing they were talking about before they killed it off.
Has anyone who’s play SimCity Societies also played the Impressions city-building games (Caesar, Pharaoh, Zeus)? I think that might be a fairer comparison.
Yep, that’s pretty much what you do in the game. I’ve created three “societies” or cities or whatever you want to call them so far, and I’ll probably go through the list and when I finish that’ll be that.
Don’t get me wrong, the game’s OK … although I wish it didn’t crash so often.
But it just doesn’t have the mesmerizing time-wasting gloriousness of a real SimCity game, that’s all.
Oh, Shamozzle, the reason I heard they didn’t make SimCity 5 is that Maxxis has had all of its resources committed to Spore for quite some time and EA wanted something with a “SimCity” label on it. Or so I heard.
Hm…I thought I heard something about that in the first post…