I’m a long time fan of the SimCity games and have owned every release since the start. In the latest edition we see some old ideas updated and really cool concepts that we have never seen before. You get the mix of sim social behavior from the previous release along with the best parts of building from earlier editions. If you have never played SimCity before the idea of the game is to manage and build a city to your own expectations; you get to choose your goals. You plan out your city plotting zones for residential, commercial and industrial. Placing roads, public transit, trains, sea ports and even airports. Have fun balancing a budget for a change with the commerce and taxes in your city or go broke trying to keep sims happy. In a few words you are to plan the city design, balance the budget and the happiness of your city in this complex simulation. The original SimCity concept is fully intact, you still ultimately want to build a growing city with wealthy businesses, healthy residents and low polluting high tech industry.
A huge change for SimCity 5 is the addition of region play. The idea is to have cities connected together to support the growth of neighboring cities. This is an interesting feature and I really hope that the initial bugs are worked out. As not everything works as expected or has huge delays. Since I’m writing this article just for fun I won’t go into listing them here.
I personally am happy to see that zones once again join together and build up. I had really missed watching the progress of a city based on the height of it’s skyline. Being able to zoom to street level with a cool camera effect is visually satisfying, I have to say I love it. You can watch your sims and buildings go about their daily tasks up close. Even more impressive is the visual candy from the latest expansion “The Cities of Tomorrow”. Just wow!
The game does have its issues and bugs but as a true SimCity fan I await the patches. If you haven’t check out SimCiy 5 I suggest you do so.
