Review: SimCity (PC) - is city-builder reboot for 2013 a success?

When the original SimCity game along 24 years ago it was like designer Will Wright had been listening to my thoughts because here was a dream-come-true game for simulation fans – the chance to create a metropolis from scratch and become its mayor.

Lacking visual flair and many features which would be included in later editions, the game was still very sophisticated for its era. In fact, its open-ended sandbox style of play was well ahead of its time.

Fast-forward to 2013 and I’m still a big fan of simulation and strategy games.

And, despite being blond and prone to foot-in-mouth moments, I’m still just as unlikely as ever to get the chance to run a major real-world city such as London.

It’s for these reasons that I welcomed the release of the sixth and latest game in the SimCity series.

Simply called SimCity, it is the first new PC title for six years, although there have been slightly stripped back versions on other platforms such as iOS in the intervening years.

I was excited to see what developer Maxis had done with the full-scale game but unfortunately first impressions were not good.

Like many people before me, I encountered early technical problems which prevented me from initially enjoying the experience.

I didn't quite see evidence of the things that have led to this being widely described as the "worst launch in video games history", but it still wasn't a smooth start. In my case the interactive tutorial would get to a certain point and then not let me go any further. After searching around on forums I came across a couple of bizarre possible solutions, one of which worked because at about the sixth time of asking I was able to get through and finally start building my own city.

During the early stages of creating my own Simontopia the game was very familiar, and it has remained so for much of my play afterwards, Using the game’s various tools and menus, the task is to create a fledgling settlement by laying down roads, building infrastructure such as water and power plants and zoning areas of land for residential, commercial and industrial use.

Over time the city you have created grows in size and population, and you’ll then be adding new things to it all the time – fire and police stations, hospitals, schools and universities, parks and many more items.

All the while you’re expanding your city you’ll need to stay conscious of keeping the populous happy while generating as much revenue as possible. As well as raising money through taxes, this time around you can also raise money by turning your city into a hub for certain specialisations such as drilling, mining, manufacturing high-tech goods or gambling.

As your city grows you’ll be called upon to resolve various crises such as industries closing down to a lack of skilled workers, your urban sprawl getting clogged up with traffic, pollution spreading through your city and so on. In addition to firefighting residents' problems, you'll need to keep improving your city, such as by introducing mass transit systems, without causing too much damage to what you've already created.

You'll be part politician, part economist, part business CEO, part city planner and part lots of other things that go into the role of mayor in SimCity.

The main mechanics of SimCity really haven't changed much in this reboot of the series so it remains a deep and complex game, with a lot of information to take in and stats to keep track of. Yet, like earlier editions, it still maintains a certain level of friendliness that makes it just about accessible to non-hardcore strategists.

If you read other reviews of SimCity many will tell you not only about the horrendous launch problems the title had but also about it being rife with bugs. These may well emerge after more than the 20 hours or so I’ve spent in the game so far, but other than the tutorial problem I’ve not seen anything I’d consider to be a major glitch.

The first, and most obvious, difference between this version of SimCity and its predecessors is the way it looks. Graphics have come a long way so everything looks more authentic. When zooming in to get a closer look at city life, there is some impressive attention to detail to be seen. The game has never been so easy on the eye.

The aesthetic, and indeed audio, charm of SimCity is very akin to EA's other people game, The Sims 3.

The other main differences in this new version of SimCity are all to do with the structure of the game.

Instead of being a solo offline game where the player gets to create a single city as big as they want completely in their own vision, SimCity 2013 is a Massively Multiplayer Online game where players are always connected to the internet and where many small cities are joined within regions.

Creating a city from the ground up and then helping it (hopefully\) flourish remains as satisfying and absorbing as it always was. The contents may be shinier and modernised but SimCity still offers the same delightful box of toys to play with.

This time, however, there are limits and unless you're prepared to manage multiple cities on your own or join up with other players SimCity will be a very restricted experience.

All the plots of land you can choose from at the beginning are very small and cannot be expanded. Your city will very quickly fill up and reach capacity, a deliberate design ploy to make you either claim other neighbouring cities in your region to control or work with other nearby mayors to strike deals for the exchange of utilities, resources and services.

This inter-connected approach extends to citizens being able to commute between different cities for work, education and tourism, while what one player does in their city can have an effect on other players' settlements within the same region.

There are certain advantages to this collaborative concept. If you have friends on EA’s Origin social network (which I don’t) I can see that playing the game with people you know could be fun. Plus, having many cities connected to each other adds an extra level of realism, rather than just one city existing in isolation.

However, there are also big problems with the way this new SimCity has been designed.

While it is possible to manage an entire region of up to 16 cities yourself as a way of making sure you have enough room for everything and circumventing the push to play with others, this soon becomes a logistical pain.

The other route which players will choose or feel forced to take is to run a region with a group of random online strangers. This requires players to work at a similar pace to each other and to work co-operatively. If you get stuck in a region with 15 stupid people who are all anti-social, you’re not going to get very far.

I’m not dead-set against the synergic approach to city-building, but I’m still uncomfortable with the direction SimCity has been taken.

Being a single-player sandbox experience where you could do pretty much whatever you wanted to was one of the things which made previous versions of the game so compulsive.

SimCity hasn’t been butchered in the same way as Theme Park was by EA when it was given a crappy freemium makeover for release on iPhone and iPad, but it’s still a troubling development that players have to accept a once-great solo game being turned into a social MMO whether they like it or not.

Overall, there is still a lot to like about this refresh of the SimCity franchise and in many ways it stays faithful to the original from all those years ago. It’s just a shame that in a game with supposedly endlessly possibilities, one thing people aren’t allowed to choose is how they play it.

Verdict: 7.5 out of 10