Our preview of Sim City by Maxis Studio.
Maxis, the creators of the Sims and Spoor franchise, have always had big intentions for its original start up. Allowing players the control to unleash UFO’s on your citizens, to making sure you have enough funding for electricity and water for your city to run smoothly. The series has always been about giving players unprecedented control and freedom, while simulating an accurate portrayal how our society works. It’s been more than ten years since we last saw Maxis return to the series. Since that time, video games have advanced allowing for a more complete version to be brought to table while introducing more ideas to the puzzle. It’s time to once again revisit the epic that is, Sim City.
The first time I played the series was Sim City 4. It’s not the best looking game, however that isn’t the charm of series. The layers upon layers of city building mechanics combined with real time gameplay, but has always had one problem. It was a very complex game using a frustrating user interface that was unusable for what the game was trying to offer. In the newest installment, everything has been streamlined, which in result allows a better gameplay experience.
TIME TO EXPAND
For the first time in the series you can now expand on current utilities that you have. In the beginning stages of building your city you will only need one of each utility, but when more people start to settle down things started to change. Criminals started to out number my cops and I couldn’t put out fires in a timely manner because I only had one fire truck rooming my city. What made it worse is that my city was starting to be ground zero for a zombie infestation (true story) due to the number of people dying every month in my city because I didn’t have enough first aide ambulances.
So what was the solution? Before in Sim City 4 the answer would be buying services until you know you covered your city, but that has changed. At any point when your growing your city you can upgrade your services allowing them to become more useful. Now you can actually make starting clinics better than traditional hospitals in the game because you are purchasing more vehicles, and more staff to work 24/7. It’s about expanding what you already have and making better in the long run.
