Addict of Fiction: [Post]
Maxis is one of those companies that are very good at recreating popular games to keep up with their audience and keeping the technology they use at the top of its game. The Sims is a prime example of their ability to upgrade graphics and the overall game quality as players gain better computers and can handle more. The SimCity franchise is no different! The regeneration of the SimCity franchise will be available Feb 2013 and is definitely a MUST-HAVE for all previous fans of the franchise.
At the Eurogamer Expo, SimCity was one of the first games
that I happily queued up to get a look at as I was already looking forward to
it – being able to play a demo of the game was just a giant bonus.
The demo was a simple tutorial of the game that took you through a multitude of
things which taught you how to play the game with hints on how your actions
could affect the way your city runs. For example: If you build educational
buildings within your city – you’re making the people smarter and they become
more tuned with issues within your city (like pollution etc), which can both be
good and bad thing.
So, in the demo you are faced with a numerous amount of
protestors at the city hall and you have to make them all happy so they just
leave you alone. This includes building a basic road to the nearest motorway
(or highway… it’s all American terminology…), turning on the power plant, creating
a sewage system, building fire stations – the list goes on. One of the simple
parts of the game that impressed me is the way that you are able to ‘upgrade’
buildings and add extra parts onto it. For example: adding a new block to the
university or adding more garages to the dump so there are more garbage trucks
(or for the English – Dust-bin men) to handle your growing city.
The game also has quests to complete, ranging from the
simple “gain 300 population” to “increase your daily income to +$10000”, with
many others in between. Individual Sims can also give you quests relating to
them and how you can make their lives just that little bit easier.
After creating join roads, segments appear which you can
either leave blank or set to a theme: residential, commercial, or industrial.
By setting a theme, people that come to your city and will automatically begin
to build buildings on that segment relating to that theme. If a building
collapses or becomes abandoned on the segment, if you knock it down it frees up
space and the Sims begin building on it all again. By having a sweet balance of
each zone allows a city to fully be prosperous and hopefully happy.
Finally at the end of the demo you received your first-hand
experience of the natural disasters as a large meteor shower falls and destroys
half of your city. It was truly amazing, but kind of made me sad as I lost half
of my hard work.
Overall, this game is beautiful and is truly going to
deliver the city-building simulation revival that everyone has been waiting
for. I can’t wait to try out all the awesome features when it releases –
including all the multiplayer options.
Thanks for listening!
Toodles x
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