So, you’ve been a fan of SimCity since the first instalment years ago, you have got every single game in the series, and now you’re wondering what the fourth game is like? Well, remember the feeling you had when you played SimCity 3000, and said to yourself “God, this is almost the same as the last one!”? Hold on to your seats and prepare to be struck by severe sense of déjà vu, as SimCity 4 will make you say exactly the same thing.
Then again, did you enjoy SimCity 3000 despite it being so very similar? By the same token, you will most likely also enjoy SimCity 4.
SimCity 4 is essentially a modern day update of SimCity 3000. The graphics engine has been totally revamped, and a few new extra features bolted on (that I’ll go into in just a moment), but fundamentally the game is extremely familiar. You can judge for yourself if that is a good thing, for SimCity fans like my self it is.
Laying the foundation
You start the game differently to previous SimCity games. Instead of going straight in and designing a brand new city you are given something new to contemplate if you’re a veteran, as you now have a whole region to work on.
Cities are no longer played in isolation, in which every city you create has no influence on the other. Now you can think more wide scale, building multiple cities that can either be isolated from each other or connected to the global world around it.
This applies now both in single player, and (finally) online multiplayer. This new feature makes it possible for players to build their cities as per normal, but with the added bonus of being surrounded by other players making their own cities. Before you get the wrong idea, it isn’t really competitive (apart from the obvious “mines better than yours” taunts). You can’t encroach on others territory, or build over others land. You are given your allotment of land on a region, and you just build and share resources.
Once you select a tile to work on you, either on or offline, you then edit the terrain around it in “god mode” before you finally start laying the foundations of the city.
The basic outline of the game remains the same as previous instalments, that SimCity veterans will have no trouble in understanding. For those who are new to this game here is a quick summary. You have the three basic disciplines for your city called Zones; Residential (where your people will live), Commercial (offices, supermarkets, shops) and Industry (manufacturing and production). When you select these zones you are then presented with building them as Low, Medium or High density. Once you place them, your citizens then decide what to build in these zones and off you go.
Building zones isn’t enough though; you need other services to keep your new population happy. This is where you need to deal with providing services for Health, Safety (Police and Fire cover), transport, Water, power, Garbage and recreation that featured in SimCity 3000. Very straightforward, very effective, and very traditional SimCity.
The fundamental basics, but something’s different…
As I said, the fundamental basics are still the same (if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it eh?), but very early in the game veterans will quickly notice that something isn’t quite right. At first you won’t be able to put your finger on it, and then it hits you.
Unlike previous games, just because you build a medium or high density zone no longer means in SC4 that a huge sky scraper will just develop there! It now takes time for bigger structures to appear in your city. The pace of the game has now been radically altered by Maxis.
There is now a staggering amount of work to put in before your city even starts to get slightly moving. Unlike the last three games you can’t build up a sprawling metropolis in only a few hours play. SC4 sets out to dramatically slow down your progress. You can only start building upwards, rather than outwards, after a load of demands have been satisfied, of which I still have no idea exactly what they are!
The manual ‘hints’ at what kind of things are needed for skyscrapers (good education, good mayor rating, high desirability etc.) but this all takes a lot of time and is by no means certain for you to get bigger city buildings.
To give you a sense of the time taken, I’ve had the game for about a month now, and my population of my most worked-on city is about 9000 people. Now, there are some rewards available to you when your population is around 55,000 people! How I am ever going to get to that level in my lifetime is a mystery to me (particularly as I have almost already filled my entire map of stuff).
I understand why this move by the developers is in place, after all in reality a city with huge skyscrapers doesn’t just grow overnight, but takes years to develop and grow. However, I think they were far too over-zealous on this factor, and the pace could have been made a little faster. Also add this to the fact that it is incredibly difficult early on in the game to balance your budget so you don’t hit the red and you get the scenario where this version of SimCity could put off many casual gamers of the series, and even alienate some impatient hardcore fans with this pace issue.
Apart from these factors, and the new idea of regions (in both single player or online), SimCity 4 is essentially the same game as previous SimCity’s with a few added features that really don’t influence the game genre too much. These little new features that make you go “Cool” but don’t really affect Gameplay. Being able to alter the tax levels of certain classes (poor, middle and rich) to influence what type of residents you get, putting Sims (from the game of the same name) to live in your city, Day to night changes, dealing with riots, and catching criminals in your city red-handed are a few noteworthy examples.
