Product Description

• Make an artistic city, a romantic one, a police state... or anything you want.
• Build the city with unique homes, businesses, and roads.
• Unlock new buildings as you city develops.
• Unique Sims appearance and behaviours fit each city type.
• Special lighting, music and details in world bring the unique themes to life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #713 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2007-11-16
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk Review

Back when designer Will Wright started making games it was SimCity which was his first big success, helping to define the concept of god games and social simulators. Over the years though the series got ever more complicated and less appealing, so that when The Sims was released in 2000 it put the old city simulators completely in its shadow. Now though the whole SimCity concept has been rethought to the point where this isn’t really a sequel to SimCity 4 at all but a whole new game somewhere between the original and The Sims.

There’s no zoning of industrial, commercial or residential areas in this game but instead you can just plonk down any building down wherever you want. In this sense the zoning concept is turned inside out with the buildings themselves casting an influence on those nearby, with various kinds of "energy". There’s wealth energy which radiates from industrial buildings, devotional energy from farms and churches, obedience energy from government buildings and so on.

As odd as the idea may sound it allows cities to be built up much more quickly and with a far greater level of control over the citizens that inhabit them. Whereas before it was a real effort just to get a small town working now you can raise giant dystopian towers wherever you want and see the population reduced to an Orwellian nightmare – or opt for a more pastoral layout and watch everyone skipping around the haystacks. The import thing is it makes SimCity, and social engineering, fun again.

Customer Reviews

very, very disappointing
I was really looking forward to this and have been completely let down. It is a travesty that this bears the simcity name.

The game play and senarios are truly awful. Manual adjustment of the camera angles is annoying.

You can't trace an unhappy sim except by searching the entire city for them street by street and hope you haven't missed them while they are in a building or in the subway.

Overall, after several weeks of trying this, I can say that - the game play is annoying, the buildings are badly thought out and created and, even in beginners learning mode, there is little help with the reasoning behind the placing of buildings. Some buildings have somekind of impact on other buildings (but which ones is not explained in the game play or in the in box booklet. It's no wonder the user guide (available for purchase) is the size of an american phonebook - WHAT A LET DOWN !!!!

Insulting
With SimCity4, EA knew they were painting themselves into a corner with the series, the 'game' becoming every less fun and more a delicate balancing act, the player juggling twenty different balls. So, EA decided that a radical rethink was needed, and, what seems an almost knee-jerk reaction to the cries of 'this game is too hard!' SimCity Societies comes along... a SimCity game only in name.

The concept of hand-crafting your cities, rather than zoning for construction is a big change, and of course makes the rate at which your city grows much slower. But it also means that realism gets thrown out of the window. Want a 'city' that consists of twelve tower blocks, two skyscrapers and a deli? You got it. The evolution and growth of your city is non-existent... once you place a building, it's there until it gets knocked down. Another big change is the fact that utilities are almost completely done away with. Laying water, waste and power networks is now a thing of the past... your only consideration is whether the city has enough power; no matter where all your other buildings are placed, they'll automatically be powered if there's enough juice to go round.

The third and for me most insulting change is the overall look. Of course, the change to full 3D means that the graphics can't be as sharp, and many games take on a slight cartoony look to both mask and utilise this current limitation, but SCS is just a riot of bright colours and cartoony graphics that is more fitting for CBBC than any gamer over the age of thirteen. Even the way each building's info is laid out borrows heavily from trading card games such as 'Pokemon.'

In conclusion, EA were so busy going in the opposite direction to their previous game that they didn't realise just how big a mess of purile drivel they were creating. Instead of making the game more accessible, they just gutted it of every ounce of depth it possessed. Not only have they completely alienated the entire (extremely passionate) long-standing SimCity fanbase, but they have failed to create a game that will increase this fanbase.

In short, EA has yet again destroyed a long-standing and well-loved franchise with their over-zealous dumbing-down techniques.

Don't miss out....
I like many other have awaited the release of this game with dread, in fact, not buying it until months after realease.

Why oh why did they get rid of zoning? Why have Tilted Mill and not beloved Maxis designed it? Why only 2 roads? Why no utilities? The list of 'whys' goes on and on....

...then I actually bought and played the game.

No this isn't Sim City 5 nor the Sims 3 (of which I eagerly await), what it is is one of the best city 'design' games I have played. The problem I found with previous Simcity games (although love them) was that I could never quite create the city I was envisaging due to the random nature of zoning. This is a game that lets you create the city of your dreams. Graphically stunning and a superb interface.

Is this better than Simcity 4? In some ways yes in others no. The point is its a different game entirely.

Admittedly there is no real goal but was there ever in any other Sim games?

My PC is over 2 years old but this game plays fine, 20 minutes to install, 5 to download the patch. Been playing for 3 days now with no crashes.

Forget previous Simcity games before buying this - have an open mind and enjoy. Seriously