Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1092 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2007-11-16
• 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

I actually really enjoy this game!
Ok it's not a game I could play for hours and hours until the sun starts rising again, but it's a game I can play for a few hours just blissfully enjoying myself making up interesting towns and cities.

It's nothing like the other Simcity games and you shouldn't expect it to be. I would say it's a game you don't have to think about too much which I enjoy, especially at the end of a long day when I don't want to tax my brain too much.

If you take it for what it is, a simple city building game with not too many worries about water, subways etc and the ability to decide what sort of tower blocks, workplaces etc you want then this is the game for you. If you only really want a Simcity 4 game then don't get it.

I did buy this game and then check the reviews and panic that I'd bought something that's rubbish, but when I played it I realised that it wasn't rubbish it's just different and it shouldn't be slated for that.

It's not perfect.
I have to admit I impulse-bought this game while out one day. Is it bad? No. Is it as good as SimCity 2000 or 3000? No.

If you want to while away a few hours creating happy sims or a dystopian nightmare, Societies is good for you. If you want the grand designs of the previous games, you'll be disappointed in this.

I liked playing it, but it got me wanting to play SC3k again (I hated the excessive micromanagement of SC4). If you're looking for a city simulation that doesn't require too much work to fill a few hours, Societies is worth a look. Otherwise, stick to the earlier games - they are still the pinnacle of building a 'proper' city.

It's a middle of the road game, which is a shame. The biggest issue I have with it is that you can't zoom out far enough to view the 'big picture'.

(And if you can't get this working in Vista, trying running it in Windows xp compatibility mode and 'Run as administrator' - that got it working for me)

Read the small print...
Unfortunately I strayed from my habit of only buying games after I've read or heard plenty of reviews from plenty of sources. I had time to kill while I was waiting for a bus last week and I found this game in a nearby second hand book/dvd/game store. I enjoyed all the other Sim City games and I was excited to find such a new release at a second hand price. I now know why it was there, and I wish I'd left it where it was.

I installed the game on my laptop (which is less than a year old) when I got home. It was the lengthiest installation I've ever experienced. I tried to play the game when it'd finally installed, but it consistently crashed my system every time I tried to interact with the game's first menu screen. I installed the game on two other machines in the house: desktop computers, much higher spec than my laptop. I managed to play the game for about twenty minutes on one before it crashed.

On that note, I wasn't impressed with what I saw of the game. The look and feel was nothing like any of the other Sim Cities that I'd enjoyed so much and found so addictive. The game play didn't make much sense to me; I just couldn't buy into it, and the graphics although pretty were not suited to this type of game: the buildings were nice to look at but incredibly difficult to manipulate.

My sibling expressed concern that I was causing his computer to crash so frequently with this game, so the next morning I gave the game to a friend at college who knows much more than me about computer hardware. He took the game home and he told me later that he couldn't believe that something so "flakey" and riddled with bugs could be released as a finished product. He pointed out a couple of very important sentences on the back of the game's cover (included as a footnote in tiny, tiny print) which read:

"supported chipsets: NVDIA GeForce 5900 (GeForce 6800 for Vista) or greater; ATI Radeon 9600 (ATI Radeon X600 for Vista) or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required. Notice: This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some DVD-ROM, DVD-RW and virtual drives."

Apparently the greatest challenge in this game is getting the thing to run.