SimCity off the rails

[CHamilton]

I'm not much of a gamer, but a friend (who's a city planner in NYC) posted an interesting review that I thought would be of interest to the two-track minds around here. Of course, we've all heard about their server and DRM problems, but it turns out there are some deeper issues.

Now that I've actually been able to log in and play, my official verdict of the new SimCity?: a disappointment. They tossed out essentially everything that was compelling about the franchise in favor of multiplayer and regional play.

Individual cities are too small; you can fully zone one out in a bit over an hour. The small size plus the square boundary leaves you with not much flexibility in design.

There's no terraforming. What you get is what you're stuck with.

Density is controlled via road upgrades: low density roads beget low density housing. To increase densities, you must upgrade the road. The problem is that you have to click EACH INDIVIDUAL ROAD SEGMENT on your entire map. Individually. Each one. It. Takes. Forever.

Building choices are stripped down; no more museums, or beaches, cemeteries, churches, marinas. Transportation flat out sucks: no more monorails, or freeways, OR SUBWAYS. You get buses and streetcars (which are built as part of a multi-lane avenue type that you don't have room to build enough of to make a difference). The lack of building choice means that building a city is reduced in importance in favor of multiplayer and regional play.

Plus data maps, while richer in information, are graphically compromised. A big part of the fun of SimCity4 was building a subway system or bus network and watching the volume and flow in the data map. That's now completely gone; there's no view that replicates that... you just see the buses moving around and bar charts of the number of passengers waiting. You get no sense of heavy volume routes. Plus, did i mention, NO F*$%ING SUBWAYS!

The addition of a colorblind mode is most welcome by me, however, you failed to convert the map legends into the same color scheme, so it's useless.

Personally, I was excited to play the rich, immersive, detailed SimCity of SimCity4 only with a more sophisticated modeling engine underlying it and better graphics. Instead, they tried to "reimagine" SimCity, which was so addictive precisely because it gave you ultimate, detailed, granular control over the workings of the city, backed up by real Sims that lived and moved within your creation. Now they've gone and given us something more like Spore: interesting to tinker with but without staying power. Unfortunately, this is going to lose its lustre very, very quickly.

 

[Ryan]

Sounds disappointing... Guess I'll stick with the old version...

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

I'm still waiting for the new Cities in Motion even though it probably won't have the trackless trolleys and BRT.

 

[Anderson]

The latest incarnation of SimCity has been a royal Charlie Foxtrot from what I can tell. Most of the problem was forcing an MMO experience into a game that really has no need or use for it to be a good game. City-building games don't lend themselves to multiplayer naturally, and any such aspects are really incidental to the game unless you force them to be integral.

And, of course, that's where EA went horribly, horribly wrong: They decided to force everything they could server-side. Saved games? They're on the servers. Lots of the processing is, too, and so is the "world" that your cities are jammed into. And the cities are so small that functionally you have to take "advantage" of the regions (whereas at least in SC4, a large-size city was big enough to ignore the rest of a region). Gone, too, is the old ability to save a game and go back to it if something goes wrong. All of this taken together turned the server issues from a minor embarrassment into a total nightmare. Oops.

The Sim City franchise has been somewhat off the rails for a while: SC3K (that is, Sim City 3000) and SC4 both had a mix of advantages and disadvantages over SC2K (which was markedly better than the original, to be fair), but in aggregate I found SC2K to be the best of the set. SC3K had a smaller "feel" to the cities, and there were some elements that I can't place my finger on that just weren't quite as good. I would put it roughly on par with SC2K, if perhaps just a hair behind.

SC4 tended towards smaller-to-midsized cities, which I remember avoiding like the plague. SC4 also had the "regional play" issue, forcing you to back out of a city and go into another to optimize things (though with a little effort, you could mostly ignore this). The Network Addition Mod and Street Widening Mod were nice player-induced changes, but were also a pain in the rear to use and often involved a bunch of trial, error, and a bit of screaming to get the "puzzle pieces" to behave like you wanted them to. The authors did their best, but the game just didn't accommodate them like I might wish it had; the game wasn't bad, but it was never particularly great.*

Which brings us full circle to SimCity, which took the worst elements of the last game and expanded upon them quite impressively: Whereas SC4 had small, medium, and large cities, SimCity has just "small". Where SC4 had a semi-optional regional system (in that it could be ignored with some ease if you so desired), SimCity makes this functionally unavoidable.

Moreover, as noted, transit planning (on your own, as separate from dropping roads) is largely gone, as is zoning (which is 100% tied to roads now...which, as noted in another review, means that you can be stuck with a choice between letting a traffic jam go unresolved or putting in a bigger road and watching high-rises pop up). Non-road-linked transit methods are also gone. So are expressways

I might consider SimCity without the persistent online connection requirement for $10 (and feel vaguely ripped off by it). As it stands, there's not a chance in hell I'll play it. As a rule, if I can't play a game's single-player version in the evening on the Cap or the Chief, before I go to sleep but after the sun has gone down, then I don't need the game. I don't need this game.

Note: What would I have preferred? Larger single city sizes, a moderate selection of transit options (subway, bus, and LRT being the big ones...I'll admit that monorails and waterbuses aren't a must-have for me, though I'd support commuter rail going in as well), some improved traffic/transit simulating in the vein of what SC4 worked on, and some added zoning options (such as mixed-use complexes). More importantly, less emphasis on intercity/regional play (though including some things here might not be the worst thing in the world, it should be easily ignored/turned off).

*I'm not even going to dignify SimCity Societies with inclusion here, but the mess that that game came across as was, as I recall, pretty spectacular.

 

[Alphacow]

I agree. The game is a huge disappointment. So many bugs too. For example: Train stations don't necessarily work.

 

[Tracktwentynine]

City-building games don't lend themselves to multiplayer naturally, and any such aspects are really incidental to the game unless you force them to be integral.

Ironic, because city-building itself is very much multi-player.

I haven't played the new SimCity yet, but I have seen some videos of play online, and while I'm disappointed in this version, I don't think it will be an entire failure.

I think SC4 + Rush Hour + Add-Ons will continue to stand as the best SimCity. But hopefully Maxis will build on the new platform of SC5 to create an even-better SC6. And hopefully SC6 won't have the always-online business that seems to have been such a miscalculation.

As an urban planner, I am quite disappointed, especially in tying roads to density and removing basically all the transit options. The new SC5 is very much auto-oriented. But note that it does not appear that SC5's cities have to deal with storing those cars. Unlike the new SimCity, large percentages of America's downtowns are devoted just to storing cars during the day. Also, it looks like most cities are just "pods" with one access point to the regional network. That's fundamentally the opposite of how cities develop. They're generally at the hub of a vast network of transportation arteries radiating out in each direction.

On the other hand, the ability to specialize, work together as a region, and the "glassbox" method where each citizen (sim) actually does exist and travels from his home to his work to his shop is an exciting improvement. (This is very similar to how CiMs in Cities in Motion works).

 

[CHamilton]

sim city will continue to mislead on transit


Ian Miles Cheong updates us on the struggles of Electronic Arts to get the new SimCity right. But it sounds like EA is committed to the original SimCity idea that the user can place stations and pieces of track, but the program will decide the paths that the buses and trains follow. And it doesn't decide very well. ...

If this all sounds oddly like demand-responsive service, well, that's more or less the model of fixed route service -- even subways -- that EA is using.

I criticized Sim City (original and version 4) long ago, but my understanding that EA's priority continues to be "immersiveness" for the gamer, not any relationship to reality.