scargums
CAGiversary!
I bought Sim City yesterday, despite the mediocre to flat out bad reviews I had seen online for it so far. Since the day the DS was announced I have been waiting for Sim City to be made for it, and I wasn't going to let some initial impressions get in the way. I will try to write this for people who have yet to read a review and address existing reviews at the same time. Some things other reviews have said were a little irritating at first, and other things I think they just need to man up about and stop whining. When did game reviews become a darwinist bitch fest, where only the strongest games are allowed to be praised. These are the same people who would probably give the Sim City SNES virtual console release a perfect score, even though it is technically inferior in most ways to this one, and not portable, but I digress. Here's the basic facts that you'll likely want to know:
There are two zoom levels, and yes, the zoomed in view is really more for aesthetics than for city building, as it is entirely too close to be of any real use, and you will likely spend a great deal of your time in the regular, zoomed out view. This is something I too found a little irritating at first, but I got used to it within the first hour and now make dragging mistakes a lot less often (for which there is an undo button anyway, provided you are building and not destroying). The zoomed out view looks fine, functions as it should, and is more akin to what you are used to on the PC. The interface is not too small to use or too difficult to read, everything you need is right there and easy to access. I also very much appreciate being able to scroll around the city with the D pad, as I hold my stylus in my right hand, and can have something selected and move the screen around at the same time without accidently building stuff when i meant just to look around.
Visually, Sim City DS is inferior to its PC counterparts, but were you really expecting it to be on par with a comparative game on vastly superior hardware? I think it looks fine, and is probably somewhere between the original two games in terms of building variety and so forth. There aren't as many buildings per sector type, but there are enough to know whether your residential zones are flourishing or struggling. Again, completely practical and functional, just not as good as modern Sim City we are used to. I also rather like the dual screen setup with the city view on top and the building view/graphs/grids on the bottom, and is something the pc versions do not offer (can't remember if 4 allowed for the colors to overlay over buildings or not).
The game does keep track of all your city's stats across its entire existence, and displays the data to you as graphs you can click on for more detail. it tracks quality of life, pollution, crime, residents, education, health, land value, and transportation. It also includes the standard maps of your city displaying the current state of that data, as well as fire, water, garbage, and power coverage, and the zones. These are all easy to read, but the game must be paused to access them. All the classic budget options are there such as adjusting the zone's taxes and how much you will fund your various services. Again, the game must be paused to access these or build anything, which does slow the game down.
My three major beefs with Sim City DS are not in the visuals, interface, or functionality of the game, as I feel all of these are flawed but solid. You can only save one city at a time, as I imagine basically all the memory was used to squeeze everything in (which is quite a lot when you think about it), and when you save a city I imagine it has to save a good deal of data, which takes up even more space. The other major thing that bothers me is the pace of the game, as the fastest pace is really not fast enough. This is one way I am spoiled by the PC version and can not go back, as the pace is entirely too slow for my liking when you've maxed out your city and have nowhere else to build and no new technology to improve what you have already and you just want a few years to fly by to build up your money and wait for inventions to come around. These problems are likely why they threw in the "save the city" mode where you go fix a city that is having problems (like rebuilding the population after an earthquake in 10 years), as they have a finite end that can be completed in one sitting, and are a nice break away from your regular city that you can't bring yourself to delete just to start a new one. My last beef is small, and is with the advisors when they bring in people from the city to give you suggestions. It happens a lot early on, and each character basically has two things they say every time, which makes you just want to skip what they are saying and get back to your city. You can ignore your advisor and not talk to these people at all, but then you might miss out on new inventions and opportunities like outsourcing your garbage.
Overall, If I were to score this game I would put it closer to a 7.5 than a 6 or a 5. that doesn't mean OMG ITZ TEH SUXORZ, as I can easily see myself playing this more than I played puzzle quest (which was a shitload, btw), and I do like it quite a lot, it just isnt quite in the same air of gaming greatness as those upper echelon games that manage to do everything right. its not ugly, but not beautiful. it has some flaws but is overall very solid in a lot of areas. its a freaking new sim city, in a classic sim city style, in your pocket, with a touch screen interface. I've already poured over 12 hours into it, and despite the problems I do have with it, its my new game of choice after puzzle quest and I don't forsee it leaving my DS anytime soon. It's easy to pick up and play for any amount of time, even though its not a minigame collection or a "casual" game. If you are a sim city fan and have been waiting for a portable version, this is it, and you have to pick it up. If you are not a sim city fan, i imagine the pace and gameplay would put you off, as this is a very laid back, let it run for hours as you pine over little details and getting everything just right kind of game.
in case you just want to skip to the end: it's sim city. If you like classic sim city, buy it.
*update: I've found a way around the whole "only one save" problem after some experimentation. It doesn't allow you to save multiple cities, on the main menu when you choose the "build a city" option you can choose to create a new city. at this point it warns you that creating a new city will overwrite your old one, as you can only save one at a time. However, if you choose this option, name your city, and build away, so long as you do not save (there is no autosave, you choose it yourself), you can sit and build new cities, experiment, and start anew all you want while retaining your original city, unless you choose to save and go ahead and overwrite the data. maybe this should have been obvious to me at first, but i didn't read it in any other reviews, and does let me satisfy my desire to play around with creating new cities without deleting the old one (which i'm doing right now).
There are two zoom levels, and yes, the zoomed in view is really more for aesthetics than for city building, as it is entirely too close to be of any real use, and you will likely spend a great deal of your time in the regular, zoomed out view. This is something I too found a little irritating at first, but I got used to it within the first hour and now make dragging mistakes a lot less often (for which there is an undo button anyway, provided you are building and not destroying). The zoomed out view looks fine, functions as it should, and is more akin to what you are used to on the PC. The interface is not too small to use or too difficult to read, everything you need is right there and easy to access. I also very much appreciate being able to scroll around the city with the D pad, as I hold my stylus in my right hand, and can have something selected and move the screen around at the same time without accidently building stuff when i meant just to look around.
Visually, Sim City DS is inferior to its PC counterparts, but were you really expecting it to be on par with a comparative game on vastly superior hardware? I think it looks fine, and is probably somewhere between the original two games in terms of building variety and so forth. There aren't as many buildings per sector type, but there are enough to know whether your residential zones are flourishing or struggling. Again, completely practical and functional, just not as good as modern Sim City we are used to. I also rather like the dual screen setup with the city view on top and the building view/graphs/grids on the bottom, and is something the pc versions do not offer (can't remember if 4 allowed for the colors to overlay over buildings or not).
The game does keep track of all your city's stats across its entire existence, and displays the data to you as graphs you can click on for more detail. it tracks quality of life, pollution, crime, residents, education, health, land value, and transportation. It also includes the standard maps of your city displaying the current state of that data, as well as fire, water, garbage, and power coverage, and the zones. These are all easy to read, but the game must be paused to access them. All the classic budget options are there such as adjusting the zone's taxes and how much you will fund your various services. Again, the game must be paused to access these or build anything, which does slow the game down.
My three major beefs with Sim City DS are not in the visuals, interface, or functionality of the game, as I feel all of these are flawed but solid. You can only save one city at a time, as I imagine basically all the memory was used to squeeze everything in (which is quite a lot when you think about it), and when you save a city I imagine it has to save a good deal of data, which takes up even more space. The other major thing that bothers me is the pace of the game, as the fastest pace is really not fast enough. This is one way I am spoiled by the PC version and can not go back, as the pace is entirely too slow for my liking when you've maxed out your city and have nowhere else to build and no new technology to improve what you have already and you just want a few years to fly by to build up your money and wait for inventions to come around. These problems are likely why they threw in the "save the city" mode where you go fix a city that is having problems (like rebuilding the population after an earthquake in 10 years), as they have a finite end that can be completed in one sitting, and are a nice break away from your regular city that you can't bring yourself to delete just to start a new one. My last beef is small, and is with the advisors when they bring in people from the city to give you suggestions. It happens a lot early on, and each character basically has two things they say every time, which makes you just want to skip what they are saying and get back to your city. You can ignore your advisor and not talk to these people at all, but then you might miss out on new inventions and opportunities like outsourcing your garbage.
Overall, If I were to score this game I would put it closer to a 7.5 than a 6 or a 5. that doesn't mean OMG ITZ TEH SUXORZ, as I can easily see myself playing this more than I played puzzle quest (which was a shitload, btw), and I do like it quite a lot, it just isnt quite in the same air of gaming greatness as those upper echelon games that manage to do everything right. its not ugly, but not beautiful. it has some flaws but is overall very solid in a lot of areas. its a freaking new sim city, in a classic sim city style, in your pocket, with a touch screen interface. I've already poured over 12 hours into it, and despite the problems I do have with it, its my new game of choice after puzzle quest and I don't forsee it leaving my DS anytime soon. It's easy to pick up and play for any amount of time, even though its not a minigame collection or a "casual" game. If you are a sim city fan and have been waiting for a portable version, this is it, and you have to pick it up. If you are not a sim city fan, i imagine the pace and gameplay would put you off, as this is a very laid back, let it run for hours as you pine over little details and getting everything just right kind of game.
in case you just want to skip to the end: it's sim city. If you like classic sim city, buy it.
*update: I've found a way around the whole "only one save" problem after some experimentation. It doesn't allow you to save multiple cities, on the main menu when you choose the "build a city" option you can choose to create a new city. at this point it warns you that creating a new city will overwrite your old one, as you can only save one at a time. However, if you choose this option, name your city, and build away, so long as you do not save (there is no autosave, you choose it yourself), you can sit and build new cities, experiment, and start anew all you want while retaining your original city, unless you choose to save and go ahead and overwrite the data. maybe this should have been obvious to me at first, but i didn't read it in any other reviews, and does let me satisfy my desire to play around with creating new cities without deleting the old one (which i'm doing right now).