SCS: It's All about Your Point of View

[gabry85 2]

Hello, everybody!

One of my friends bought SimCity Societies, and gave me a chance to play it.

Like many of you I thought this game looks boring and useless, but, as I was playing it, I understood something more. I generally agree with dirk in his earlier preview: you must think differently from the previous SimCity series, I know it's the only way.

My strategy was: "leave realism and detail alone for now, just see what's this game about".

This was my brief game: I tried to remake Hillys, the city in Beyond Good & Evil, one of my favorite games. Hillys is small city where an oppressing military tyranny rules on its citizens and uses propaganda.

I was curious to recreate this kind of society in this game: I put together Cyberpunk and Authoritarian societies with smaller Capitalist and Romantic on their sides, then a farming Contemplative societies in the small islands.

The idea of changing buildings according to their "social energies" was the nicest thing of this game. Hillys also lacks of roads, people use flying or water cars, so I didn't cared much about them. The only things that actually bothered me were plopping every buildings and the frequent crashes, very annoying...

Eventually it was nice recreating Hillys in SCS and I had a lot of fun seeing how my society grew. IMHO, I don't think this is a mindless child's game, it's just like a experimental laboratory.

My advice: if you want to experiment with a new kind of game, take a try on SimCity Societies demo or play it with a friend as I did; if you are instead a hard-core player who wants realism and detail (like me), just don't buy it and don't feel bad about the SimCity series. If you want to create realistic cities, play SimCity 4 and wait for Cities Unlimited.

IMO, the only EA's mistake was calling this game SimCity, because it has nothing in common with the previous series.

If I can post a result, I would give SimCity Societies a bare 7 out of 10.

That's my thought about SCS. Please, feel free to share your constructive opinions. Thank you!

[SlightlyMadman 0]

I got to try the game out for several hours last night, and I'm still not planning on buying it, but it was actually kinda fun. A good XP or a trip to the bargain bin will make this a worthwhile purchase, IMO. I found that the trick to the game is not to think of yourself as managing the city, but as managing its citizens.

It's basically more of a macro-management version of The Sims, than it is a city management game. It's also extremely pretty to look at, once you turn off that awful restricted camera.