Observations from a Simcity Veteran

[Sfletcher 1]

I have played the SimCity series for 20 years, since the first game back in 1989. I have watched it develop from simple tiles to the beauty of SimCity 4. I will admit I have never played Sim Societies, I simply avoided it when I read the reviews of others.  So when SimCity 2013 was announced I was excited but skeptical, most likely the same feelings many people had. Excited because the game was back in the hands of Maxis, but worried that Electronic Arts in its drive for a buck would screw this thing up. I love SimCity 4, I have played it since the day it came out in 2003, I don't know how to design buildings like many of you do in the exchange, but I have downloaded hundreds of them over the years, purchased the CD's from Simtropolis, and have for more then 4 years on and off worked on what I call my master piece Republic of Maxis. Up until last week I was still working on one of my cities, and I still plan to play SimCity 4 like always, and download new additions, as the game to me is still a masterpiece regardless of all its minor problems and faults.

 

I work in the finance industry, and have a twelve month old son, so getting time to play this game over the last week, along with Electronic Arts failure to properly provide servers has been tough, but after some doing I got onto Oceanic 2 last evening and started to build New Plymouth.  I think I have managed to put in a total of perhaps 3 hours of play and the game is breath taking. The graphics, the buildings are simply amazing, being able to follow a Sim from home to work to the store and not see him disappear was nice to say the least. I was critical of the map size at first, but now having understood the upgrades in the roads it seems to be just fine, my little city has more than 100,000 sims living in it. Having the modules has also been nice, I have two large elementary schools, and one high school, instead of eight elementary schools and 3 high schools. Three firehouses, and one police station protect my city, instead of half a dozen, and only one hospital and two clinics and my people are largely healthy. While this seemed like a plus what I didn't much like was water and sewer. Those damn drain pipes fill up quick, and you need a city of 75,000 people they allow for a pump station and a sewer treatment plant, so this made it harder for me, something I was not use to in SimCity 4. Other surprise, which I find a challenge is having to go back and forth into the data overlay maps for planning, I had to make sure I didn't cover my oil fields, (I did accidentally cover the coal fields). Overall I would say I'm now impressed, at first I was disguised, and fully prepared to go back to SimCity 4 for good, but now I can say having played a while I will enjoy this game, I think its got a lot of room to run. I hope and I do not know this answer, but I hope Maxis will allow MODS, as it has made SimCity 4 all the better. So just a few thoughts from a SimCity veteran. I' curious to hear what others think. I have read some of the forums here, and on EA's on site.