Not necessarily bad thing if it concerns just interface.
How many remakes are better than the original? Removed all that made SC4 so complex and great? Micromanagement has been one of those really important parts of SimCity for me, I want to be charge of everything in my cities, with more options to do so the better.
So it seems this will be great game for new gamers, or those that found SC4 too hard :| .
I would really like to hear some thoughts from old time SimCity veterans who have had hands on time with this, cause I still want to believe this will be great game.
Smokki, I wrote that article, and I'd like to take the opportunity to expound some on the concerns you have. First, how it feels a little bit like The Sims and Sim City in the interface. You've probably seen form screenshots, how the interface elements are at the bottom of the screen and you dive into categories from there. It's an interface that's been in Sim games since oh, SimGolf- it's clean, and unobtrusive, yet it is unmistakably a Sim game. It certainly looks better, but it does not deviate from what you're already used to.
Next, the micromanagement of power, water, and sewage. What's been removed is the need to lay power, roads, water, and sewage independently. When you lay a road down, you are also laying down all of those. It does take a bit of micromanagement out of the game, but there are still other factors that the player still has to manage, you can have everything connected via a road, but if you do not have sufficient capacity, a good amount of water towers built in the right places, or enough power generation plants, you're still SOL. In the demo, turning on my power plant for the first time, watching workers arrive at the plant, and then seeing it go online, and lights coming on throughout your town was quite something to behold.
Finally, your concern that this game will be something more for casual players as opposed to the hard core. What I played was, of course, a very early alpha build, and what was shown was a demo stage that had an introductory tutorial. The tutorial did a good job of introducing the concepts of the game, and leads into the quest type system with a very small pre-built town. I'm sure that they will give you the opportunity to start from scratch if you like. The quests can also be ignored - but they're milestones that a dedicated player will want to hit on their own, if memory serves me, the first was to reach a certain population, and to attain a certain level of income.
I hope this helps clear things up!
