SimCity Societies (PC)

Paving a bold new path.
1/30/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 3

The net result of this wacky generation and use of social energies is a city built more to balance these invisible forces than to fit some rational plan. You start to pick buildings based on their social energy rather than whether or not it makes sense, say, to put a meatpacking plant or tattoo parlor next to an elementary school.

A promising feature, and one that takes center stage in ads promoting the game, are themes. Buildings come classed into collections such as authoritarian, romantic, fun and cyberpunk. Without any prohibition on mixing styles, you are as welcome to craft an authoritarian romantic city as you are to build fairy tale castles on the main street running through a rural town. This provides plenty of funny choices and surprisingly coherent cities. Why a cyberpunk capsule hotel doesn't seem out of place next to a mini-golf course or row of brownstone townhouses is something we'll leave to the urban theorists.

The fact that it all looks cool remains the high point of the game. Even though the detailed 3-D people and buildings always threaten to bog down all but the most powerful 3-D machines, half the fun is getting the camera in the right place and enjoying the scene. Drop the point of view down onto the street where you can watch individual Sims stroll in and out of stores, and you find that you now control the most fascinating ant colony devised to date.

On one level, this junk-drawer approach to city design does make for interesting places, but eventually players will run into one of the biggest limits of the game: the land. A complete lack of terraforming tools sticks you with the ground that god, or at least the game, gives you. If you'd like to nudge a little hill out of the way to squeeze in a building, forget it. If you need to carve out a flat place for a road, no dice. You'll end up wandering your buildings and streets around every little lump, knoll or dip.

Roads themselves have not gained any appreciable intelligence, either. Even though the ability to add dirt roads to your redneck haven has its own simple "Dukes of Hazzard" charms, it's not long before you have looping, winding streets that won't connect, no matter how hard you try. Forget diagonal streets. Not only doesn't the game support them, but laying out straight roads is hard enough.

Other changes in the classic SimCity play take a while to sink in before you realize that you really do miss them. Complex overlays of pollution, traffic and crime give way to bouncy icons that hover over buildings and people. Want to know where the criminals lurk? With a click of a button, every single pickpocket and burglar shows up in the city with a floating label. It's kind of funny to see. Unfortunately, the game never really gives you that summary information that can help you figure out where to place the next police station. One of the more peculiar moments in gaming comes when you realize that you actually miss the budget spreadsheet from the original games.

Perhaps to make up for the limited road tools, the game is very forgiving about where you place buildings. For one thing, you don't need to worry about connecting them to power or water. If you have enough electricity in your city, it finds its way to every lightbulb in town. Even roads don't matter as much as they have in the past. Build a ranch on a hill too steep for streets and some bold pioneer will move in. Better yet, watch the house: The resident Sims will manage to commute down the slope into town to make it to work.