[E3 2012] SimCity

[Psykoboy2]

I honestly don’t think I have ever played a SimCity game before. That’s some kind of sacrilege, right? I’ve seen it being played and probably taken over a time or two just to have a look, but I’ve really never sat down and played the game before. Don’t even think I own a previous copy, really. I guess, maybe, I’ve just been waiting for this version of SimCity to be released.

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If that’s the case, the wait seems to have been worth it. We should start here with the GlassBox engine. Seriously, I really think this might be a game-changer for sim-type games, it’s unbelievably amazing what this thing does and can do. It really puts the sim into SimCity. For starters, it really makes things look pretty. It isn’t realistic, by any means, but it isn’t too cartoony, either. It’s gives the look of SimCity a personality that just fits. That’s just on the surface. Beneath the look of this game is the brain of everything. The sim part of it. The number cruncher and data carrier. GlassBox simulates everything. And you can see it happening in real time. The distribution of power and energy, a workforce, a neighborhood, a retail shopping district, traffic, population, crime...it’s all taking place with GlassBox.

And it’s all extremely user friendly in the sense that if you want to see GlassBox working, you can do that. It can show you the distribution of everything that is going on in the city. If you want to see what’s using the most electricity, water, money, whatever, GlassBox can show you, visually. It won’t pop up a spreadsheet or graphs, it visually shows you how the city you’ve built is working or failing. It’s like if Google made a SimCity.

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A lot of people have talked about the multiplayer aspect of SimCity, or, more specifically, the “always on” aspect. With Origin, you’ll be always on, that’s true, but you don’t have to do anything with anybody because of it. The option is there, sure, but you can play entirely by yourself in a private session if you so choose. If you do go public, it’s all about you and your friends if you want it that way. There will be leaderboards and challenges that can allow you to compete with friends, but the main aspect of multiplayer is one of co-op. The demo shown for us consisted of three people playing together in their respective cities all trying to build an international airport. Doing so would increase the population, economy, tourism...all in all just a general positive boost for each other’s city. In order to do this, each city had to provide resources into the project. In the teamwork aspect of SimCity, one location had gotten so dense that they didn’t have enough power to run the place. A neighboring city was able to help out with this by providing some of their power in order to get things up and running. The whole thing was just very friendly and helpful, which is a bit of what I expected when building cities with friends. Maybe not so much with strangers, but with friends...totally.

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There hasn’t been a SimCity game since Societies in 2007 or, before that, SimCity 4 in 2003. That’s about a 10 year span between a proper SimCity title. It’s been a long wait, but one that looks more than worth it from what I’ve seen. You can expect that wait to be over come February 2013.

[Crittias]

I love the visual style. And I'm in awe of the level of simulation detail behind the scenes. I'm still not entirely sure how fun it'll be, but I am hoping it is indeed an enjoyable experience to play.