Nothing beats being
greeted by a launcher with its loading and checking for updates. You’re
thinking “I’m about to start playing one of my favorite MMOs” but wait, didn't
I just click on Maxis' new SimCity? Yup that's right; this edition of the SimCity
Franchise makes the player have to be online to play! What once was a
single-player utopia has turned into a DRM nightmare...supposedly?
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| Time to start playing SimCity Online?! |
Some of the features have changed from prior SimCity(s), but I do believe for the better; like zoning, road building and how water, power, and sewage get transported. There is still the colored RCI (Residential=Green, Commercial =Blue, Industrial=Yellow) but say you want a city with small housing for either low, med, or high income. You must zone it along low density roads or you could start seeing apartments or towers popping up all over town. The advantage of keeping Residential zoning from growing into large buildings with people packed in is that your city uses less power and water which makes less sewage and garbage. The only con is you need to zone a lot more Residential areas to actually grow your population in that city. Oh yeah and road construction is so expansive you need no worries about building pipes or power lines from your power plants, water towers, or sewage plants since all of that now travels along your roads!
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| From Left to Right: Roads, Water, Power, and Sewage Menu. All resources traveling along the constructed road. |
Now if you're new to SimCity you might be asking "Paul, how do I get my Residential or Commercial zones to move up on the income level?" and I'll tell. It’s super easy to build nice things around your Residential or Commercial areas like parks, fire/police stations, clinics, schools, and landmarks. The easiest and cheapest is parks but you just can't plop down low wealth parks and hope that high wealth moves in, you'll have to plop down high wealth parks like plazas and such. "But how can I tell which parks are low, med, or high wealth”? Easy! When you click the parks button which has the little tree symbol on it, it brings up a sub menu and you'll see Basic, Sports, etc and if you look closer, there is the simoleon symbol too which one represents low, two = medium, and three = high wealth parks. So just start plopping down those high wealth parks and the land value rises and, bomb, you got your rich fancy Sims moving into your city. But be careful, high wealth Sims need high wealth shops and jobs. Now for industrial zoning which is a little different. You need to have educated Sims and have community/university colleges near your industrial zones, and they'll start moving up the tech level. Higher tech industry also pollutes less, and provides job for high wealth residents.
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| From Left to Right: Low Wealth Land Vales, High Wealth Land Values. |
Now let's talk about some of the newest features like specializations and editing plop-able buildings. So say you have a nice sizable city going but wait, you don't have enough fire trucks, police patrols, or ambulances servicing the city? It’s time to plop a new fire/police station and clinic, right? Nope, just click on your existing service building and you can enter edit mode which allows you to add more fire truck, or police cars/etc to already existing service buildings. This also works with power stations, garbage dumps, schools, town hall, and also with specialization buildings. Now if you choose to go into a specialization, which there is 6 (Mining, Drilling, Trading, Electronics, Tourism, and Gambling) you have to unlock them by providing power/water and have a certain amount of buildings of Commercial or Industrial. For mining (Coal and Ore) and drilling (Oil), you have to have the resources buried under your city. Specializations are by far one of the most amusing new features of SimCity. Also you can make a lot of Simoleons from these industries.
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| From Left To Right: Coal Deposits, Oil Deposits Under The City. |
So SimCity has been out for a month already and it is a far cry from what it was at launch. I had mine pre-ordered at a local GameStop and, on launch day, went to pick it up. Sure it had a few hick-ups here and there when I was trying to start a region but once I got past how not ready Maxis' servers were for the amount of gamers logging in on launch day, (I mean seriously 4 servers?) it really shined. The region play is great though a little lag at launch and it’s now almost instant trading of water, power, sewage, and resources. Even if you're playing single player and claimed all the city spots in your region or joined someone's region, what Maxis wanted this game to be is there. So if you're on the fence on this purchase, I would say take the risk and you will see what truly a great Maxis game is.
