the teabag

So, for the first time (I know, I have taken forever) I finally played SimCity Societies. I hadn’t installed it yet because I am a Linux user, and I wasn’t going to install an XP partition on my machine just for the game (well actually, I was, but the second drive in my boxen turns out to be broken and I wasn’t going through the rigmarole of installing a new drive, and an OS just for the game). My friend, who is also a hardcore SimCity fan, came home recently and he bought his XP laptop with him, along with a shiny copy of SimCity Societies. Excited? was I ever!

So I got to play the game I had been waiting patiently for, and I played it for at least two hours. The interface hasn’t changed much, and within a few minutes of setting up my map, and the level (I went for normal to begin with) I was able to play the game with ease. Of course, I had to build a power plant, a couple of blocks of flats/apartments, and some businesses, and the game was well on it’s way. All good to begin with. Quickly I realised that instead of supplying the standard RCI (residential, commercial and industrial) to keep up with demand, I had to build things to satisfy the arts, intelligence, and diamonds to name but a few new characteristics.

I found that I didn’t even have to connect buildings to roads in order for them to work and although this slows the towns Sims down it encouraged town planning to be completely lazy and haphazard. If my arts icon showed -2, I could simply build a new building that has a +2 arts icon to allow me to stay above the curve. If I needed some + diamonds, then I just placed a hedge (at least I think it was a diamond) anywhere on the map, that’s right, I said anywhere.

After two hours of playing, I quickly realised that I hadn’t gone under budget once. I didn’t have to wait for things to build, and more shockingly, if I put the game into the fastest speed, I could have gone for a walk, a long walk. Nothing burned down, the town stood, almost silent as new buildings were given to me and gasp, my cash flow grew increasingly large. Now I wouldn’t want to say this too loud, but in my experience of SimCity, I have managed to get some great scores, and I guess you could say that I’m not half bad at the game, but I still expected this release to throw a few gotchas at me, a curveball if you will, it didn’t and to say the very least, I’m disappointed. Even on the release of SC2000, I had to spend a lot of time getting used to the new AI, same with 3000, and again the same with SC4.

In short, I’m disappointed and saddened. What once was such a brilliant franchise has lost it’s way. I understand that EA have farmed this release out, in fact I blogged about it before and begged them not to break it, but to actually take a cleaveland steamer on the source code and rub it into the fans faces, goodness me. I have one more question, do I still continue to be excited about Spore? Well yes and no. I have nothing to compare it to, but even if its rubbish, then at least it will be better than SimCity Societies.

RIP SimCity. RIP