SimCity Societies puts The Sims in SimCity!
While previous SimCity titles would be best described as God games, SimCity Societies is different by being a “social engineering simulator” rather than a city-building simulator.
System: PC
Genre: Simulation
Release dates: November 13th 2007 (USA), November 16th 2007 (EURO), November 15th 2007 (AUS)
Players: 1
Developer: Tilted Mill Entertainment
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Origin: America
SimCity Societies is an accessible city-build game that allows players to create any city they desire. But let’s get something straight from the start: this SimCity is not a realistic urban simulation. The game features an all-new feature set, SimCity Societies not only allows players to create their own kinds of cities, but shape their cultures and environments as well.
With more than 500 buildings and decorative objects and six different values a society can focus on, there are various possible cities that can develop. Make your cities green or polluting, contemporary or futuristic, rural or urban. Create an artistic society or a police state, an industrial city or a spiritual community. How players mix and match their resources determines the fate of their city.
Gameplay-wise, the public works and a tax system do not play a part in the game, instead you get weekly income from workplaces in the city. Transportation networks have been simplified to dirt roads, paved roads, subways and bus stops. Players do not build zones, a key element of past SimCity games, instead they have the ability to directly place individual buildings, something not seen in previous editions, and similar to Monte Cristo’s game City Life.
There are six “social energies” (the values mentioned before) which allow players to learn about the characteristics of the citizens. The six energies are productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority, and knowledge. The city will look, and act, in accordance with the energies the players choose. Players may focus on satisfying one, several, or all of the energies. An improved version of the reward system introduced in SimCity 3000 has been included in the game.
Watch the SimCity Societies launch trailer.
So what are SimCity Societies’ main features?
* The most versatile city-building game–SimCity Societies provides the ultimate building block tool kit, allowing you to combine and connect elements of your city like never before. This innovative, modular approach to city building makes SimCity Societies accessible to players of all levels, while at the same time provides tremendous new possibilities to players familiar with the SimCity series.
* Revolutionary new resource management: control the societal values of your city–SimCity Societies introduces new kinds of resources for buildings to produce or consume, called “societal values.” How you mix and match these values — productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority and knowledge — determines the core attributes of your city. A new system in SimCity Societies adjusts the appearance and sound of your city on the fly to reflect the kind of society you are developing.
* Build out the city with unique homes, workplaces, leisure-time venues and parks –Choose from over 500 unique objects which can be combined and connected in almost limitless combinations. Inspiration comes from the wide range of architectural styles, ranging from the realistic to the fanciful, from rural to urban, from industrial to futuristic. Each building reflects its name and nature, and many offer a click-on action for you to play upon! As your city evolves, you’ll be able to unlock new buildings to help advance your society.
* Download new content and share your own unique content with your friends online –SimCity Societies allows you to modify the way the game looks and plays, including changing building textures and statistics and Sim behaviors.
Watch some more SimCity Societies gameplay building footage.
In conclusion let’s see how much fun SimCity Societies is on a scale from 1 to 10?
FUN FACTOR – 5.5
Long-time SimCity fans won’t find any classic gameplay here, since if you make one work place you can fund your entire city and the different societies don’t effect that city. On top of that, the entire city takes care of itself, for example disasters like fires go out on their own, not very exciting. The bugs in the game cause larger cities or cities with lots of effects on (sometimes with the exception of music) to freeze up! The framerate is choppy even on high-end PCs. Wait for patches to fix these bugs. Suffice it to say this explains the low rating, because it’s pissing me off. Props have to be given for the developers to bring together building skills and industry energy management, electricity production and greenhouse gas emissions are used to highlight the impact of electricity generation on the emissions of carbon dioxide that are linked to climate change and thus your city. If you’re looking for a SimCity game with easy difficulty and a very casual take on the simulation genre, then this might be for you as it can easily be played by beginners.
Graphics – 7.0
The animations work for SimCity, but most of the life of the city is in the buildings (not the Sims) like the lighting effects, moving telescopes or helicopters flying around. Every aspect of the city is very colorful and the overall visuals are stylized with lots of details. If you know XML, you’re even allowed to create your own city themes.
Audio – 7.0
Loads of standard sound effects that create a good ambiance. The background tunes are very relaxing, helping you to keep building.
Ingenuity – 5.5
The game’s interface is great, as you’d expect from a SimCity management game, it makes controlling the game easy and fast.
However, the gameplay itself forces you to spend most of your time reading the varying energy, workers and job numbers and keeping your city balanced. But without a campaign mode, what’s your goal?
Replay Value – 5.0
Expect to get about ten hours of gameplay out of it if the game doesn’t freeze up on you. I don’t mind the casual “city builder” theme at all, the game doesn’t rely on heavy statistics analyzing, so you can play around sandbox-style. But aside from having to place every single building, once the city becomes large the game keeps crashing, so my patience ran out. I didn’t pretend this was Maxis making SimCity 5, but I’m not a fan of this spin-off either.