SimCity Societies (PC DVD)

Platform:

Pre-Owned/Used: Very Good Condition copies available

Product Description

• Make an artistic city, a romantic one, a police state... or anything you want.
• Build the city with unique homes, businesses, and roads.
• Unlock new buildings as you city develops.
• Unique Sims appearance and behaviours fit each city type.
• Special lighting, music and details in world bring the unique themes to life.

Review

Back when designer Will Wright started making games it was SimCity which was his first big success, helping to define the concept of god games and social simulators. Over the years though the series got ever more complicated and less appealing, so that when The Sims was released in 2000 it put the old city simulators completely in its shadow. Now though the whole SimCity concept has been rethought to the point where this isnt really a sequel to SimCity 4 at all but a whole new game somewhere between the original and The Sims.

Theres no zoning of industrial, commercial or residential areas in this game but instead you can just plonk down any building down wherever you want. In this sense the zoning concept is turned inside out with the buildings themselves casting an influence on those nearby, with various kinds of "energy". Theres wealth energy which radiates from industrial buildings, devotional energy from farms and churches, obedience energy from government buildings and so on.

As odd as the idea may sound it allows cities to be built up much more quickly and with a far greater level of control over the citizens that inhabit them. Whereas before it was a real effort just to get a small town working now you can raise giant dystopian towers wherever you want and see the population reduced to an Orwellian nightmare or opt for a more pastoral layout and watch everyone skipping around the haystacks. The import thing is it makes SimCity, and social engineering, fun again.