SimCity Societies Comments by Dan Whitehead

:(
Why can't they just remake SimCity 2000?

A shame. For some reason I wanted this to turn out good, maybe 'cause I used to love the franchise in its humble beginnings oh so many moons ago.

Booooo!

I had no faith in this game from the moment it was announced. They should have just used the extra staff on Spore ^_^

+1 to comment regarding Sim City 2000, quite possibly the series' high point, and probably my most-played SNES game. 3000 and 4 haven't got the same magic, and 4 runs dreadfully on my Mac, the Rush Hour traffic missions have a frame-rate that leaves them unplayable.

I always thought it a pity that Simsville was canned, seemed like a decent idea, but Societies sounds a bit rubbish.

d'oh!

This looked kinda cool in the initial teasers. What a shame.

What a shame. Never expected anything else after reading about the features and seeing the screenshots, but it's still disappointing.

What they could have done with today's hardware.

Sounds crap. What a travesty.

So they killed SimCity. Why, oh why did they have to name it 'SimCity Societies'? it could just have been SimSocieties. Meanwhile I would be happily plugging away at SimCity 4.

What a waste of time and resources. I don't mind esoteric ideas, I don't mind changing gaming fundamentals, but they should result in something MORE FUN than the original. And what is this 'casual' gamer BS? When people started a SimCity game, they KNEW what they were getting into, even if they continued to suck at it (like yours truly).

All this does have a silver lining though: The next SimCity game will be true to the originals. Lets go ahead, NOT buy this, and make it a flop.

Terrible. Terrible. Like others here, I'm a SimCity 4 faithful. When I first heard about this game I was hopefull. After reading the first preview, I was sceptical. After reading this Eurogamer review, my intial fears have been confirmed. EA destroys yet another brand.

Oh noes!

I really wanted this to be good. Been waiting for a good Citybuilder sim far to long now.

Yep, disappointing.
Looks like I'll be sticking with SC4 & City Life until a newer, decent city builder arrives.

The new City Life game is looking pretty good. The developers have been camping out at the Simtropolis forums for a while now, getting feedback from hardcore Simcity players. Hopefully they'll take the advise on board, and from the little info and screen shots they've released, it certainly looks promising.

I'm pulling my sad face.

I'd like a LEGO (Sim)City.

Good review, they never should of taken maxis off the job.

I so wanted to like this as I wanted somthing a bit more casual than Simcity, but alas, it seems they've just went to far and screwed it up

Role on "Cities Unlimited" next year then then, I hope Monte Cristo don't mess that up.

While I recognise there's a place for casual gaming, it is possible to go too far. This game has, unfortunately by the sounds of things.

I really really like the idea of a social aspect being applied to the SimCity game, but this game has gone about it the wrong way.

Why can't they just remake SimCity 2000?

Isn't that what SinCity DS is?

As much as I hate to post one of those "sounds more like a..." comments, 5 seems really generous. Having read the review, you'd have to pay *me* to get me to play this game.

Game experience aside, I can totally get how a museum fosters knowledge but consumes creativity, and a prayer bell creates spirituality while a monastry consumes it. A museum is all about disseminating knowledge about what has already been created. Artifacts like prayer bells inspire people to be spiritual, while monasteries rely on the pre-existence of spirituality to exist themselves (no monks -> no monastery, plus monks in monastery being spiritual = monks not in society being spiritual). Assuming these examples are typical rather than exceptions, this seems more like common sense everyday logic filtered through a game mechanism than Sim City 2000 ever did.

I remember watching a preview of this on the 1Up Show months ago and it looked really good. I was enjoying all the things they showed you could do within the game to your people.
Its a shame they appear to have shagged up a great idea of a game but I will still play the demo should one be released to see for myself.

Assuming these examples are typical rather than exceptions, this seems more like common sense everyday logic filtered through a game mechanism than Sim City 2000 ever did.

The rather fuzzy application of "social energies" is the least of the game's flaws, but here's another example - in fact, it's the first thing you see in the tutorial. You place a cottage, but it doesn't "work" because there's not enough creativity. Huh-buh-wha? It's a house. Why does it need creativity? And how does it "not work"?

Concepts such as creativity and spirituality simply don't work as finite resources in a game. Logically speaking, you can't "run out" of spirituality. A monastery requires spirituality to "work", OK, I can understand that. But then why does it not also create spirituality? It's turning Sims into monks! These are abstract emotional concepts that are self-replicating. Creativity fosters more creativity, not less.

You can argue that, in gameplay terms, it only works if you treat them as finite resources, the same as electrical power and money, but then doesn't that undermine their use in the first place? You could just as easily call them Magic Bongo Bean Particles and the effect on the gameplay would be the same. The core conceit behind the game - "social energy" - simply doesn't make sense.

@YourMessageHere : Yes there might be a valid point there. But the thing is, it shouldn;t have taken a forum poster to explain this concept - it should have been made apparent to the player by the game itself

I was really looking forward to this one, and here you've dashed my hopes. Curse you, Daniel "Sycamore" Whitehead! Think it'll be worth a purchase once it hits bargain bins?

From article:
"In place of the pragmatic red, yellow and blue zones of old"...

I do believe it's GREEN, yellow and blue, mate. :) Or at least it was last time I checked, which was today.

SC4 definitely used green, yellow and blue (and orange on the minimap to point out landmarks or civic buildings).

AOFanboi: SimCity DS is more like 3000 in nature. The graphics are definitely 3000's set, anyhow.