If the prospect of the game’s multiplayer feature is the reason you should acquire SimCity, then the reason you should avoid it is its single player. The game was mostly created as a cooperative multiplayer, but it’s not hard to see latent potential for inter-player competition, such that, for example, mayors could jockey for bragging rights. Regions can be public (anyone can join) or private (invitation only), or, if the player desires, they can control all of the cities in a region by themselves. Pollution from one can drift to another, and research unlocked by one can be used by cities throughout the region. Cities can trade resources and collaborate on major projects. ![]() Citizens commute between cities, go on vacations in other cities, emigrate and immigrate. Within a region, cities are connected by roads and railways. Cities exist as part of a region, and each region holds between 2 and 16 cities. The new SimCity includes multiplayer, and does so in a way that is both clever and full of potential. If you were anything like 10-year-old me, your one regret from the game was that you never got to rub it in other people’s faces that you were a better mayor, and therefore a better person than they were. That single feature should be enough to command the attention of any SimCity fan. If you want one good reason why you should buy SimCity, it is this: it has multiplayer. So we’re left with just that usual question when deciding to buy: is it a good game? Heaven is other people But the server issues as of writing seem mostly resolved. If you’ve read anything about SimCity in the past week, it’s likely from someone preaching the evils of the game’s DRM. Congested servers, combined with an obnoxious demand rights management policy, meant very few people got to play the game until more server capacity was brought online. It’s obligatory to note that after waiting 10 years for the next SimCity, fans were forced to wait a little longer, as the game remained unplayable for days after release. And all the planners with their inefficient grids and stupid zoning policies would look up and shout “Save us!” and I’d look down from my 0 percent tax rate Eden and whisper, “No.” Launching not with a bang, but a whimper But the thrills of municipal management still called to me. ![]() Junior high, high school, college… these things eat into a young mayor’s leisure time, and what I had left to devote to SimCity dwindled. Nothing says “employable” like a grade-schooler who can perform a tracheotomy. Why pay for schools, police stations, and hospitals, when you can just merge them all together? Give the city children a fast-paced, hands-on, experience-based education in crime fighting and emergency services. I’d meticulously plan out every square inch of my objectivist utopia, and then check the box beside every penny-pinching city ordinance the game offered. I spent so many hours on the simulation that it’s possible it sowed the seeds of my political leanings.ġ0-year-old me was like a modern day Herman Cain, with bold plans to run my government on unimaginably low tax rates. I was fanatical about it - I spent whole weekends planning out city blocks on sheets of graphing paper and testing them to see which was the most efficient. When I was 10 years old, my favorite game in the world was SimCity 2000. Arts video game review A tale of two SimCities It is the best of games, it is the worst of games By Keith Yost Mar.
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