SimCity Games Review: Everyone is dying. The industrial district of the nascent coastal city of Scarborough is billowing an ominous cloud of yellow smog, expanding at an exponential rate towards the densely populated metropolis located further inland.

Placard-wielding citizens begin to protest at the town hall as pollution causes widespread disease and turmoil – the city’s modest medical services fail to adequately treat the volume of inbound patients.

Crime is suddenly rife; fires spread through the increasingly desolate-looking surroundings and, unless we’re mistaken, we’re pretty sure a fire-breathing dinosaur just incinerated the entirety of Scarborough’s middle-class population.

Well, at least the oil trade is booming. Time for a do-over then. After a decade’s absence, Maxis’s pre-eminent SimCity franchise makes its long-mooted homecoming to the genre it almost single-handedly pioneered back in the Eighties.

The transition from 2D to 3D has positively galvanised the franchise from statistic-based micromanagement to intimate agent-focused simulation on a street level.

From following the individual Sims on the pavement to gauge their daily habits and desires, to the unique interdependent relationship shared with neighbouring cities, the new SimCity is leagues ahead of its predecessors.

It’s an overwhelming proposition, then, but one with a breezy accessibility compared to previous instalments.

You’ll be inducted into the experience with a torrent of mini tutorials, help bubbles and hints that guide players over the course of the game’s first few hours – a necessity given the breadth of features SimCity boasts – and the tangible interface welcomes rather than confounds.

But what surprises most is how the depth and complexity of SimCity evidently refuses to be compromised; rather Maxis has bulldozed the obfuscation surrounding the existing systems. “Some people said it couldn’t be done,” laughs lead producer Kip Katsarelis.

“You’ve got these two extremes: SimCity 4 was a pretty hardcore game, you had to be pretty savvy to play it; on the other hand we know there’s a new casual market out there, people who have been introduced to city builders in a way and they’re going to want to come and check this out.

”/// Roads control everything in SimCity. The first order of business is connecting a piece of tarmac to the outside world and from there zoning can be applied to roadsides, designating the commercial, industrial and residential.

Electricity, water and waste (viewable in any one of the infographic-style data layers) then flows naturally beneath the streets once connection to a relevant station is established – if a building is disconnected from the streets then expect all its resources to quickly shut down, resulting in a powerless, poo-filled landmark festering in one corner of your city.

But what determines whether your neighbourhood will bloom into a bustling metropolis is the road density: if your strategy is to create a city rammed with cloud-piecing skyscrapers then high density roads are essential for traffic and construction

however, those with more modest ideals can opt out of upgrading smaller streets. Much of the above is established within the early hours of the game, but this opening portion of the game is also the most integral.

As SimCity nears completion, Maxis has been focus-testing the game extensively, adding

tutorials and hints where needed to make sure that the systems present are clearly detailed.

It’s getting the game built and finding out the places where people are having troubles

explains Katsarelis.

“That’s why a lot of the bugs you saw today were done because we just added new mini tutorials. We get people in and playing it, we find out where the steady points are [and for those] we’ll create tutorials.”

The void left by SimCity over the last ten years has seen no shortage of city-builder-cum-despot-simulators muscle in on the territory, not to mention the advent of free-to-play examples offering a swathe of mobile approximations of SimCity’s time-sapping formula.

For Maxis, it’s an opportunity to broaden the appeal beyond existing fans of the series. “To me it’s just opened a whole new audience to the genre,” Katsarelis enthuses. “We call them casual gamers but they might be more hardcore than the ones we call hardcore.

Who am I to say whether one game is better than another? They’re getting enjoyment out of it and having fun and at the end of the day these are games. This is entertainment.

We’re here to entertain people. If we can entertain the hardcore audience, the creative audience, a storyteller and a casual gamer, then that’s what we’ll aim to do.”One much-vaunted new feature of the reboot is the inclusion of multiplayer.

While not an obvious addition for the franchise, it overhauls existing strategies players familiar with the series may have.

The key to successful multi-city gameplay is to develop a symbiotic relationship with neighbours, sharing resources and sticking to a speciality. One city could focus on industry, such as drilling for oil, while the neighbour establishes residential accommodation for commuters.

/// Working together like this can be mutually beneficial, but, in true Maxis style, there’s always an opportunity to act like an utter bastard: pump out enough pollution and it’ll drift into neighbouring areas and when your town is nothing but a post-apocalyptic husk, crime will vacate to the nearest city.

How you choose to run your city will have a drastic affect on those around you. “It’s so clear that gaming has gone online and connected and multiplayer – people want to play with others,” says Katsarelis on the decision to take SimCity online.

“I remember when I would lug my computer in my car to my friend’s house to play games together.

Now I can push a button and play with other people. There’s an appetite for that.”Multi-city play is equally essential offline as it is on and nestled between neighbouring

SIM UNIVERSE

In much the same vain as Autolog and Battlelog before it, SimCity will introduce the Simlog to the world of The Sims.

We suggest to Kip Katsarelis that this may have wider implications to the wider Sims universe, but while he coyly dodges addressing the future of his popular brand, he does talk about the noticeable synergy between the two properties. “The Simsspawns from SimCity,” he is keen to point out.

“We’re Maxis, this is who we are. A lot of the people worked on The Sims games before. Even our advisors we took from The Sims 3.

You’ll see more crossover too and people playing The Sims playing SimCity, so there’s something familiar for The Sims fans who want to come over.

Above: Multi-city play is integral to the experience, sharing resources and offloading toxic responsibilities to another neighbouring city to benefit yours.

While you can benefit by working together, you can also work against a nearby metropolis. Right: An indicator that your city is a success is when the roads begin to clog up with traffic.

Upgrading roads can increase the capacity for vehicles, as well as dictate how your city evolves.

Above: There are various map views that enable players to gauge how your city is performing on multiple levels.

It provides even more depth to the already impressive showing from Maxis. Right: A thick cloud of smog, destitute citizens and fires breaking out all across the city – our virtual city of Scarborough is disturbingly accurate.

Zooming into your city reveals the true beauty of the tilt-shift aesthetic. Every part of the simulation moves around like a joyous toytown created by a kid in his bedroom. It should at least give the game a wider appeal.

PREVIEW| SIMCITY |MULTIFORMATconurbations is an area accessible once you’ve accumulated a specified amount of Simoleons, Sims and materials.

These ‘Great Works’ appear to be the ultimate goal of SimCity – a monumental endeavour to build a space centre, a solar farm or a fan-pleasing centre of arcology. The quickest way to reach this is through the aforementioned city specialisations.

A cursory glance at the data maps will indicate whether there’s a precious resource located beneath the land; but if coal, oil or ore deposits are not available, embarking on a commercial enterprise such as a casino city is a viable alternative.

Building up a successful specialisation increases the mayor’s approval ratings, enabling further enhancements to be made to buildings and local amenities, and generally boosts the income of the town.

A quicker alternative is to cheat. It’s an aspect of the reboot that has concerned some, assuming that the option to input cheat codes will be omitted given the move to online and competitive leaderboards.

However, Maxis has confirmed that cheats will be included when the game arrives next month. “As we unveiled the game we had our hardcore community asking for a sandbox, asking for cheats,” Katsarelis says.

“At first we wanted to put constraints on the game where you had to earn your money and compete on the leaderboards, but now we’ve realised we have to cater for that audience as well.

We’ve now got a sandbox mode so you can play cheats and be disconnected from leaderboards.”It’s one step to placate the concerns of the fans willing to accept nothing but the perfect SimCity experience after a decade in the dark.

The 2k by 2k size limit has its benefits given the multi-city gameplay and any qualms about depth can be dismissed after hours poring over the mayor’s approval ratings, analysing land value and maintaining RCI needs.

Ultimately, every facet of the multidimensional simulation enables the player to carefully plan and cultivate the city that they want to build, rather than adhere to the regimented evolution offered in previous games.

The fact that it manages to do so in way that neither panders to nor alienates newcomers is a small miracle in itself.

We only have one question to ask: why did it take Maxis ten years to create what is arguably shaping up to be the best SimCity yet? “We had a very particular idea in mind,” states Katsarelis.

“SimCity has always been 2D; we wanted to build a 3D world. We wanted to change the simulation from something that was more statistical to something that was more agent based.

There’s more integrity to the simulation and computers a decade ago weren’t powerful enough to do what we’re doing now with the Glass Box engine. We also wanted to do multiplayer and be online.

Gaming has changed so much over the last ten years and it’s time for us to catch up.

We’re finally 3D, we’re finally online and these are some big hurdles for SimCity.

It was all about getting the right team, the right idea and technology all together. Now is the time.”