A Short Hour with SimCity

Having been invited to the closed beta of SimCity this weekend, I thought I'd take to my keyboard and get some of my early thoughts out there.

Be aware though that the game is still in beta and over a month away, so any criticism here can be taken with a pinch of salt until the full game is out. You also only get one single hour, and any SimCity fan knows that it takes days or weeks of gameplay to get a decent city built.

As much as I'd love to post some videos or screenshots I took, I'm not 100% on how strict the NDA is for this beta.

So, without further ado, these are a few of the main additions, improvements and problems I found in one hour of the game.

Space

The real major complaint stemming from the beta is the issue of how much space you are given to build your city. I have to agree that upon being given my chunk of land, the first thing I noticed was that it was considerably smaller than past games. As the beta is only an hour, I didn't get the time to decide whether it was actually enough or not. What I can say, is that in one hour I had filled approximately half of the land. Part of this is due to the amount of road that is required for zoning (see below), and another part is due to the fact I was rushing, but even so it felt like it could easily be filled in a day of play.

It is a genuine worry, and in a recent Reddit Q+A, it was confirmed that the largest spaces available in SimCity are around the size of a medium landscape in Sim City 4. It's difficult to understand why this is, given that with the resources available today, you'd expect a bigger city if anything. If this game receives any negative reviews or comments, it's highly likely that the small spaces will be at the root of the complaints. It also leaves me wondering exactly what use an airport or rail system might be, unless of course they are linked to other cities.

Other cities are available to play in the same region, so if you find yourself out of room it is possible to make a new city and have it cooperate with the old one. The two will function and work together like neighbours if you allow it. However, I get the feeling that those empty spaces are really meant for playing with friends.

Zoning and Building Modules

After the atrocity that was Sim City Societies, it's good to see area zoning back. It's not SimCity without residential, commercial and industrial zoning, and it's all back with all the proper indicators and meters that you need. It has been simplified though, which I still can't decide is for the better or worse. The good thing is that it's no longer possible to control the zoning of different land values yourself. Where before you could zone residential areas for the poor, middle class and rich separately, the game now does that for you. You'll simply zone the area, and as land values rise (through low pollution, good transport, low crime etc.) the sims will simply upgrade the buildings themselves. It works, because it means you really have to work to keep land values up if you want big skyscrapers and large hotels.

One of the downsides of the new system though, is that zones now have to be placed directly onto a road. Previously, you'd zone a large square area and the game would add some roads in for you, leaving you to upgrade them at a later date. Now, you can only zone the edges of existing roads. It makes sense, but I found that space was very quickly becoming less as I had to constantly lay new roads to zone new areas. It means you have to have a line of road on either side of every row of buildings, or try to make the gap between two roads big enough to fit two streets of buildings without wasting precious space - which can be difficult to tell at first. It led to me often zoning an area and sims not having enough room to build on it, rendering it wasted space. I'm not saying it's a bad system, but it takes a little getting used to and could possibly result in a city with a LOT of road when given more than an hours playtime. This adds to the feeling of larger canvases being needed.

Gameplay footage showing zoning

Aside from zoning, you can still put buildings down ('plop', as the game puts it) singly in the form of fire/police stations, hospitals, schools and many more. A new feature to this however, is modules. They are extensions and add-ons to buildings you've already placed that enhance both its properties and design. It can include adding extra classrooms for a school rather than forking out for an entire new building, or simply adding some extra squad cars to a police station. The beta locked out most of the upgrades, but it's easy to see how adding modules to existing buildings will be essential later on.

City Specialisation

One of the major new additions to SimCity is what Maxis have called City Specialisation. It's pretty self-explanatory and can be seen in most of the videos that Maxis have put out. The beta only shows seven specialisations to choose from, but I'd say more are likely to be added post-release. Only Gambling was available this time, and then only a single casino. On my second run through, I flew through the things I'd normally plan carefully - zoning, road placement, pollution worries - and got right into placing my casino to see the difference it makes.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The casino brought in some criminals, crime went up dramatically and I hadn't yet placed a police station, causing chaos. Many of the buildings already built were torn down and new hotels put up to accommodate the tourist influx. Land values rose around the casino, and so did my funds. I placed a few modules - a comedy club and a room for reasonably rich folk. That brought more business. Coffee shops and hardware stores disappeared, restaurants and posh banks put in their place. The city suddenly felt more alive, like it had a reason for being there. Night fell and the casino glowed in the centre of my town as people continued to flock to it. It became instantly obvious that in order to get a bustling, vibrant metropolis like was shown in the trailers, you have to take up a specialisation. That's really the idea of the game.

Official Maxis Screenshot of a Casino City

Unfortunately, the other, larger casinos were blocked for the beta, but I'm incredibly intrigued to see what happens when the larger ones are laid down. I would assume that as you upgrade and build better things from the specialisation menu, sims will upgrade the rest of the city themselves providing the land value is kept high. Specialisations are what are likely to form the backbone of your town, and as a result the towns around you.

Verdict

It's far too early to say whether or not SimCity will be a huge success, and the beta didn't allow for enough access to different parts of the game to really give a definitive review.

The game does feel like it's been dumbed down slightly, perhaps for the benefit of younger players. Statistics about your city now appear less detailed than before, and while this could be seen as a negative, it does actually allow for smoother, more relaxed gameplay. I'll stress again though, it's entirely possible that some options were simply locked out for the beta.

Still, it takes a good hour of careful city building to be ready for a specialisation, meaning that most beta players won't get chance to really tinker with it unless they rush like I did. I firmly believe that the specialisations will transform your city in more ways than I mentioned above. Mining cities will cause pollution in the way that casinos cause crime, and it's sure to bring a new dynamic to the gameplay.

What I can definitively say is that I thoroughly enjoyed what I played and I now have no doubts about keeping my pre-order. I played through my hour about 5 times, experimenting with different methods, and each one provided a different experience. It's incredible zooming down to street level and just watching your city come to life.

With the only major worry at this point being the small city size, SimCity is shaping up to be an incredible game and one that should be enjoyed by most.