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Not Simcity, but somewhat entertaining nonetheless

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 378 / 382
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you're reading this, the odds are that you have some basic understanding of the premise of this game and already understand that it is NOT in line with the historic Simcity franchise. It's meant to be more of a hybrid between The Sims and Simcity.

In keeping with this, many of the micromanagement aspects of Simcity have been completely removed, primarily in the infrastructure department (transportation and power are very basic and water/waste have been completely removed). There are no budgets, ordinances, or city advisors. Cash is generated on a straight line relationship to buildings that produce it. Zoning is gone, as is the idea of area of effect coverage by certain buildings.

The new concept in Societies is social energy which comes in 6 main flavors - Authority, Prosperity, Creativity, Knowledge, Productivity and Spirituality. The amount of each energy in each city is defined by the types of buildings you place. For example, an Observatory increases Knowledge, a Wall Mural increases Creativity, you get the idea. Unfortunately, some buildings also consume social energy so you need a certain reservoir of a given type for some buildings to function. Unfortunately, the correlation between which buildings produce and consume is, as far as I can tell, arbitrary. For example, a Stone Church acutally consumes spirituality but a Religious Bookstore produces it. The only way to know is to look at each building individually.

As you overbalance towards one of the social energies, your city gradually begins to thematically reflect the energy. This is easily done, as you tend to unlock new buildings which increase a given energy as you build more structures which produce/consume it. In other words, if you start heavy on police stations, jails, courts, and other government type buildings, your Authority energy starts spiking and unlocks things like the Ministry of Thought, Secret Police and the Propaganda Center. Your city, in turn, becomes more Orwellian in nature - even the music changes to match the mood. The buildings, streets, even the lighting actually change as well the further you push it (I went with an authority theme in my first city and named it, appropriately, Paranoia).

This last dynamic is really the reason to play the game. There really are a lot of fun concepts you can build - a frontier town (complete with horse and buggy instead of cars) a college town (complete with dorms and frat houses), even a haunted town. (There is a "hidden" societal energy for Haunted). The visual represenation of the societal energies is what makes the game tick and makes you want to try different city types.

Unfortunately, the down side is that there is almost no structure to the game. There are no missions, scenarios, or even goals. Unlocking more structures and a few trophies is about it. This means that gameplay gets a bit repetitive. I've sunk about 20 hours into the game at this point and it's already getting a bit redundant - at least until a city really begins to hum. There is also minimal challenge to the game. In Simcity, it was fairly easy to get off on the wrong foot by overdeveloping, overexpanding, or failing to plan things out. Dealing with the issues this caused was (and remains) one of the alluring things about the game. Socities, by contrast, is much more forgiving. I would go so far as to say it is probably impossible to "fail" at building your city and there is very little emotional/fun payoff for designing your city particularly well. It's more just to see what it looks like, and then moving on.

Controls are pretty easy to use and intuitive. There are simple sorting options for the various energies to get you right to what you want. My main beef is that the road system is somewhat clumsy and the building selection screen doesn't give you a size "footprint" making it annoying to build something as simple as a city block. Also, as mentioned above, there is no inutitive way to know what buldings consume/produce energy other than looking at them individually.

Finally, the game is definitely a system hog (although my understanding is the patch currently available is supposed to help with that). My 2.75 GHZ CPU, Dual SLI Nvidia 8800 GTXs, and 4 GB ram had severe stuttering on the high resolution. However, the game still looks great on medium/high resolution settings and lets you zoom in as far as you could wish. The sounds/music are Sims-esque, but quite good.

I'd rate this one at about a 5 out of 10. It's fairly simple to plug in and play, although some of the mechanics "under the hood" are hard to understand. It's definitely NOT Simcity, but I give EA/Tilted Mill credit for at least trying something different in this era of highly repetitive game styles/types (Another WWII game? Sure! We can make it an FPS and call it Medal of the Call of Opposing Fronts 6!) Had they taken the time to give it a bit more structure, and actually not dumbed it down quite as much, it would be a much better and compelling game. If you're a fan of the Sims, I'd say go get it now - you'll probably feel like it's worth the money. For fans of Simcity or gamers with a passing interest, I'd wait a few months for the price to drop on it.

The Sims TRY TO MOVE UP IN SOCIETY...ONLY TO BE RUN OUT OF TOWN!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 62 / 62
Date: November 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is what happens with a merger that is never given the chance to consolidate: no one gets what he expects.

First of all, if you were expecting either SIMCITY 5 or THE SIMS 3 (or even the long lost SIMVILLE), this is not where to look: SC-SOCIETIES was developed not by MAXIS but by TILTED MILL (of CAESAR 4 fame) - but this in itself is neither good or bad. Definetely bad is where they decided to take both franchises though.

Gone are most of the gameplay options that made the SIMCITY series a city-management gem. The good old colored city zones are no more - instead you have to micromanage every single building. In place of the zones, there are now six nebulous "social energies" (:productivity, prosperity, authority, creativity, spirituality and knowledge). Every building either produces or consumes one (or more) of these energies. For example, a library creates knowledge but consumes...creativity. Yeah, I know, to add insult to injury, these "social energies" do not always make "real world sense" either. It's more of a trial & error learning process.

The functioning of a real city is not observed in many aspects: for example, utilities need NOT be connected to your buildings: if enough power-plants within the city limits, you are fine. I guess Tesla's theories of wireless energy transfer finally found their mainstream niche!
Even more absurdly, civic improvements, ornaments and decorations have a cumulative beneficial effect on ALL the city - not just on adjacent areas. This makes as much sense as, say, raising the property values of ALL apartments in a city with a Central Park somewhere...

Here is why fans of THE SIMS will be left disappointed as well:
sure, your Sims still have info-balloons (depicting moods and needs) but you can have no direct effect on them. You end up playing the...buildings, not them. So, if you though it would be fun to see your beloved SIMS interact on a larger scale...not yet.

Graphically, SC-SOCIETIES is a true eye candy! The buildings and city improvements are well and clearly designed (and they are abundant - over 500 distinct items!); lighting and shadows are not only impressive but realistic in perspective and scale as well; and the weather effects (not to mention the impressive natural disasters!) add another level of visual appeal.
Now, try placing a beautifully designed and perfectly shadow-casting building that can rotate only in 45degrees increments onto right-angled street blocks! It took me over 2 minute to place a single separating wall between two houses (at maximum magnification mind you). You see, beauty can only be a means to an end when it comes to game design.

For such a shallow game, SC-SOCIETIES does convey an illusion of depth. There are statistics everywhere - almost every object sports various info-balloons with them. For the casual gamer, who obviously this game is aimed at, this all looks very impressive. I very much doubt that more experienced gamers will enjoy this ride though.

Take you pick based on your experience level.

Beautiful but full of bugs and problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 81 / 91
Date: November 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It is unfortunate that the Sim City franchise has put out a product that is so full of bugs that many users are unable to play the game at all. The Sim City forums are full of reports of technical problems, ranging from system crashes, to memory leaks.

Here are some things to be aware of if you have the game or are considering it:

1. there is already a patch available from EA, however, this patch does NOT resolve any of the reported crashes or memory leaks
2. there are a myriad of bugs, one of which is incredibly silly - if you use a particular type of road (the most common one) the game basically grinds to a halt, but if you always use county roads (a dirt road), the panning/scrolling is as normal
3. there is a mod available which unlocks some features and enhances game play, but again, crashes and memory leaks abound
4. if you have an ATI video card, there is a known issue with the latest THREE versions of the ati catalyst driver and this game - you will have to revert to a version that is approximately 4 versions old in order to maintain any level of game stability

That's enough for the technical issues, let's talk about game play.

The game is beautiful, and highly adaptive. You can finally play in a "free-for-all" mode that gives you unlimited money and basically lets you build the city of your dreams - you had to use a cheat to do this in previous sim games. The graphics are splendid and you can customize the level of detail for just about any aspect of the game, but keep in mind the higher detail, the slower the play, even on a fast computer. Adaptive means that depending upon the type of buildings you most often build, the "environment" will adapt and change, including the music and sim behaviour. This part is VERY cool.

Another downside that a lot of people are talking about is that there is really not a point to the game. You basically have to balance the types of buildings you build, and the sources of societal pleasure, like creativity, authority, productivity. What this really means is that you need to build houses, workplaces, decorations and venues for your sims, and each one has associated positive or negative points in those societal pleasures. As long as you build a balance of buildings, you're basically set. There is no challenge to the game in that regard, especially if you're playing in unlimited money mode, or free-for-all mode.

There are no options for things such as highways and trains in this game, because that's not the point. You get several types of roads, bus stations and subway stations (but no subway option - you just build the station and it's created for you). There are no water items to build (no pumps, towers, pipes), and you can plop your power plant anywhere on the map - no worry about connecting it anywhere, there are no power lines and it doesn't seem to matter where you put it as long as it exists.

Education? Only if you need to balance out your societal points, otherwise people don't seem to care about education one way or another. You can build some clinics to keep people healthy and you can build a police station or fire station if you want to, but unless you unleash a disaster, I've never needed them unless I'm balancing points.

The variety of buildings you can build, from houses to venues is quite diverse, and they have added cool concepts like stores that your population can buy products from to increase their happiness. But that happiness wears off after a while and they need more to buy. Again, just make sure you have enough venues for your sims and they take care of the rest. There's no micromanagement needed.

The game does continue to evolve as you play. Bridges go from uncovered to covered as your society ages, and other minor things change too.

All in all, the game has frustrated me due to the buggy nature. I can only play for about 30 minutes at a time before the memory leaks completely consume my computer. The program does not even exit cleanly, consuming over 400MB RAM even after the program has closed. (All known and reported issues)

My recommendation is to stick with your SimCity3000 or my personal favourite, SimCity 4, at least until a few more patches come out from EA to fix the game play and performance. It's not worth the money at this point.

Sim City Dissapointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 108 / 142
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have been an avid player of all the Sim City titles, so of course I bought this game at the first availability... Couldn't wait to get home and play it. Too bad it is such a disappointment. The building types are great, and the ability to angle the buildings.. but that's about it. The over all feel and play of this game is so not Sim City. After only an hour of game play it has become quite boring and feels more like a chore than an entertaining game. It's just not fun at all, without being able to build and control the infrastructure and transportation aspects of this game it feels like a beginner's version. EA has made a serious mistake by outsourcing this title to tilted mills, and this game is so not worthy of the SimCity name. One can only hope that there will be a SimCity5 that will return to the original game play ideas that the Sim City games were based on. I can't believe I payed $50 for this, it's not even worth $19.99. Please, do yourself a favor and pass on this one... especially if you are a Sim City fan. I really wish I would have.

Buyer Beware: Game Still Full of Bugs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 48 / 60
Date: November 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As an avid SimCity fan, I am very disappointed to report that EA Games, who used a different company than the one which produced the SimCity games, has apparently rushed this game to the shelves for the holidays before it is ready.

Virtually no technical support yet exists, and more users every day are reporting installation and game crash problems. In addition, the true list of system requirements are not provided on the outside of the box - this game is not compatable with many of the most popular video cards, including numerous versions of NVIDEA gaming cards. This means that tens of thousands of PC users can NOT run this game.

I can't recommend strongly enough that buyers wait for several months to purchase this game to see if EA will be issuing patches to fix these numerous problems. Whatever you do, check the [...] website before you purchase - unless you have a gaming PC that is less than a year old, there is a very good chance that your PC will not meet the "true" systems requirements.

move along folks, nothing to see here..

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 37 / 45
Date: November 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

i'm not a veteran sim city fan at all, but this game looked like an interesting take on the franchise - i thought you'd be able to create interesting societies and see how people act within them. wow, am i disappointed. and it's not just me - all the users of gamespot are giving this 1-star reviews too.

there's just nothing here. there are social "energies" like authority and creativity, and you create buildings based on which energies they create or use. it sounds fun - it is not. i don't feel connection at all to the citizens, and the bad camera doesn't help that at all. also the graphics suck - things should be bright and easy to see from a good angle. instead, they're at a bad angle, you can't zoom in very close and nighttime keeps coming making it hard to see. what the hell?

the user interface is simply a mess. there are tons of buildings grouped together alphabetically instead of by a meaningful category system. this means if you want to build any building, you have to scroll through and find the one you want alphabetically. that sucks. there are filters for creativity, authority etc. for buildings but they display the ones that USE and the ones that CREATE the energy all together. not good. i'm afraid the bottom line is, this game is just not good or fun. if you're an old sim city fan, or even if you're not like me, i'm afraid you are going to be disappointed.

Different but still fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 33 / 41
Date: November 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I've been a simcity fan when they first came out. I think that this was their remedy to not being able to produce Simville which was supposed to be a combo for Simcity and The Sims fans. Yes, when I bought it there were bugs, which the patch has since remedied and so far so good. I think being a die hard Simcity fan you are going to be disappointed because it is unlike any SimCity you've ever played. It's not about the infrastructure; it's about the people. The fun is in the details. For example I created a fun/contemplative city. As the society progressed the street lights changed to torches and every house had a chinese lantern to light their porches. Murals changed to reflect your society's interest. Even the sims' names and the music changed to a more Asian influence. Talk about the music!! I love the music. If you create an authoritarian society the music became a more militaristic/industrial/techno march and all the details like banners of a dictator pop-up everywhere in the city's decor. On the downside, you have to give up some of the customizing tools you had on SimCity, like the terrain tool and if you plan to build a subway don't plan on seeing the underground view. You just have to trust that the subway exists and that your sims are going underground and using it. Overall, if you are have an open mind and are more concerned with the socio-dynamics, rather then the zoning, then this is the game for you.

Horribly Unstable

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 28 / 33
Date: November 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is NOT SimCity. It has little depth, almost no problem solving, and nothing that can't be fixed by spending money and replacing buildings. Money just rolls in once your city reaches critical mass, and that's not hard to do either. If you want a challenge in this game, you'll have to create it yourself by deliberately throwing in crime, pollution, and situations that provoke sims in to going 'rogue'.

But the graphics are awesome. The city's roads and buildings take on the character of certain archetypes (cyberpunk, authoritarian, romantic, fun, contemplative, etc) as you push certain societal energies. This makes playing the game and watching the evolution of your city a lot of fun.

However, the energies themselves affect only buildings. Sims are sims in this game and never act any different depending on what you do. They get happy and unhappy just the same. For all it's talk about creating your own society, this game doesn't seem to realize that the society is the people. Since none of what you do affects the people much at all the game comes across as rather hollow and superficial.

If you'd like to create a city from a simple artistic point of view, this game is for you. You've got total control over which building goes where. Street placement is limited to 90 degree angles though and there's only 2 kinds of streets (the paved one does change according to what energies your city uses, and these different types have already been unlocked by at least one mod). If you are looking to indulge your creativity in building a beautiful city with an interesting layout, this game will let you do just that.

But wait for another patch. This thing crashes frequently. I can get up to 2hrs of playtime before it crashes depending on how large my city is and how much I do. Often it crashes after 30 min on small to medium cities. I haven't gotten anywhere close to filling up the map. The EA SCS boards are filled with people who have similar, if not worse problems. (There is an autosave feature. I have it set to save every 5 min. But really, who wants to play a game that continually crashes?)

SCS is a game that's more geared towards the casual gaming market. That's ok (except for the hardcore SimCity4 fans who were looking for an update on a classic). I could get into SCS and lose myself for several hours if it was stable and would run for several hours reliably. I'd give it a 3/5 on the fun scale. But I have to take off 2 stars for instability. I have Vista 64 and my computer specs far exceed the minimum. There's no excuse, in my opinion, for releasing a game that obviously wasn't beta tested enough. I have to assume EA was trying to cash in on the Christmas buying season since they well knew they weren't going to get many SimCity fans sold on SCS.

BEWARE OF SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 44 / 63
Date: November 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this product today, and I noticed that the system requirements are pretty hefty, including newer video cards.
So, if you are like me, who has basic computer, you might not be able to play it.
This is what you will need:
1.7 MHZ or Higher processor
2.1 GB to load program
Video Adapter MUST have 128 mgs or higher and one of the following chipsets:
ATI Radeon 9600 or higher or
NVIDIA FX 5900 or higher.

The Nightmare is complete, however.....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 21 / 25
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I will admit that I had faith in Tilted Mill for taking the huge task of blending Simcity and The Sims together into Simcity Societies. After all they did a nice job in Children of the Nile. It wasn't a "blow me out of the water" hit, but it was nice.

Tilted Mill and Electronic Arts decided to bring Simcity Societies in which everything from Simcity 4000 and its expansion are thrown out the door and reworked. This was a bold plan considering how hugely popular the Simcity franchise has been. From the original to Simcity 4000, the core of the game remained the same. The graphics began to change and content was added. This ranged from city ordinances, one-way streets, ground highways, above ground highways, sanitation, ferries, and elevated highways. Simcity in effect evolved. While not perfect in Simcity 4000, it certainly was a beauty to look at in 3D (somewhat). With the added expansion Rush Hour, it certainly made SC4k more enjoyable and more content.

Here's were Simcity Societies tries to continue the Simcity franchise yet retools everything starting with the original Simcity more than 18 years ago. Instead of zoning, you place the buildings just like in City Life. Unlike in SC4K, roads and power has been watered down. No power lines can be placed. Schools, colleges, museums and libraries have been totaly changed. You can create different types of cities by placing specific buildings. If you place more courts, jails, and police stations, your city becomes Orwellian. You can create a "creative" city using murals and other buildings specific to creativity. Also you can create an Industrious city. These are a few types of cities you can create. This is disapointing to me because I loved the zoning and the micromanagement that came along with the Simcity Franchise. You cant even drive in your city. All of this was wiped out in Simcity Societies. Not good! This I would believe would alienate many Simcity lovers. After playing Rush Hour, I was hoping EA wouldn't abandon SC4K like Atari/Frontier abandoned Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. SC4K and Rush Hour Expansion just needed some minor tweaking, more content, updated graphics and it would put SC4K even higher. Perhaps next to The Sims Franchise and Civilization.

The graphics are nice. If these graphics were used in SC4K, then I would have to say is, WOW! Unfortunately, EA/TM didn't. Everyone said this is a hybrid of The Sims and Simcity but I would have to add City Life into it. Simcity Societies is a mix of The Sims, Simcity, and City Life. From City Life, the only thing missing are the social classes that can't get along and mix in turn create trouble that you have to deal with. City Life tried to be the successor to Simcity as Simcity Societies tried to as well. Unfortunately, both failed. The developers had good ideas but there was too much watering down. SimCity Societies was a good attempt but not good enough. Maybe Tilted Mill will listen and restore what made the Simcity Franhise a terrific city-management game.

One thing that surprised me. Im running this game on a Intel Core2Duo machine, with 4GB ram, x1900xtx video card, SB X-Fi and it hick-ups at times.

Im not going to go as far as saying steer clear of this game. It had good promise and it seemed like Tilted Mill was really trying unlike other developers who send out horrible games and then distant themselves from it, or blame the dog. Simcity lovers will pick up this game, then be somewhat disapointed. Newcomers to the citybuilding genre will like it, then as they get further into the game, will see it as fading on the fun and wow factor. I bought it when it first was released simply because I had a giftcard when I traded in some console games. Otherwise I would of waited for the price to go down. I still enjoy SC4K and Im in the middle of building a huge region. Simcity Societies doesnt make me forget SC4k. But again, I hope Tilted Mill retinkers Simcity Societies and restores what made SC4k a great game. Together they will make a masterpiece. Until then, I will hope and pray.

Please becareful as well. Those bargain $200-$800 will not run Simcity Societies. Pay close attention to the requirements. If you are running the onboard graphics and/or sound graphics the game will not work.

Those itching to try this, I encourage you to download the demo first. Those that are still undecided, wait for the expansion Destinations (which looks promising) to be released, and make up your mind then. By then, the Deluxe will be available (end of May to late June) which includes all of the Simcity games from the original to Simcitiy Societies and its expansion. You will get much more for your money in the deluxe version than just buying Simcity Societies by itself. How many of us still have Simcity Original? Anyone feeling nostalgia for Simcity Orginal and Simcity 2 and 3?

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