Screenshots For New Wii SimCity Released

Kotaku has a host of screenshot images from the new upcoming Wii sim, SimCity Creator. Looks like the new SimCity allows you to not only build and manage a city, but utilize a whole new range of disaster tools as well. Can't wait to introduce my citizens to the new hand of God.

Comments

looks good

[stoolpigeon]

I look forward to introducing my kids to this game. I don't know if they will enjoy it as much as I did, but I think they will like it.

I hope

[dunezone]

Its a mix between somewhat simple and somewhat complex. I loved the original, loved Simcity 2000, and enjoyed Simcity 3000, but Simcity 4 included so much depth and micromanagement that it turned away a lot of us.

Re:I hope

[mrchaotica]

And on the other side of the coin, there are those of us for whom even SimCity 4 wasn't complex enough. Or, at least, realistic enough.

I, for example, would like to see a SimCity that wasn't based on a rectangular grid, so that you could have proper curves in the roads. I'd also like to see the ability to make walking and/or cycling paths, so that you could potentially create a city with no cars whatsoever. Bus stops and subway stations that didn't take up a whole grid square would be nice, as would being able to build roads one lane at a time (including turn lanes). Finally, I'd like to see mixed-use zoning.

Of course, they could keep the complexity down by removing other stuff. I wouldn't mind them cutting the touchy-feely "my sims" junk, the driving missions (if somebody wants that, they ought to just make a new Streets of SimCity and do it properly instead), etc.

Re:I hope

[Rocketship Underpant]

You've already been modded as high as possible, so I might as well put in my two cents instead. :)

I agree wholeheartedly. Building a city is absolutely fascinating, and SimCity gives a taste while making more interesting layouts and experiments impossible. I'd love to have a city simulator that let me *at least* emulate a real-world city with angled and curved roads, pedestrian paths and walkways, customizable roads (with respect to number of lanes and lane use), mixed-use zoning (or even un-zoned development), better overpasses, etc.

I can imagine such a game being similar, complexity-wise, to SimCity 4 at first sight, but including tools like a Road Designer, an Intersection Designer, a Zone Designer, and so on that let you produce custom elements for the game. I'd pay a good deal of money for something like this.

Here's what I don't care about. I don't care about the tedium of laying pipes and power lines everywhere. I don't care to have special sims I follow around the city. I don't even care about natural disasters, though I suppose some people enjoy disaster scenarios. I just want a really sophisticated sandbox to play in. :)

Wii Games

[AndrewStephens]

I wish there were more games for the Wii like this - the WiiMote seems tailor made for turn based strategy and board games.

I can't understand why x-box live gets all the board games when the x-box controller is so ill-suited for the task.

Re:Wii Games

[pavon]

It is well suited for point-and-click games (which most board games are) because it has a pointer, rather than having to navigate with an annoying d-pad or joystick.

God game

[AKAImBatman]

Can't wait to introduce my citizens to the new hand of God.

Mayor Daley? Is that you?

Where is simcity 5 for the pc? I want to have road

[Joe The Dragon]

Where is simcity 5 for the pc? I want to have full road control in it as well. I don't want to locked down to common roads types, lane sets, and interchanges. Also let us build tolls on ramps as well.

Re:Where's my GTA SimCity?

[AdamBomb8705]

So you want Streets of SimCity then. I'd love new versions of that and SimCopter with modern graphics and physics engines.

Says it all...

[neokushan]

I'm not saying it's a bad game or anything, but when the most exciting thing about a new SimCity game is the disasters you can inflict upon your city, it sort of implies that they've made the wrong kind of game.
The objective of the game is to build and manage your city, not destroy it (although that's always fun), makes me think it's about time SimCity got a proper remake to bring it into the 21st century and not just updated graphics.

Eh, it could be worse

[Moraelin]

Actually, if you want the real black sheep of that series, try Sim City Societies, a.k.a., Sim City V. It was kinda the opposite: over-simplified to the point of being absurd and meaningless.

It wasn't just a numbers game, it was a _totals_ game. You needed X points creativity to place one artsy-town house. That's ok, you just need to place Y graffiti walls for those, but it doesn't actually matter where. It can be in a bunker under the ocean floor, for all those people care. Ditto for just about anything else. You need X1 police-state points for a secret police HQ, if you go for oppressive totalitarian town. You need X2 wealth points to build a bank.

The whole thing is just a game of producers and consumers, and the only condition is that you must produce more than you consume. But even there the relationships are actually weird. A secret police HQ for example, actually consumes police state points, so logically it makes your city less oppressive. A bank actually consumes wealth points, so logically it would make your town poorer. Etc.

Worse yet, because the game actually encourages you to stick with one theme, you'll likely need to manage _one_ number. Yay.

Ok, there is one more number: workers vs work-places. Even that's screwed up. Shops don't actually have employees. Buildings are divided hard into:

- houses: they provide workers

- service buildings, like shops: they neither add nor use workers, but they satisfy some need

- industry: they provide employment, but otherwise have no influence on morale

The division is weird at times. E.g., banks are industry: they provide employment, but otherwise are of no use to your citizens. It gets worse: there are even kinds of _shops_ which are categorized as industry, so they don't actually sell anything. And viceversa.

Things like education quotient, happiness factors, pollution, etc, are gone too. E.g., placing a school doesn't really do anything for your city's education, it just makes kids happy (I'm guessing the designer doesn't have kids of school age;), provides some kinds of points, and subtracts other kinds of points. So basically it's again at most needed for the totals to build something else. Ditto for, say, slum or police state themes. They don't actually make the citizens unhappier or anything, they just provide or consume some points.

In a nutshell, it's no longer a city simulator, it's a fancy drawing program with some elementary maths attached. It lets you paint a city in a certain theme, but not much more, and not in a much more interesting way than doing it in Gimp. (In fact, maybe less. Wrestling Gimp's interface can be a challenge and game by itself;)

So to cut this rant short(er) and get to the actual point: well, I see your point about too _much_ depth and micro-management. But I hope the next one will have at least _some_ depth and complexity. Something as shallow as a puddle on the sidewalk, can be even less fun to play.