It's like I can't mess around and learn a new game without wanting to take screencaps and talk about it at length. It's weird and vaguely unnerving. But who cares, it's time to
Build some cities!
SimCity, for those not up to speed on one of the most well-known game franchises in history, is a game about building a
simulated
city. That's why it's called that. There's no victory condition, you just build and handle civic problems as they arise until you decide you're done. You handle zoning and municipal services like electric power, water, and garbage disposal; while balancing the city budget.
yes it's more fun than it sounds shut up
I haven't played a SimCity game since 2000, and even that in passing. The most experience I have with the series was the SNES launch title. I have a
lot of catching up to do.
So let's reticulate some splines!
One of the first new concepts in SimCity 4 (which was introduced in a previous version but it's new to me goldurnit) is that of region play. You aren't limited to just one city, you can control several scattered across a rather large swath of land called a "region".
You can load pregenerated regions or even download them off the Internet and load them up, but eh. We'll start from scratch whynot
Oddly, there's no way to randomly-generate a landscape. You start with a wide, flat prairie or an ocean, and build up from there.
So I've got these open, verdant fields, stretching as far as the eye can see. Know what that reminds me of?
The first level of every other video game, ever. Welcome to World 1-1.
Let's zoom in on one of the larger tiles to start our first city, yeah?
Terraforming lets you raise or lower then land -- lower it enough and it'll fill with water. You can plant trees and stuff, too.
Not bad, not bad. A big plateau in one corner, a few steppes leading to a more-or-less flat-bottomed valley. This reminds me of something, too...
Right. Off we go.