I’ve always been a mixed bag as a gamer. My first gaming platforms were my parents’ Atari 2600, my dad’s TRS 80 and Tandy 1000 (as well as the subsequent IBM clones), and my grandfather’s Commodore 64 and Amiga. The NES was soon available at a friend’s house (and later on in my own), while the SEGA Genesis made its place known as my primary console for many, many years. As time progressed, I maintained a fair balance between PC and console gaming, with a six or seven years exception. Consoles never disappeared, but PC was my main platform until about 2006, when my PC finally gave up the ghost and I found myself either unable or unwilling to update it. Since then, consoles have become dominant for me, and nothing has come along to really force me into rebuilding a PC. Until yesterday’s announcement of SimCity.
For SimCity, I will build a PC.
SimCity 2000 is quite easily one of my favorite PC games of all time. It doesn’t take the top spot, which is held firmly by BioWare’s 2002 RPG, Neverwinter Nights, but it can without hesitation be given the silver medal. SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 were good, but I lived and breathed SimCity 2000 when for longer than I’d care to admit. Now, SimCity has given me that impetus to bring PC gaming back into my home.
Built using Maxis’ proprietary Glassbox Engine, SimCity brings one incredibly fun new element to the SimCity franchise: your city will have an affect on other cities, and vice versa. If your city is a shining metropolis, a beacon of hope and joy in an otherwise bleak world, the cities of neighboring players will be positively affected. If your city is near an absolute slumdump of a town, well, don’t let your Sims walk the streets at night without providing solid protection. Compete or cooperate with other cities in the search for resources and solutions to common global problems. Build within an interactive and persistent world!
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What’s that I see at the 1:10 mark? An ARCO exodus? Yeah, it is. I know I say this a lot, as do a lot of people, but I am absolutely serious about it in this case: Aside from going to work, SimCity will devour all of my waking moments for a very long, and very entertaining time.
