Before I copy/paste the review in from my blog, I wanted to write this explanation. I wrote this review back in late summer and since then no one has really told me if I should keep writing or stack these into the pile of Things-I-Cannot-Do.
So, without further ado; A retrospective of SimCity 3000
SimCity 3000’s predecessor is not as you might have guessed SimCity 2999, but SimCity 2000. A game that’s the 3000th in it’s series you would expect to have massive improvements, but there really aren’t any. Will Wright basically copy/pasted SimCity 2000 with slight graphical improvements.
I have played SimCity 2000 on the GameBoy and even there I thought it was really fucking hard, so from previous experience I played SimCity 3000 on easy, but it was really fucking hard anyway. What’s the point of having the option to play on easy/normal/hard if all the difference is how much money you have
There isn’t even a tutorial level that explained how to do shit, you just get plunged into a half built city or no city. I picked no city, named it Shitti Town, for some strange reason, erected some houses, waited and waited long for little sim people to start walking the streets. When that happened I started to notice that the number that represents my money was starting to get lower and lower as the number that represents the date got higher and higher. I was losing money, and fast. So I quickly raised the taxes on everything, started paying much, much less for everything and and suddenly my population was getting lower and lower. People escaping?! From my city!? As quickly as possible I jumped into the demolition truck and WRY–I mean, deleted all the roads that lead out of my city, trapping the little clouds of pixels in and ruining their virtual lives forever. When my city was nearly in the shitter due to the nonexistent economy and budget plan, I just launched all the disasters at it hoping to get some satisfaction out of it, but none came. Every disaster always hit the wrong place no matter how much I hoped it would land in the city and even if it did, it just put a gray square where the houses were with spots that were a little darker shade of gray.
There are five disasters which you can choose to end the lives of sims and make their families live lives of sorrow and hatred for nature and you. Earthquakes, fires, aliens, riots and tornadoes. Either they come by themselves, which can be turned off, or you make them appear, but on top of that – Where is fucking Godzilla? The reason why most people play SimCity is to see a gigantic green lizard reduce their city to a smoking pile of rubble. At least I certainly do. And why can’t I put a volcano in the middle of my city? I guess I’ll just have to tell you about the shitty regular disasters.
The earthquakes shake the ground and sometimes produce a faultline, which you can make yourself by deleting the houses in a line, elevating the ground and putting back the zone and letting sims build the houses all over again.
Fires make things smoke and then produce unconvincing fire which turns the house into a gray square unless there’s a fire department nearby and you plant the Fire-Over-Here Spear on the house.
Aliens fly around terrorizing everyone with their spotlights of doom. There was this strange glitch that the mothership stayed in place when you were moving the camera. It would continue moving when you stopped moving the camera, meaning that you could change it’s course at will and probably make them miss some alien convention. You might argue, surely there is a patch released that fixes this. You know what I think of patches? If they need to release patches and fixes, then the game is clearly not finished and if you release an unfinished game into the market, then you are asking for trouble. Unless it’s a patch that enables playing the game on a later operating system, against which I have no problem.
Riots are when people get really angry and start throwing dust clouds and bits of paper the size of entire houses around. This can be stopped by planting the Police-Needed-Here Spear and waiting, unless you make a police department next to the riot.
Tornadoes happen when Taz from Looney Tunes is in the area and decides to throw around bits of paper the size of entire homes.
Then there’s the real disaster. When you’re losing massive amounts of money. Try as you will I could not figure out a way to stop it. The budget adviser doesn’t help for shit as all he does is tell you to review your nonexistent budget plan.
At the end of the year you get to see how well you did this year. My report looked like some unfortunate father’s bank account after filming a Sweet 16 show about his brainless daughter that wanted that specific car and would not accept a perfectly fine Audi.
Then there’s the landmarks. Theoretically you can build all the landmarks in your city and be the belly of the world, if you have enough money and need more population tan the map size can support. I immediately built the World Trade Center and gleefully placed an airport next to it before realizing that this game was made before Arabs did 9/11. I mean, the government.
There’s basically all the buildings that are 3D in Google Earth and then some. Most of which have never been heard of which Maxis probably pulled from under a rock. Everything except my 1000 foot statue made of solid gold. I don’t care if I will make every sim in the city cough up their emergency lunch money, I want it built.
You can alter the terrain at which point I erected two gigantic mountains, and made a river flow up and over just to fuck with Newton. Unfortunately, it didn't affect my population at all. I mean, who wouldn't want to live in a city wheres there two mountain pyramids where water flows upwards?
EDIT:
Also, excuse anything that may not adhere to the escapist guidelines, this is the first time I ever done this kind of thing.
So, without further ado; A retrospective of SimCity 3000
SimCity 3000’s predecessor is not as you might have guessed SimCity 2999, but SimCity 2000. A game that’s the 3000th in it’s series you would expect to have massive improvements, but there really aren’t any. Will Wright basically copy/pasted SimCity 2000 with slight graphical improvements.
I have played SimCity 2000 on the GameBoy and even there I thought it was really fucking hard, so from previous experience I played SimCity 3000 on easy, but it was really fucking hard anyway. What’s the point of having the option to play on easy/normal/hard if all the difference is how much money you have
There isn’t even a tutorial level that explained how to do shit, you just get plunged into a half built city or no city. I picked no city, named it Shitti Town, for some strange reason, erected some houses, waited and waited long for little sim people to start walking the streets. When that happened I started to notice that the number that represents my money was starting to get lower and lower as the number that represents the date got higher and higher. I was losing money, and fast. So I quickly raised the taxes on everything, started paying much, much less for everything and and suddenly my population was getting lower and lower. People escaping?! From my city!? As quickly as possible I jumped into the demolition truck and WRY–I mean, deleted all the roads that lead out of my city, trapping the little clouds of pixels in and ruining their virtual lives forever. When my city was nearly in the shitter due to the nonexistent economy and budget plan, I just launched all the disasters at it hoping to get some satisfaction out of it, but none came. Every disaster always hit the wrong place no matter how much I hoped it would land in the city and even if it did, it just put a gray square where the houses were with spots that were a little darker shade of gray.
There are five disasters which you can choose to end the lives of sims and make their families live lives of sorrow and hatred for nature and you. Earthquakes, fires, aliens, riots and tornadoes. Either they come by themselves, which can be turned off, or you make them appear, but on top of that – Where is fucking Godzilla? The reason why most people play SimCity is to see a gigantic green lizard reduce their city to a smoking pile of rubble. At least I certainly do. And why can’t I put a volcano in the middle of my city? I guess I’ll just have to tell you about the shitty regular disasters.
The earthquakes shake the ground and sometimes produce a faultline, which you can make yourself by deleting the houses in a line, elevating the ground and putting back the zone and letting sims build the houses all over again.
Fires make things smoke and then produce unconvincing fire which turns the house into a gray square unless there’s a fire department nearby and you plant the Fire-Over-Here Spear on the house.
Aliens fly around terrorizing everyone with their spotlights of doom. There was this strange glitch that the mothership stayed in place when you were moving the camera. It would continue moving when you stopped moving the camera, meaning that you could change it’s course at will and probably make them miss some alien convention. You might argue, surely there is a patch released that fixes this. You know what I think of patches? If they need to release patches and fixes, then the game is clearly not finished and if you release an unfinished game into the market, then you are asking for trouble. Unless it’s a patch that enables playing the game on a later operating system, against which I have no problem.
Riots are when people get really angry and start throwing dust clouds and bits of paper the size of entire houses around. This can be stopped by planting the Police-Needed-Here Spear and waiting, unless you make a police department next to the riot.
Tornadoes happen when Taz from Looney Tunes is in the area and decides to throw around bits of paper the size of entire homes.
Then there’s the real disaster. When you’re losing massive amounts of money. Try as you will I could not figure out a way to stop it. The budget adviser doesn’t help for shit as all he does is tell you to review your nonexistent budget plan.
At the end of the year you get to see how well you did this year. My report looked like some unfortunate father’s bank account after filming a Sweet 16 show about his brainless daughter that wanted that specific car and would not accept a perfectly fine Audi.
Then there’s the landmarks. Theoretically you can build all the landmarks in your city and be the belly of the world, if you have enough money and need more population tan the map size can support. I immediately built the World Trade Center and gleefully placed an airport next to it before realizing that this game was made before Arabs did 9/11. I mean, the government.
There’s basically all the buildings that are 3D in Google Earth and then some. Most of which have never been heard of which Maxis probably pulled from under a rock. Everything except my 1000 foot statue made of solid gold. I don’t care if I will make every sim in the city cough up their emergency lunch money, I want it built.
You can alter the terrain at which point I erected two gigantic mountains, and made a river flow up and over just to fuck with Newton. Unfortunately, it didn't affect my population at all. I mean, who wouldn't want to live in a city wheres there two mountain pyramids where water flows upwards?
EDIT:
Also, excuse anything that may not adhere to the escapist guidelines, this is the first time I ever done this kind of thing.
