SimCity Societies | Decent compared to what I've played!

SimCity Societies | Great game potential, but gotta work some of the hefty game requirements...wishing now for a Mac version

pc & video games:

SimCity Societies

	SimCity Societies Windows \| Electronic Arts, 2007 average customer review:based on 84 reviews view larger image
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Decent compared to what I've played!

This game is excellent. I was impressed with the graphics and overall it was an enjoyable experience. I would definitely buy this game again. It beats the pants off of free sim games like http://ebwf.myminicity.com/

Great game potential, but gotta work some of the hefty game requirements...wishing now for a Mac version

I bought SimCity Societies for my wife as she loves the SimCity genre. This is totally different from the Classic SimCity style game, yes you still build a city and control aspects of it, but in this game you get more control over how your Sims live and interact. Gone is the lengthy zoning requirements that you had in other SimCity versions. Instead you get to place every building. You are regulated by many factors now, having to figure out if a structure provides enough happiness or entertainment value etc. Its somewhat intimidating to me who last played SimCity 2000 and SimCity 4 Deluxe. This game has some HEFTY video and system requirements. My wife's PC has plenty of RAM (4GB) and a great video card (Radeon X1650 w/ 512MB) and the game still chunks along at times until you go into the Video settings and adjust for lower values. You really should want to have a Dual Core processor to play this at anything above default values. The 3D is freaking awesome. Sometimes its just cool to spin the camera around and snap different pics of the city you made. One thing we love is you can create various types of cities from a Fun theme to a Capitalist theme to an Authoritative Dictatorship theme. And if you screw up or get tired... you let loose Armageddon. Although, the Destructive Forces in my opinion are way too limiting... Killer Storm, Meteors, Fires, Earthquake. I yearn for the UFO Alien Attack, or Giant Lizard from other SimCity games. Perhaps there will be addons. The game is hard to get into... You really NEED the Game Guide. Its not too expensive. I got it for my wife at the same time as the game. The Guide helps so much with some of the cryptic icons and other weirdness. When going to the SimCity Society Forums I get the feel that a lot of people are Disappointed with the Game. There is a Patch out now which can fix some of the crud. As of right now, There is only a Windows Version. Which is very sad... Mac Users have to Use BootCamp or similar to run Windows XP/Vista on their Intel Macs. Even then there are errors that pop up. The game makers REALLY need to Port this game 100% to the Mac platform. Anyone with a new Mac would have enough specs to run the game. Oh well. My wife and I gotta share for now. Until I buy my own copy. :)

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Fun, but really buggy

I love Tilted Mill's games, and have been a Sim City fan since day 1. This is a fun game, although I can see where it could become boring after a while. There is no challenge, it's just a city builder. You can throw disasters at your city to spice things up, of course, and there seems to be an endless supply of buildings to unlock by meeting certain building requirements and milestones.

That said, I have to express extreme dissappointment with the playability of this game. My computer meets all the requirements to run the game, and on first install it wouldn't run. I had to actually format my hard drive and re-install windows to get it to run. Perhaps my system was already messed up, though.

With large cities, the game crashes every 30 minutes or so.
The 2nd patch released "fixed" my game so it won't even load.

I've read on the tech-support forum that this game has issues with dual-core processors. People have had to change a setting to associate the game with only one core.

I'm sure Tilted Mill is working to get a third patch to address these issues, but until then, keep an eye on the tech support forum and purchase only if you are willing to deal with potential fun-inhibiting bugs.

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Hard to get used to and maneuver around

I am a huge SimCity fan. Play Rush Hour for hours a day, and bought Societies hoping it was the next best thing. It really isn't. I played it as much as I could possibly stand, and have gone back to playing Rush Hour. Society is hard to get used to, and the camera views can be quite difficult to handle. It would take alot of practice and patience to get the hang of it right away.

Not SimCity 5

If you are looking to a follow-up to SimCity 4, this is not it. The similarities between SC4 and SimCity Societies ends with the fact that you are building a city.

This game is more focused on the energy of the society than it is with traditional SimCity style city-building. It is a breath of fresh air and is just as addictive as the older versions if approached with an open mind. Overall, the gameplay is pretty interesting and it is fun to try to build different styles of cities.

The reason I will only give this game 3 stars is the technical difficulties that come with it. The installer is abnormally slow in comparison to any other game installer I have ever seen. I tried to use the update patch from EA, but it keeps giving me an error saying that I need to uninstall and reinstall the game (which I have done, to no avail). Even with my new-ish graphics card (nVidia GeForce 8500 GT), Intel Core 2 Quad processor and 2GB RAM on WinXP, I had to set most of the graphics settings to low and reduce the resolution to 1440x900 for the game to be responsive enough to be playable.

Overall, I'm excited about the potential of this game, just disappointed in the execution of the development by EA and Tilted Mill.

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