Electrical grids? Meh. Highways? Fleh. Civic infrastructure? Poo. If you’re a real SimCity fan, you know it’s all about the disasters that the apathetic world throws your way. You know that something will come, and that you’ll need to deal with it. It’s inevitable. If it’s a worry you’ve had to relate to your psychiatrist, then you need worry no more. This is what you’ve been waiting for: a faux ‘olde’ style trailer showing off the various ways that your Simulated City (5) could be destroyed, and the various avenues open to you to protect it.
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Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Posts Tagged ‘Maxis’
SimCity Trailer Is A Disasterpiece
By Craig Pearson on October 15th, 2012.
Under Construction: SimCity In-Game Footage Shown
By John Walker on October 11th, 2012.
Maxis’ Lucy Bradshaw (senior VP and GM) invites you into her living room to watch some Sim City on her enormous telly. Originally broadcast live at some point during last night, it’s an hour and seventeen minutes of all things Sims and SimCity. It’s below, and I’ve highlighted the parts you’ll want to watch.
Urbane Living: SimCity
By Adam Smith on October 4th, 2012.
This is a treat. Ten minutes of SimCity, showing a city being simulated all the way from its humble beginnings as a field to its brash middle period as a nascent tourist trap. I’m unable to remove the frown that the social and online aspects of the game have stitched into my forehead, but I’m also unable to banish the smile that the multitude of systems at work brings to my face. Rather than being about plonking down zones and buildings, this SimCity tracks and models individual elements in great detail. That level of simulation fascinates me.
A Whole New: SimCity World (Also, Beta!)
By Nathan Grayson on August 16th, 2012.
You may not have heard, but SimCity‘s making a big, connection-required-on-start-up play for online, er, play. That said, I doubt the decision was made entirely by a roundtable of cackling men in suits who meet in dark rooms and refer to themselves as “The Council.” There is, in other words, a method to the madness – almost as though it’s being guided by some omniscient presence that has a disturbing amount of trouble preventing tornadoes and wildfires from ravaging entire metroplexes. But what exactly are we getting for our trouble? Well, it’s called SimCity World, and EA’s dropped a video of the basics in action. Build a (curved!) road past the break to see for yourself.
A Time To Expand: The Sims 3 Seasons
By Adam Smith on August 3rd, 2012.
Like the games themselves, the expansions for The Sims are a surreal blend of the mundane and the extraordinary. There was an expansion that allowed Sims to go out to bars and clubs, which is something that most people can do anyway, but in the world of commercialism and gobbledegook it also became possible to turn into a vampire. The Sims Seasons adds weather and new activities and interactions for each season, so Sims can now become sunburnt or struck by lightning, which seems to burn off all of their clothes but doesn’t quite kill them. There are also festivals along with other season-specific happenings. And then there’s the alien abductions because, hey, the weather isn’t weird enough.
SimCity Simpressions
SimCity Social Casts Net Wide, Ends Up Simple
By Nathan Grayson on June 26th, 2012.
SimCity Social‘s open beta first really started bothering me when I stopped playing it. And not for the reason you might think. Someone called me on the phone while I was poking around and still mourning the fact that “OppressionVille” was too big for the city name field, so I looked away from my burgeoning burg for, oh, 15 minutes. When I returned, nothing had changed. No tornadoes had struck. Nothing caught on fire. Yes, SimCity Social is a turn-based game, but that only partially robs it of the gleeful insanity that so characterizes’ Maxis’ most-famed of llama-loving city builders. After all, that structure could work if given proper treatment.
Here, though, it’s symptomatic of a much larger problem: SimCity Social is about as easygoing as they come. There have been (at least, after a few hours) no downsides to my actions – no tension or intrigue. Sure, neat things (like a UFO crash) occasionally happened, but they largely served to stuff more Simoleons into my jingling mayoral pockets. Well, until typical social game stuff took center stage, anyway.
Urbane: Slightly More Of SimCity Revealed
By Jim Rossignol on June 13th, 2012.
The mind of Maxis is brimming over with simulated city, and they’re sharing slightly more of that than we’ve seen already in a new trailer, which I’ve conveniently erected beneath this introductory text. I’ve also posted the “gameplay” trailer so that you can compare that with the slightly silly CGI version of their cheery urban world that they’ve bookended their blatherings with.
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Simply Wonderful: SimCity Dated For February 2013
By Nathan Grayson on June 2nd, 2012.
The pre-E3 news volcano keeps on spewing molten infobits, as is its over-exuberant wont. EA, for whatever reason (perhaps, you know, E3) is saving its trailers until next week, but it’s seen fit to toss a rather important morsel in hungry fans’ direction to tide them over. Namely, via an email touting the publishing kingpin’s trade show lineup, it pegged SimCity‘s grand opening for February 2013. Previously, all we had to go on was a vague “2013.” Now then, here’s hoping that actually goes according to plan – given the precedent set by a certain other recently launched “always online” game.
Maxis, meanwhile, has promised a grand unveiling next week – far beyond rough-around-the-edges tech demos. Most crucially, multiplayer’s apparently a lock for the show, which means we’ll finally understand how EA’s admittedly less potent connected tech will improve our experiences. So then, chatter excitedly amongst yourselves. Preferably in Simlish.
Cautionary Tales: SimCity Plays With Fire
By Nathan Grayson on May 2nd, 2012.
Fire! It’s nice to look at, pleasant to sit around during the harsh winter months, and – because Mother Nature likes a good laugh just as much as the rest of us – one of the most insanely destructive forces on this planet. And now, it’s coming to a SimCity near you. Well, OK, it’s only doing so if you’re a really miserable/sadistic city planner. Wondering how to avoid reducing all your hard work to ash? Hey, me too. We have so much in common. Near as I can tell, step one is to watch the following trailer and then do the exact opposite.
The city of tomorrow!
Maxis Factor: A SimCity Interview
By Alec Meer on April 27th, 2012.
Shortly after seeing the new SimCity in its full bendy-road glory, I had a quick chat with one of its architects, EA Maxis’ producer Jason Haber. Tackled – its lengthy development, why we’ve waited so long for a sequel, why it’s a ‘real’ Sim City, difficulty, whether important content is being sectioned off for pre-order bonuses and DLC, and how a traffic jam could make your whole city burn down.
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The fall of Societies
And Now The Game: A SimCity Preview
By Alec Meer on April 25th, 2012.
After all that back and forth about the DRM, let’s see what this new SimCity really is. There’s no number because it’s not a sequel as such, or so the word goes. I can’t help but see it as a statement of intent – the series first turned fallow and then was perverted, but now it’s back, back, back on track. Pure and faithful. In the same way Dexys Midnight Runners are, in their new incarnation, simply ‘Dexys’ there’s a consciousness that a long history can be as much an albatross as a boon.
And so what might have been Sim City 6 is simply ‘SimCity’, and it is indeed a city management game. A proper one, with zoning and utilities and emergencies and traffic jams and crime and all that metropolitan jazz. My sense was that it’s more accessible than Sim City 4 was, but not in the way that Sim City Societies or – heaven forfend – a Cityville-type is. Yes, the ‘a’ word. Wait, calm down. While I can only speak from a quick, eyes-on impression of a very early build, the trick seemed be in the presentation of information, not sacrifice of the information itself. A surprisingly lavish and high-detail 3D world was backed up by a slick-looking interface, heavily customisable to show what you do and don’t personally want to see at any one time.
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