Sim City Creator
Put on your video cow boy hat, you've got some controls to wrestle with boi!
By Matt Kelly
Did you ever play Sim City Societies?
It was pretty bad... I've been playing Sim City games since forever, and okay, the formula has remained pretty much the same throughout; but whoever came up with the genius idea to totally slash the gameplay to bits with Societies, is no doubt now the target of virtual mayor hate everywhere. I had it installed on a computer at work when I was still doing minor hours as an IT sales guy, and I think I played it for about 15 minutes before completely writing the game off. Even when the only option was to stand behind a counter at 8PM waiting for the odd person to walk in, it still beat playing Societies.
Of course this is all largely irrelevant, but I guess more what I'm getting at is if you've still got a bitter taste from Societies, then Sim City Creator is probably going to make you quite happy. It's a real Sim City game. Lots of flaws mind you, but if transit layouts and zoning laws get you hot, then there is at least something to be found in Sim City Creator.
Like most original games that are ported from PC gameplay, it sits in a weird space between different PC versions. Think of Sim City Creator as Sim City 2000.5 with some bits of 3000 and 4 thrown in. Sim City Creator goes a long way towards breaking that 'grid' style of cities that happen in every other version of the game. Take your basic road tools example, yeah the game plays on a grid, but you're not bound by it to stay on one straight line or any particular angle. You click where you want your road to start and where you want it to end, and if that breaks the grid pattern, hey that's fine with Creator, it'll just lay it across as you want it. Creator even goes to the effort of sometimes filling in those dead spaces between weird angled roads and buildings to make it all look more consistent, and this is where the game's controls are at their height; doing these very big natural design moves that aren't bound by the conventional grid play. On that level, your cities and end up having a very unique look to them very fast without wasting hours. But oh, hey, say you wanted to do some very nitty gritty work, like complex tight road design, zoning weird shaped areas, or dropping down some water pumps, thats when the controls start going to hell.
It very simply comes down to trying to do too much with the IR pointing of the Wii Remote. IR Pointing handles both map screen movement and layout, which is no different from PC edge scrolling with a mouse in concept, but on the Wii you have the movement sections on the screen, instead of the edge. I want to lay a road from point A to point B, but point B is towards the edge of the screen, but as soon as you move your cursor out of the 'dead' zone, it starts scrolling of into the wild blue yonder; not helpful for tight city design! There's been a few things done to alleviate this a bit, such as a mild screen lock and a quick undo button, but seriously, just give us the nunchuck stick to scroll the screen, or make the scroll area right on the edge! This wouldn't have been hard to fix!
If you are one of those mayors who grow your city and then spend hours making it look great - expect some mega frustrations with precision actions! If, on the other hand, you're a player who just slaps things down and watches it grow, I hate you and will mess with your save files, but also this won't bother you anywhere near as much (the scrolling, not the ninja attack of city beautification). There's also a bit to kung-fu grip sliding up and down the Wii-Remote, as Sim City Creator calls for you to handle both the D pad right down to the 2 button. Not exactly comfortable.
Control schemes aside, Sim City Creator has some real gameplay depth to it and hasn't copped the console cutdown that most strategy games go through. While you won't have 10 different power plants to choose from, all the base elements are in there. City planning, utility management, waste disposal, public transit and so on. New additions to the gameplay are pretty minor but can be fun. Hero Buildings take the place of Land Mark buildings from previous games and this time around do (slightly) more. Plonking one of these down will now spread its style through the local area, so say you throw town the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower, suddenly everything gets very French. There's a whole lot of styles, some aiming to be fairly realistic, and others that turn your city into the absurd. Advisors have also been somewhat expanded as you'll now be able to pick out various 'MySims' style folks to join your management posse. While the theory is great, it's pretty rare that different choices lead to any benefits. More often than not, the advice is pretty average intertwined with a bunch of unfunny gags. All advisors also have a leveling system which means that as they gain more experience, they start dealing some mildly more useful advice. Finally, advisors can be assigned to areas of the city to help with the specific section. While the game does have some new additions, they are a tad half baked and as far as gameplay goes, the only thing that gets Sim City Creator it's score is the fact that it really hasn't played too much with the formula.
Beyond the core 'Freeplay' mode, you've also got missions and contests. Missions are objective based scenarios, where you're given a certain requirement to meet with your city. This can range from something simple like having a certain population; to much more complex and absurd objectives, such as destroying the entire city with a giant spiked wrecking ball. Missions can be a tad vague when it comes to requirements, but ultimately are a fun diversion from the core game. You'll also be able to unlock various things through missions, such as Hero Buildings. Contests are set up as WFC ranked missions: you'll have an objective for your city and be put up against others doing the same. It's a kind of passive multiplayer that does add some vague community elements, but you're still playing by yourself at your own pace, which is kind of a pity as it would have been nice to have some online region play ala Sim City 4.
Sim City Creator maintains a fair bit of complexity in it's graphics. While the building variation at any one time isn't huge, there is a LOT on screen, along with some light effects work such as smoke pouring out of the power stations. Examine too close and it can get quite drab, but as a complete picture your city can end up looking really great. There can be a little bit of initial load while it calls on the required data for your city scape (for anyone who remembers the glassy loading cubes that replaced buildings in Sim City 4, you'll find this during the initial load) but once the game gets rolling it's all very smooth. The MySimsesque advisors are probably the most graphically complex thing in the game, but chances are you'll be trying to get rid of them as quick as possible. While the sound effects merely serve their purpose, the game music does win some points for sound quality. It's crisp and with more fidelity than you can shake a stick at. It's a shame most of them are completely forgettable. Anything with 'Sim' in front of it nowadays is normally attached to some fairly decent tunes, but not for Creator.
Summary
Sim City brings the goods in terms of gameplay options, but gets dragged down by control issues and in-your-face-but-fairly-useless advisors. If you can get past the controls, Sim City has got a lot of value in it.
Gameplay - 7.6
The deep gameplay is there but dragged down by some very loose controls at times
Graphics - 7.0
A great complete picture but nothing wonderful up close.
Sound - 6.5
Yes for sound quality, no for funk factor.
Replay - 8.0
Fight your way past the controls and you'll be around for a while.
Overall - 7.5