Series: Sim City Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Maxis Published: Feb 1. 1999 Category: Simulation Players: 1 The city – based simulation game has a been such a success that it has been able to compete with game marks such as Tetris and Pac-Man. EA already settling dust with a sequel ‘Sim City 2000’ wanted it just bigger and happening. Then came the Sim City 3000. No doubt EA has left anything to leave the game back. Sim City 3000 is fun, exclusive and requires some thinking. The game is innovative with soft content and nothing to savvy. It’s time to build your own city no matter what happens. First thing you’ll notice that graphics have just got better. The graphics pay a lot of respect while making your city, displaying how expensive a building can be and how shabby can a building be. The graphics are much … much better than the SNES Sim City 2000, allowing you to zoom much deeper; this allows you to see pedestrians and cars moving by. As always something lacks - Nightlife, variety in buildings and probably Seasons (All these features are available in Sim City 4). If you have played the series before you’ll probably understand what’s going to happen but SC3 is much cooler and prettier than its predecessors. The game plays much like the older games. You set up residential, commercial and industrial zones. Remember, to keep residential zones not too close or not too far from the commercial and industrial zones and connect all the ends with water supply, electricity and roads. There are three density zones for each of the zones – These include light, medium or dense particular zone. Light zones are cheap and are not so profitable compared to dense zones which are expensive and converts your city into cement jungles. Additionally to the game, you can also build farmlands via light industrial zones on the outskirts of your city. As your city grows you’ll need more police coverage and adequate fire protection in your city. You can make more recreational things for your citizens in the city like – marinas, zoos, libraries, museums, schools, colleges etc... As the city progresses you will have to watch for your budget estimating you can use it for future projects; to handle a large population you will have to arrange revenues. People do not depend on taxes they would never stay if the taxes are high nor will you benefit if the taxes are low, best way to keep the taxes ticking off you will have to keep it neither so high nor low. Till now what you have read is only the basics. In 3000, you’ll have deal with everything nicely and keeping in mind of your good consequences. One think you should regularly watch is the accumulation of garbage in your city, for managing this you will have to spare land for landfills and remember not keep near any zone as no one likes to live near garbage. Later, Mayors of neighboring cities might give you some extra landfill area in their city for some required money. You can also take many resources like extra electricity or water supplies from other cities or you can even do the vice – versa. At times even you will get suggestions from citizens for city ordinances encouraging various issues like – Ban on gambling, parking fines etc. These ordinances have benefits or disadvantages; If don’t want to take bad step the best way is consult the advisors. The advisors help you through the game and if you forget any basic of the game... They are always with you. You’ll understand that how concrete theses deals are, thanks to the news ticker they keep you ticking off with humorous news. The main problem you should keep an eye on is the span of your power plants and water towers. To fix this problem just replace these with a new one. The things can get tougher if a disaster occurs in your city. Though you can disable disasters; the challenge of the game would remain the same. The problem while dealing with a single problem you will end up with piles of problems. However you’ll run with occasional flaws – e.g. you have made up a new city block and forgot to power it or not connect the pipelines, your advisors would say that our power supply or the water supply is inadequate. After you fix it, you would notice news telling that our resources are nation’s envy. SC3 contains many historical landmarks to be situated in your city but they do nothing just take space to cover up the land. You can put at least 10 landmarks in your city and they don’t cost money after all they do nothing to your city. The game lacks variety again much like its predecessors. Their aren’t many buildings to see as most of the time you would see the same building. No stylish buildings for 22nd century as beyond. As Sim City 3000 is seen as an imminent sequel to the game, but as always variety lacked. Despite this, game is lovable, fully-3D and a very attractive game. It’s time for the scores then. Presentation – 10/10 – Superbly presented with lined features, fully 3-D looks and an attractive look to the game. Gameplay – 9/10 – The game play is breathtaking following some small quirks that occur for a short-time following its medium – type difficulty. Graphics – 10/10 – Getting out of the sluggish 2-D graphics and presenting with all – time 3-D looking graphics. Sound – 9/10 – The sound is present, lovely and suits well to the city environment. Replayability – 10/10 – Following that the game doesn’t have any storyline; you would love to play the game again and again. Total Score – 48/50 – The game is a try for simulation or a gaming fan, I bet it will not let you down.
Nice review. I have seen The Sims: Complete Collection, it's a pack with 8 games. I'm waiting for a pack of the Sims 2. Never played Sims City, it's not very popular here in Portugal. Never found it in stores. Ah, well...
A nice review, Vincent. I've never really been one for any of the Sims games - they always started out fun, but after about an hour, it feels really redundant and gets extremely boring. That and my computer is now officially totaled, so I can't play games on it anyways XD
Nice review Vincent-V, hope to see more! And I also have played 2000 like Anand, this looks interesting, I just might get it.
screenshots could have been a bit more varied, and you could have gone into the disasters a bit more. Other than that, I have no complaints. (except that in the original sim city the disasters occured even if they were disabled)
I think, this particular installment of the SIMCity franchise was the reason why the spin off franchise, The SIMs was born. The story goes something like, because of the massive success of the SIMCity franchise, the developers had this brainstorm idea that, "if our audience loved the concept of managing & building your own city (as well as other stuff, as SIMCity has cropped up other things like SIM Theme Park & Theme Hospital), why not go down a few notches & let's make them manage their own "SIM", actually in SIMCity, the virtual residents are already called SIMs. During the planning or beta stages, I think, of The SIMs, the developers actually thought of naming the franchise "Doll House" or something, because they felt that this particular game might only appeal to girl/lady gamers, boy were they wrong. I loved the SNES SIMCity, one of the disasters was Bowser Koopa, rampaging through your city looking for Mario ;D
