Sim City Creator (DS) Review
Who can honestly say that they’ve never heard of any of the Sim games? I remember when I was in primary school that heaps of kids used to play SimAnt, a game where you actually create an ant colony and watch it flourish. I thought the concept was bizarre but still pretty unique, and wondered where the series would go from there. Sim City Creator is the second Sim City game for the Nintendo DS, and is nothing like the Wii version of the same name. What Sim City Creator does, however, is put a very interesting twist on an already (very) well established formula.
The idea of Sim City Creator is not to build a city and then just maintain it like in previous games of the series, but instead, to build a city and maintain it as it goes through the different eras, and watch it expand. It’s a very interesting concept to use, and reminds me a bit of the recently released PC game Spore, albeit with less action or depth, which is one of the main downfalls of Sim City Creator. The graphics in Sim City Creator are a bit of a hit and miss. On one hand, the architecture is constructed well enough to be quite distinctive to each era. The game also utilises pre-rendered backgrounds, which look almost photorealistic and really help in building a kind of atmosphere for your small town. On the other end of the scale though, everything seems to have been really compacted to a small space and it makes it hard to precisely look at specific points in the game. Furthermore, some of the buildings, although beautifully detailed, are varying shades of grey, black, and brown, making your town look like some strange dystopic locale.
So, how does it play? Well you’ve got two main modes. Free mode, which, as the name implies, allows players to do whatever they want, at whatever rate they want, in whatever manner they want. Basically, Free Mode is your classic Sim City style gameplay where you can pretty much do ANYTHING with what you’ve already unlocked. Then there’s Challenge Mode, which is essential for people who want to unlock more objects to place in their cities. Challenge Mode is where the crux of the gameplay is, and is a great mode because it shows your city evolving through the eras, unlike in Free Mode. The choice of eras in Sim City Creators is quite good too, with players being allowed to model their city after the beautiful ancient Asia, or perhaps the Elizabethan English period is more for you – either way, you get some choices and it certainly helps the player build a “bond” with their city as it progresses, and thus encourages them to look after the city.
After moving on into an era, however, you can also choose between European Industralism, American Prosperity or Asian development, which each have their own unique sets of buildings (but can be traded among users). Finally, you can also do the standard Sim City stuff like viewing your budget, and all the micromanagement you’d ever hope for – though it’s nowhere near as detailed as previous games in the series. Finally, you can also speak to citizens and see what they think of your city, with specific stats such as education being shown for them too. In this mode, players see a pre-rendered city and strange pink and blue characters walking around (they look like the ones you’d find on public bathroom doors). Tapping on them lets you talk to them, and brings up a MySims style caricature of the person. It’s a nice touch and it once again helps in the “bonding process” of the city between the player. You control most of the game using your stylus, similar to a mouse in the PC counterparts. Herein lies a problem though, as sometimes the icons on the screen are way too small and I found myself tapping the wrong icon at times or having to tap more than once for the game to recognise.
It was annoying at first but I got the hang of it. Either way, it’s clear that Sim City Creators has been toned down from its predecessors, but that makes me think it’s a perfect recommendation to someone looking to dip their feet in the Sim series, and that’s the beauty of Sim City Creator, you will get as much as you put into it. The game could last for hours on end, if you choose to spend lots of time in the Free mode. But if that’s not your interest then Challenge mode is also available. Needless to say, if you were interested, Sim City Creator has a lot of stuff to do.
There is hardly any audio in Sim City Creator, with the bulk of it being the noise that disasters make, as well as the standard backing track of the game when nothing is occuring. The standard track is a very solemn classically styled ambient music track that really suits the tone of the game, and the sounds that the various disasters make when they hit the city are also pretty good. It’s just a shame that the extent of the audio ends there. Some voicework or even some nice sound effects for the citizens would’ve been nice, but alas, it wasn’t done. Sim City Creator is a competent simulation title that should serve as more than an ample introduction to people interested in the genre. Its simple user interface, combined with its scaleable gameplay according to the players interest makes it perfect for almost anyone. The only thing with Sim City Creator is that devoted followers of the series should probably stick with the PC counterparts for an experience with much more depth.
