You may have read our last one feedback on the event which took place in Paris on January 25th and our interview with Kip Katsarelis. Here now my opinion as a player as well as some unpublished screenshots that I had the opportunity to take directly into play at the SimCity event!
When I was finally able to get comfortable in my seat to test SimCity, I was a little stressed. Indeed, I had been able to play SimCity 4000 very quickly and my last real game was ... a very long time ago on SimCity 2000! I was able to spend hours and hours building my city in my childhood and it really marked me. Besides, I still have it on my PC, it follows me everywhere?
It was therefore the opportunity to update myself with this very enticing SimCity that the developers are preparing for us. I had prepared a small sheet schematizing my future city so as not to pass for an acorn, I expected a rather difficult management because of the videos that we had already seen on our site. It is not so ! Everything happens naturally, the user interface is very well designed and intuitive.
Let's already see my little start to town. It's quite square but very practical to arrange the different and very many structures that the game offers us.
Let's detail this first image:
► At the top left, we havea chat to chat with players in our region. Convenient to ask your neighbor to stop polluting us with his industries!
► At the top right are the regional and global ranking and account and game settings. You can thus know your positioning in the world individually or the rating of your region. Graphics, sound and game quality options as well as missions data by locals or various other entities are also at this location.
► At the bottom right you find thetool of destruction as well as all that is curves and graphs. We were only allowed 10 screenshots, I would have liked to take more to give you more details. There is a very impressive number of graphs, topographies and maps analyzing in detail the direction of the wind, the pollution, the level of the water table, the oil tables, the crimes, the fire risks, the road traffic ... Everything you can imagine is placed there, ready to be used. one click and you know everything about your city!
► At the bottom in the middle are the construction tools, let's see this big chunk:
Construction tools
- Disasters: for the moment we could only launch a species of big lizard that looks strangely like the animations of Spore, a game from the same publisher;
- Roads : you can create straight lines, arcs of circles, roundabouts or simply follow your imagination by guiding the path with the mouse. There are various types of roads from the small path to the busy avenue giving up to 6 or 8 traffic lanes;
- Areas : residences, shops and industries are therefore grouped together in this space. Just select the desired area and apply it to the side of the road. If there is little space, the area will remain small, otherwise, on the contrary, it will grow until it can reach large areas;
- Electricity: by clicking on this tab, the electrical traffic appears in your city in order to see the distribution of this energy. Obviously, you will find the buildings linked to this tab such as coal factories producing electricity or wind turbines;
- Running water : likewise, the water traffic is visible and the structures linked to this tab are available; for example: the water tower;
- Water treatment : again, the sewage traffic is visible and you can build a water treatment plant;
- Political: here are the political buildings, for example a town hall or the very pretty house of the mayor;
- Waste treatment: well yes, the Sims eat, we must recover their empty crisps packets and their soda cans! You must therefore install a recycling center and set up hours for the passage of dump trucks;
- Firefighters : the fire department is always present and many improvements can be made to your fire station;
- Ambulances: to ensure a long life for your Sims, everything related to health is grouped here: hospital and ambulances! ;
- Police : crime, always crime ... Manage your police stations well and peace will reign in the city;
- Education: schools and universities are grouped together in this part, as are school bus stops;
- The circulation : bring a train or just buses into town to improve traffic flow on your roads;
- The attractions : and finally, the attractions: parks, swings, swimming pools, small forests and other things that can distract your Sims will be here.
For all of these tabs, a character will let you know if there is anything going wrong in order to improve them. Click on him and as always, he will tell you everything! : p You will also see your population, your argent (Simoleons) that you can manage by clicking on it. The taxes, profits and expenses. happiness of your Sims is also detailed. 3 small gauges indicate the needs of your city (green = need for houses; blue = need for businesses; yellow = need for industries)
► At the bottom left, you will find the button revealing all the options that I have just revealed to you as well as a second button indicating the specializations of the city. Want to make your city attractive thanks to its casinos ? It's here ! I even built one that I was able to improve over time by adding a jackpot room (there is also Blackjack, Roulette and the like) and other cool expansions that always attract more Sims. Depending on your technologies and specializations, you will find a lot of buildings and services here. The time, the speed of the game, the city name... You will have noticed. There is also the small button with 3 clusters of cubes linked together. Click on it and the region view will be displayed, displaying all the details of the players around and revealing the construction of the environment that you can create by cooperating with your neighbors (great work)! Do you dream of creating a space center and launching rockets? It's entirely possible ! The players from the regions connected will also appear.
So much for theuser interface. Sorry for the pavement but I had to detail this very important part! Regarding the image that I revealed to you above, I was therefore able to create my first small town by placing the roads, a water tower, wind turbines (I am a green mayor!) And a water treatment plant .
Sometimes, the Sims give us their thoughts on things going on in town. This is how I read that a Sims was happy to be able to take a shower! Ah ah, are they clean, my fellows? Sometimes they give from time to time missions. Here, you can see that I have to keep the happiness rate above 65%. If I succeed, they can unlock the mayor's house for me!
I then clicked on the running water tab. As I announced to you earlier, the water traffic is revealed as well as the manager of this category and the buildings to be constructed. Apparently everything is fine, he has nothing to tell me. Can you find where I placed the mayor's house?
Likewise for the wastewater, I placed the treatment plant far enough away so as not to pollute the water table which is on the other side of my city.
My Sims have been working all day and suddenly I see the traffic increasing .. What is going on? Well the Sims come home after a hard day's work, the factories, for the most part, shut down and everyone goes to sleep in their homes. Not bad this little town, right?
I was able to take a screen of the land value. We therefore see that residences and shops are not very inclined to develop near industries, whereas the mayor's house, the town hall and a building at the back attract them! Know where to build with this handy tool?
As my industries are developing more and more, I wanted to secure the area by adding a fire station. Note that I can add a bell for more responsiveness from them as well as new trucks and various other bonuses.
I was talking to you earlier about taxes, profits, expenses and all those accountant things. Note that by clicking on your "wallet", all these options are displayed. It's up to you to decide whether to raise or lower the taxes according to their zones. You can also make loans and analyze your expenses and income! Well, speaking of an accountant, there is also an employee who advises you on the city budget.
My city is progressing well, as are the industries, shops and residences that are developing. You will notice that I have added a few parks for my Sims to stretch their legs and also a casino to the right! We are now equipped with bus in order to reduce city traffic and pollute less. There are also ambulances and a police station.
All these new services generate new costs and obviously more water, more electricity. It's up to you to anticipate and adapt to these changes. Look, I had to build 4 more wind turbines.
I can't wait to see what future big cities will look like! Here is the region view, notice that we are 3 players: one who managed well and a mayor who let his Sims die on the left! In the middle of the regions, there is an area of cooperation: major structures. That is to say that the cities can contribute or not to a large-scale project like here, the arcology allowing to build a huge ecological building as we could see it on SimCity 2000 if you remember. This requires an extremely large number of materials, metal, copper, televisions for example, and is built in several stages.
I must have spent a little over 2 hours in front of this game and it was too short! Even if a lot of elements were blocked, there was so much to develop! I came with some apprehension of the game but it's totally, 100%, a pure bomb. You certainly played the beta last weekend; your version was older than ours and some points have been improved since then.
The music is excellent and not repetitive. I listen to the music and sounds in play a lot and I was really afraid to hear the same chorus on the chain, it clearly isn't. Zoom out and a really nice little music will make your hair stand on end, zoom slowly towards the city in order to hear more clearly the ambient noises, the cars, the traffic jams if there are any, the factories running, the wind turbines and the noise the wind... Everything is alive!
For graphics which are quite discussed on the web, I found that they were really well detailed even if some details are perhaps missing and in particular scale concerns to be resolved which in no way affect the remarkable quality of the game in beta. Hopefully they maybe tweak the game a little bit more to satisfy more players and there ... There won't be any complaints.
My test was more than satisfactory, I can't wait to be able to move up my city and play with the other Games Managersr! We will most certainly create a region of 16 players (and maybe a second? A third?) To bring together all those who want to play under the banner of the network.
Thank you for reading me and wish you an excellent evening, see you soon!
► Discover the video of Zelvac who was present at the scene with me:
I also invite you to follow his Youtube channel, ZelvacGaminG, full of game videos! ?
