SimCity taught me a couple of things. One, there is no action without consequence: no industrial growth without pollution, no higher taxes without a dip in the polls. Two, there is a whole real world outside my simulated city, where you just can't turn off all disasters and set game speed to slow - it's where I live when I'm not playing SimCity. Now Maxis has released SimCity 2000. Try not to let that annoying little thing called your life interfere with playing it.
Like the original (now selling as SimCity Classic) you have a budget, some land, and equipment and supplies to build on it. The game's simulation algorithm uses your actions as input to calculate property values, pollution levels, population expansion, crime rates, business growth, your mayoral rating, and even little things like the citizens' (called Sims) happiness. Everything is connected to everything else in SimCity's algorithm. For example, heat, high crime rates, and unemployment cause riots; good economies, low crime rates, and education prevent them. Riots cause fires, which are aggravated by a poorly funded fire department. Firefighters are good at controlling fires but can be wiped out by rioters; police are good at controlling riots but can get toasted in a fire. Police stations lower the crime rate and help raise the land value in a circle around each station. High land value boosts local commerce, commerce creates jobs, jobs increase population.
SimCity 2000 has enough new features to justify readdiction. Now, time itself becomes a factor: As new technologies, such as desalinization and fusion power, are invented, the tools to use them pop up in your toolbox. The terrain (completely editable) has hills and valleys, and you can zoom into and completely rotate the 3-D model of your city. You have to dig in the dirt to lay pipes and construct subways. Your constituent Sims demand education and health care, and their IQs drop if you don't build them enough libraries and museums. If they don't like where you laid the train tracks, the Sims will drive cars; if they don't like your judgment (or lack of it), they'll vote you out of office or move to a neighboring city. You'll have to work hard to win their love.
Oh, and that annoying thing called the real world? That bag of meat you live in? That head that keeps peeking into your office, asking when you're coming to bed? All behind you now. Give in. The year is 2000 and you are the mayor of a brand new city.
- Lisa Seaman
SimCity 2000, US$69.95. Maxis: (800) 336 2947, +1 (510) 254 9700.
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