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Sim City 2000
.: Reviews:
PocketGamer.org
review, User review :.
Review #1: PocketGamer.org review
.: By:
Mike :: Device
used: iPAQ
H3650
:: October 17, 2001 ::
Buy this game :.
The Pocket PC is becoming a mainstream gaming
device. A year ago, such a statement would have been laughably untrue. Now,
however, not only is the Pocket PC itself gaining popularity and recognition at
an ever more impressive rate, its capabilities as a gaming device are being
noticed by the industry's biggest names.
Sim City 2000,
although brought to the Pocket PC by ZIOSoft,
is under license from arguably the games industry's best-known brand,
Electronic Arts. It seems safe to assume that
EA want to test the Pocket PC waters, and what
better way to start than with one of their top-selling all-time classics?
If you've never played a
Sim City game before, the chances are
you're in the minority. The original "Classic" version was the game that made
Maxis, the company who developed it (and who has since been gobbled up by
EA), world-famous. Unlike most computer games,
the theme is one of creativity and construction, rather than violence and
destruction. Sim
City 2000 is one of those all-too rare titles that manages to please both
parents and children - indeed, there have even been reports of it being allowed
(and even encouraged) on school computers!
So, how well does the game shape up following
its transition to the small screen? The answer, in a nutshell, is very well.
ZIOSoft should be commended for producing
a port that is, by and large, utterly faithful to the desktop original. As far
as I could tell, virtually no gameplay elements from the PC version (which,
admittedly, I last played a long time ago!) have been omitted. If you were
worried that the Pocket PC version would have to be cut down in some way, worry
no longer. This is the full Monty, right down to the subterranean water pipes,
the subways and the continuous complaints and demands of your city's
inhabitants, the Sims.
Gameplay-wise, therefore,
Sim City 2000 is
exactly equivalent to its desktop counterpart. For those who have never played
the game (is there anyone left out there who hasn't?), the idea is simply this:
to construct a city. The game is about as freeform as you can get - the only
limits to how your city turns out are the restrictions on what you can actually
build, and the map. For the most part, building is done in zones - residential,
industrial or commercial (with the choice of either heavy or light).
Once you
have zoned a section of land, assuming that it is receiving power and water, it
will begin to become occupied. You'll notice apartment blocks and houses
springing up in residential zones, factories and warehouses in industrial zones,
and shopping malls and restaurants in commercial zones.
There is also a large variety of special
buildings, structures and complexes that you can build, should finances allow.
These range from fundamental services such as police and fire departments
through to airports, parks and zoos. As time progresses, more become available,
ranging from the useful to the wacky.
One of the nicest touches in the game is the
animation, which makes your city feel alive. You'll see cars moving up and down,
smoke pouring from factory chimneys, trains rumbling from one station to the
next, aeroplanes taking off from an airport, etcetera. This is backed up by a
suite of suitable sound effects which, along with the cheesy music, can
thankfully be turned off from within the game.
Should you be a fan of micro-management,
you'll be delighted to hear that ZIOSoft
have managed to cram in seemingly all the statistics and graphing options found
in the original. Want to find out your city's GNP over the past 100 years? Want
to compare this with your city's growth, crime rates and unemployment figures?
Not a problem! Likewise, your city's budget is entirely under your control,
allowing you to fine-tune your spending and taxation plans in detail. You even
get a team of advisors, although saying that they're not exactly up to much is
being far too polite!
Whilst the gameplay may have survived the
conversion to the Pocket PC intact, there have been some necessary changes to
the interface. Gone is the floating toolbar of the PC original and in its place
is a fixed toolbar along the top of the screen. As there are many more buttons
than can be fitted onto a single toolbar, left and right arrows allow you to
switch from one toolbar to the next - there are six in total, offering
thirty-three different icons in all.
What's more, many icons actually offer more
than one function - you have to tap and hold the icon for the list to appear.
For example, the Residential Zone icon offers you the choice of either Light or
Dense zoning, and the Education icon offers you the choice of building a school,
college, library or museum. Initially, therefore, it is relatively tricky to
find the particular function that you want. Over time, however, you find
yourself quickly becoming used to it, although I still find myself building the
occasional $4,000 power plant where all I wanted was a simple $2 power line!
The building process can be quite tricky as
there is no visual guide when it comes to placing structures such as police
stations, zoos and town halls. To place a structure, you tap the square where
the middle of the building should be - although there is no way of telling the
dimensions of a structure in advance which means that it's all too easy to
position it wrongly. Unfortunately, there is no undo function - if you make a
mistake, you have to leave it or bulldoze it, wasting your hard-earned cash in
the process. While I don't remember there being an undo function in the
original, it would have made a very nice addition for the Pocket PC version,
especially given the interface limitations.
Fortunately, most other tasks such as placing
zoned areas (e.g. residential, industrial, commercial, airports and seaports)
and laying road and railway tracks are easy to accomplish, with the zone being
defined by a tap-and-drag movement of the stylus. Once you're happy with the
zone that you've defined (which is highlighted and the price clearly marked) or the road/rail route that you've drawn, you
simply lift the stylus to effect its completion. Very simple, very intuitive.
The game screen packs in a lot of additional
information, most useful, some less so. At the top of the screen, you're given
information on the demand (or not, as the case may be) for the three main zones:
residential, industrial and commercial. Just below is shown the date and your
current budget. At the bottom of the screen is a small status bar divided into
three sections. The first of these indicates your currently-selected tool and,
if appropriate, the price. The second gives you the latest news reports (e.g.
reports on water shortages, hurricane warnings, etc.) and the third gives you a
one-word summary of the current weather.
In general, I like the way that the
screen is laid out, although I do wish that
ZIOSoft could have applied a semi-transparent background to more of the interface
than just the single-line date/budget display. What is nice, however, is that
the four zoom modes found in the original are retained, although I personally
find the closest too pixelated for my liking. In addition to zooming in and out,
you can also rotate your viewpoint - no need to guess what's hidden behind that
mountain!
The menu, at the bottom of the screen, offers
you all that you might reasonably have expected to find. Along with options to
load and save cities and scenarios, you can adjust the speed (from Turtle
to African Swallow), turn music and sound effects on or off and, most fun
of all, effect a disaster! Alternatively, should you prefer a quiet life, you
can opt to play with disasters turned off. Finally, you can opt to sign up for
various newspapers.
Taking up a newspaper subscription is a good
way of keeping in touch with the thoughts, views, praise and (more often than
not) complaints of your city's inhabitants. From time to time, you'll even come
across a feature article, although the pseudo-random style employed tends to
reveal the hand of an artificial intelligence routine that places its emphasis
firmly on the artificial! Nevertheless, the newspaper reports add to the
atmosphere of the game, and generally offer good tips on how to improve your
city.
As far as performance goes, I noticed no real
issues on my
iPAQ H3650.
Scrolling, which can be achieved either by use of the scroll bars or the joypad,
was reasonably smooth. The only slowdowns I noticed were when I had a huge city
loaded and a monster was rampaging through town! Saved games vary in size from
around 70 KB to 120 KB, depending on the size of the city; the game itself takes
up around 3.5 MB. Incidentally, it appears that you can load previously saved
games from the PC version without a problem - I downloaded a few saved games
from the Internet and the game loaded them up without any trouble.
There is even a terrain editor included in the
game, allowing you to terraform the world according to the way you want it.
Because of the small screen size afforded by the Pocket PC, it is more than a
little fiddly, but nonetheless a welcome addition. The editor can, however,
perform noticeably worse than the game on occasions - I noticed a long delay
when creating large mountains or valleys, for example.
Overall, this is an excellent conversion of a
wonderful title. If you've played the game before and liked it, there's
absolutely no reason why you shouldn't like the Pocket PC version as
ZIOSoft has done a wonderful job at
faithfully reproducing the original given the limitations of the Pocket PC.
Granted, the graphics no longer have the wow factor that they did when the game
first came out, and the music and sound effects aren't going to win any awards,
but it's gameplay that's all-important and, in that particular department,
Sim City 2000
comes up trumps.
Flaws? None of any note, apart from the
obvious fact that the limited dimensions of the Pocket PC screen make the
interface a little difficult to navigate at times. So many buttons, so little
screen space! The only major quibble I have is with the price. At $29.95, this
is one of the most expensive games on the market which, bearing in mind that
this isn't a totally original title, is a little disappointing. This doesn't, of
course, detract from the quality of the game itself, which is superb.
Pros:
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A very faithful conversion of the original.
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Excellent gameplay.
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Detailed graphics, animations and sound
effects.
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Statistics and options galore.
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Terrain editor included.
Cons:
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PocketGamer.org score: |
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.: Game category:
Simulations :: Reviews
Index ::
Buy this game :.
Editor's Note:
Please note that
ZIOSoft is one of PocketGamer.org's
sponsors. This, however, had no bearing on the review score.
Review #2: User Review
.: By: Andrew Fisher :: Device
used: E-115
:: November 13, 2001 ::
Buy this game :.
I'm probably going against the line here but I think this game
absolutely bites on the PPC. After seeing the postings that one of my fave games
was going to be ported I was over to
ZIOSoft like a shot, looked at
screen-grabs aplenty and eventually shelled out my thirty bucks. Whilst the
download [10.5 MB plus 2.6MB for the manual] was taking place I was imagining
how much I'd appreciate playing
Sim City on the
tube on the way home... how civilised and technically advanced! The people
pressed in like sardines around me would be marvelling at how gifted a city
builder I am... [well perhaps that was just dreaming].
Anyway, after the download I duly installed and started it up to find to my
horror that whilst it was a direct port from the grown up PC version someone
really hadn't taken the time to adequately check the final product. Whilst the
game play was all there in a fantastic effort by the programmers, there are
innumerable quality issues that just spoilt the experience.
Okay, we all know that the Pocket PC has limited resolution and things have to
be crammed in to fit onto the screen. Regardless of that, there is very little
point in putting things on that you can barely read. I am of course referring to
the status bar just above the menus written in 4 point text. No point guys, come
up with some icons instead to better fit the space.
Other peeving moments included the non-holdable scrollbar buttons and horrendous
formatting on every screen that wasn't to do with the main gameplay. Information
should be presented well and it is in these details a lot of people derive great
joy in, in a simulation of this type. At least make it look like it wasn't
cobbled together in twenty minutes.
My final gripe is to do with windowing and it annoyed me so much I had to make a
concerted effort to play with the game. When programming for the PPC, one knows
what size the screen is; it is one of the first things the developer gets from
the system as the game loads. There is no excuse in my book for game windows
running off the side, the bottom or being obscured by the menu bar - none at
all. I don't want to have to move windows around in a tiny screen to try and
read everything!
Right, enough rant. The big thing is that you do have the entire
Sim City 2000
sitting literally in the palm of your hand. The game mechanics and play are
identical in every way. Build your city, make it grow, make it prosper, deal
with disasters and derive great satisfaction. I still am legitimately impressed
that something that was designed to run on a Pentium II with loads of RAM has
been compressed onto PDA. Also the scrolling buttons are a nice touch that keeps
it useable.
Good job on the game play, it's just a pity about some of the details. Possibly
don't buy it until the next version.
Pros:
Cons:
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PocketGamer.org score: |
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.: Game category:
Simulations :: Reviews
Index ::
Buy this game :.
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