<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Release Date: March 5 (North America), March 7 (Europe) Platforms available on: PC Developer: Maxis Publisher: Electronic Arts Genre:City-building SimCity has already made the headlines for all of the wrong reasons, and now the persistent server problems that plagued its launch are behind us, the game has a lot of fences to mend. While this series reboot is perhaps the most creative title we&amp;#039;ve played this year, troublesome glitches and the frustrations associated with an always-on internet connection are difficult to overlook. The game&amp;#039;s premise is much the same as any other entry in Maxis&amp;#039; world-building series. Players are cast as the omnipotent, god-like mayor of a virtual city that they must build up from scratch, and then assume responsibility for every solitary detail of its growth and development. It&amp;#039;s an empowering experience where the restrictions placed upon the player are few in number. However, with this great power comes great responsibility as users must attend to the every need of a virtual population well in excess of 1,000.  Satisfying the majority of your citizens&amp;#039; happiness level and wants is the only way to prevent your digital metropolis from becoming tomorrow&amp;#039;s ashes, and the key to this is effective management of your tax income and natural resources. While this doesn&amp;#039;t sound like a great deal of fun, you&amp;#039;ll just have to trust us when we tell you that it can be. A polished user interface centred around a set of easy-to-use creation tools makes laying down the foundations of your city quick and easy, but players will encounter a few questionable design choices down the line.   The playing field feels small and restrictive once your city has grown beyond a certain point, and it&amp;#039;s frustrating to see its boundaries hit invisible walls. Roads serve as the backbone of your cities and traffic is their lifeblood, but managing it can be very frustrating. Congestion is a problem you will often find yourself grappling with, and it&amp;#039;s usually more of a headache than it should be. The problem lies with the fact that cities have only one entrance. If traffic gets backed up there, essentially supplies cannot get in, nor can tourists. The effective demise of your city feels like a harsh price to pay for having a traffic problem, and this just is one of several gameplay flaws that let down what is otherwise an excellent title.   SimCity is, in many ways, more than a mere game. With so many creative tools at their fingertips, users with a flare for artistic expression can create aesthetic masterpieces, while the hardcore strategists are more likely to focus on maximising the economic potential of their cities. Mayors are responsible for the upkeep of essential services such as education and law enforcement, as well as power, water and transport. Players must keep all of these plates spinning while ensuring that the books remain balanced, but the rewards of creating a fully-functional economy are many. There are few things more satisfying than looking down upon a living, breathing city of your own creation that is able to sustain itself because of the choices you have made, except perhaps bulldozing the house of a disgruntled citizen and replacing it with a power plant, simply because you can. Unfortunately, more design-related problems arise as your city continues to grow and thrive. The playing field feels small and restrictive once your city has grown beyond a certain point, and it&amp;#039;s frustrating to see its boundaries hit invisible walls. This usually happens right when you have accumulated enough cash to build a new stadium or skyscraper, and can feel like quite the slap in the face.  The SimCity series has long been associated with innovation and creativity, and its latest instalment continues this tradition by breaking new ground. This time around, Maxis has attempted to turn what has traditionally been a solo experience into a social one, with some success. Each city occupies a space on a pre-made map region where up to 15 other players can start their own settlements. The idea is to link up with other people&amp;#039;s cities, sharing resources and services as well as tourism. This feels like the natural way to play SimCity because there are so many different forces at work, making it difficult to manage them all on your own. An effective city cannot excel in every area, so it must exist in harmony with the surrounding settlements. The potential for creativity and collaboration is here in spades, but it&amp;#039;s stifled at almost every turn by some poor design choices. For instance, a player whose city has a finite water supply can purchase it from a friend&amp;#039;s city and perhaps offer its garbage collection services in exchange. SimCity was always about creative expression, but this new collaborative element helps it achieve a new level of poignancy. Playing online alongside a group of friends and watching your inter-connected cities grow as one is among the games highlights, but server instability and the lack of sophisticated communication tools prevent it from fulfilling its potential. Moreover, multiplayer gaming is not for everyone, so the lack of any kind of single-player, offline campaign will alienate some players right off the bat.  The need for an always-on internet connection won&amp;#039;t sit well with some. Maxis and EA have their reasons for enforcing this on players, but resting the community&amp;#039;s fate on servers that are anything other than watertight is difficult to justify. Since launch, there have been reports of everything from addled social features to the loss of entire saved games due to server hiccups. Some of the development choices Maxis has enforced have really blow up in its face, so it might be time it rethought some of them. Despite its disastrous launch, there is plenty to like about SimCity. The potential for creativity and collaboration is here in spades, but it&amp;#039;s stifled at almost every turn by some poor design choices. There&amp;#039;s an empty void where the offline solo campaign should be, and claustrophobic map space and road tool limitations are just a few of the frustrating glitches players have to contend with. There are a few technical issues that need to be ironed out first and foremost, and the game could yet fulfil its potential with some carefully tailored DLC content, and since a game of this scope and scale will certainly be an ongoing project for Maxis, not all is lost.    "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/review/a465730/simcity-review-pc-city-building-reboot-stands-on-shaky-foundations/>