Mar 08 2012
A New Sim City?
It’s been several years since I played video games on a regular basis. Most of the PC games that have come out in recent years just haven’t interested me in the least bit. I remember talking with “Ogre” a few weeks ago about the “good old days” of strategy and simulation gaming, a pair of genres which has pretty much become defunct since the early 2000’s.
Maxis just announced a new Sim City title and it’s definitely something that piqued my interest. Age of Empires Online did the same thing initially, but that fell to the wayside. I don’t want an “Online” version. I want a new sequel to the “regular” A0E games.
I confess to never being a fanatical Sim City player back when Maxis was making those titles, but I did enjoy the games to an extent. I think that nostalgic part of me is hoping this is going to be something that actually gets me back into PC gaming.
The old Sim City games were never the total city simulators I wanted. I’m a micromanager. I think that’s why I enjoyed RollerCoaster Tycoon so much. You could change virtually everything under the sun in that game, from coaster designs to the type of pathing your customers walked on. With Sim City, you were always limited to what actually went on in your city. Zoning residential, commercial, etc always felt like they had gamers on training wheels. It never gave me the control I wanted.
Maxis, please don’t screw it up. Give us more control over what happens in our cities. The new Sim City could be awesome.