14 DAY TRIAL // Other than the problems with the game servers, the biggest issue with SimCity is the limited space that each settlement offers, which introduces a sense of claustrophobia that many fans believe has no place in this series.
I had played SimCity for about three hours before I was aware that I lacked space and that there was literally no way to introduce a solar panel electricity plant in my city without wrecking a big chunk of it.
I sought a good location that I was willing to lose, but I didn’t want to part with any neighborhood, however small, because they all seemed organically connected to my larger vision of Softcity (yes, I sometimes lack imagination when it comes to names).
I had started another three cities in the same region before I understood what Maxis was trying to do: the team wanted players to specialize ruthlessly, acting less like a benevolent mayor and more like an efficiency-focused corporate executive.
This philosophy seems alien to me and I struggled to tear down chunks of my city in order to upgrade old infrastructure and introduce more modern buildings.
I have also failed to appreciate the way SimCity forces me to drop any idea of varied economy and focus on just one sector in order to get revenue and offer the rest of the region a surplus of resources.
The entire structure that Maxis has built starts to make sense when you accept the fact that the region is actually the city and the parcels that you can control are actually more like neighborhoods or suburbs, pooling resources in order to support the wider structure.
But this presents another problem because a player either needs a dedicated and coordinated group to create a great metropolis or the time to jump from city to city in order to manually control each area and push it as close to perfection as possible.