Game Review: Simcity DS

Game: Simcity DS
Console: Nintendo DS
Developer: Aki Corp.
Release Date: 19th June 2007

While there are many games in the SimCity series, for the most part they can easily be divided into 2D and 3D games where the 3D instalments take a far more complex approach to city building compared to the fairly simple setup and zoning featured in the 2D games. SimCity DS is somewhere between these categories however, with a 2D graphical approach and fairly simple building options mixing with a few of the more complex features from later games such as water distribution and requests from individual citizens on behalf of particular demographics.

As a city building game, the goal of the main mode is to increase your population to the point where no more people can physically live in your city, whilst keeping the general happiness level high through a variety of factors. Information can be accessed regarding the quality of life, crime rate, amount of waste, power, fire risk, pollution and transport options in each area of the map.While there's no data for overall happiness, I can only assume it's an aggregation of the factors on each datasheet which is represented by the amount of people moving or away from the city.

In the main mode, a civic advisor offers insight into what needs to be done in order to expand the city, though this is only basic tips rather than a detailed plan of action. There's a choice of advisors, but for the most part they'll compliment whatever decisions are made. The build mode is accessed by tapping a small icon on the main game screen, and pauses the flow of time until exited. Within the build mode it's possible to place new zones, buildings, roads and other features with a fairly intuitive system of control.

Once build mode has been closed there's very little players can do, save for watching their city expand and waiting for citizens to petition them for new buildings and services. As such, much of the game is spent waiting for enough expansion to take place to warrant new zones and building. Often players will also need to wait for their bank balance to go up sufficiently to be able to afford to build.
While this is a problem with SimCity games in general, very few of the other instalments insist on the game being paused for building to take place.

Unfortunately the game doesn't feature enough depth to give an organic feel to the growth of the player's city. There's a constant cycle in place of building residential zones for people to move into, a little more industrial to give them jobs, some commercial for them to relax and spend their money and maybe a few parks and libraries for their free time before starting over again. It's only once a city reaches 50,000 or so in population that things become a little less simple. I found myself giving up on my city after reaching a population of 70,000, as a fire devastated one area, accidentally severing power to much of my city causing 40,000 people to leave. Despite my every attempt, I couldn't get the population back up to the level it had been at, so I decided to call it a day.

In addition to the main Build-A-City mode which is freeform for the most part, there's also a Save The City mode in which players take on cities in crisis and attempt to fix whatever problems exist. Usually these problems focus on a singular aspect such as traffic jams, the economy or the crime rate. This mode is a refreshing break from building your own city, and can be more of a challenge as much of the time, players will be directly in control of the traffic/crime rate etc. in their own cities.

Graphically the game isn't particularly bad for being on a handheld, and I'm definitely glad that the developers didn't take the cartoonish route, but when zoomed in the map details are pretty fuzzy and low quality. The musical accompaniment to the game can get fairly annoying as there aren't that many tracks and one of them has a repeating note which sounds like a warning alarm.

Overall Simcity DS isn't the worst it could have been on the console; it plays quite a bit like the original SimCity for SNES, with a couple of upgrades in detail and the use of the bottom screen comes in handy much of the time. In terms of being able to compete with more modern PC and console versions of SimCity however, there's really no contest as this version of the game lacks complexity. Once you've built one city, you've pretty much experienced all the game has to offer, save for the scenario modes.

Rating: 71/100
Grade: C