Sim City Beta (2013) (PC) (Maxis)
3The new Sim City game has received pretty favorable preview coverage and a lot of people seem genuinely excited about this venerable strategy franchise coming back after a long hiatus. The fancy new 3D engine and multi-faceted online integration seem to be the most hyped features, but for me the most interesting aspect to note is that those dense management elements which characterized the series in the past do not seem to have been unnecessarily stripped down despite some obvious streamlining and a new interface.
At least judging by this tutorial from the Origin-exclusive beta, there's *a lot* going on in the new Sim City game - to the point that even seemingly mundane, nitty-gritty details such as sewage and electricity have not been removed but rather expanded upon and tied into the grand overarching regional interdependence system which also serves the foundation for the Internet-based features. The slick new Sims-inspired look is deceptively simple but once you start clicking stuff some familiar-looking statistics, charts and sliders come bubbling right up to the surface. Some people have made comparisons between the new Sim City and the Firaxis-developed XCOM in terms of bringing back an old genre using a streamlined and approachable design, but my initial impression is that the new Maxis game is significantly less afraid than XCOM was to simply keep the complexity intact while updating the presentation and adding some fairly ambitious online features.
The full game is out in March, and although I'm personally more of a Caesar/Settlers kind of guy when it comes to city building on the PC it's sure going to be interesting to see how this surprisingly faithful re-boot turns out...