![]() Eventually, we knew, we'd break the back of this thing, and place hospitals at just the right juncture, or drive trade forward with a seaport or out of town highway. We learned that persistence was the only route to success, and that enough police stations would drive crime down for good. Failure, like all videogame failure, taught us that we had to learn, to master, to repeat and overcome. To build and to have a balanced budget was tricky enough, but factor in disasters and the stupendous costs of infrastructure and you'd be crying like an onion-eyed baby over your balance sheet. Yet what we most readily forget about this ancient, Spartan game is just how hard it could be. It was a masterpiece of design – visual, simulatory, managerial. You could see neighbourhoods prosper, see roads congest and collapse, watch buildings fade into cracked dereliction, or be rejuvenated by fresh investment. This was a game so clean and crisp, so immediate and detailed, even way back in the prehistory of 1994, that we knew things without having to ask. Even more crucially: it could all be understood at a glance. Games are more than the sum of their rules, and it's never truer than in the case of SimCity 2000. You might know what the game was about, or even grasp the mechanical programming that powered it, but you couldn't not understand how it worked without spending those hours at your desktop. This means that no one can understand quite how it works without experiencing building a city for themselves. Like so many great games, SimCity is what clever men call “computationally irreducible”. A butterfly beat its wings over there, and a deficit the size of the moon swelled up over here. It started out with a simple set of things we could do – build roads, zone land for commerce or residence – and yet the possibilities that emerged from even the smallest decisions were vast. SimCity was a fine example of the 'emergent' game scenario. It was that sudden, wondrous game, and the thing which threatened to consume hours, days, months, relationships, careers, lives. Once unearthed and installed, a city must be founded, expanded and maintained.Ģ000 managed to be as easy to use as a set of child's crayons, and yet abyssally deep – and the perfect scaffold for tactical imagining, like Chess, or Elite. Back in 1994 we couldn't help but worry about how close the industrial zones were to our suburban housing, or about how much we were spending on road maintenance, or subways, or airports. The isometric depth of this sequel dragged us outwards and upwards from the original SimCity, inspiring us to such an extent that that original compulsion to build and zone and budget seemed flat and parochial by comparison.Ģ000's rich spine of management systems and statistical paraphernalia induces the weird urge in all gamers to become tight-fisted local governors. This is the Sim game upon which all others rest, like resource-pecking vultures on the bones of some perfect Darwinian entity. No subsequent Sim-sequel has been able to capture SimCity 2000's primal management essence. If nothing else I think that 2000 captures the quintessential essence of a City game. This look back at SimCity 2000 invites the anger of fans of the subsequent SimCity games by claiming it was the best the series had to offer. You can be a fire-breathing dragon in Dragon Simulator 3D, a fierce predator in Tiger Simulator 3D, or a beautiful horse in Horse Simulator 3D.Īs you can see, simulations games are truly diverse so why not have a look through our range of sim titles and see what world you want to simulate today.In keeping with our Sim theme, I thought I'd publish this piece which was originally written in summer 2007 for PC Gamer UK's Long Play series. If you want to live life as a tiger, parrot, horse or any other animal, then there are plenty of options thanks to the developer CyberGoldfinch. ![]() Practice epic driving stunts and race through the streets at break-neck speeds! Swap bodies with an animal Race the streetsįirst we have Drift Hunters - this is an awesome racing and drifting simulation that lets you drive around a huge 3D cityscape and practice your driving skills. ![]() If you want to jump in an epic sports car and race at dangerous speeds around a city, you can! If you want to try managing a charming farm or a busy city but don't want to have the stress and pressure, you can! The possibilities are endless and the sim games such as the ones listed below are just a small snippet of what you can experience. Simulation games allow you to perform a wide range of tasks in some beautiful computer generated worlds without any real-life consequences.
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