Flocking to the new city

By Peter Eley

Sim City 3000 ****

Maxis

$109.95

PC


Sim City 2000 came out in 1993 and six years later the much-delayed Sim City 3000 has finally hit the shelves.

Has the wait been worth it? Well, the game is topping the sales charts already and has attracted a perfect 10 rating on some of the Internet's top gaming sites.

While there's no doubt it's a great game, I was left with an overwhelming sense of deja vu - it is amazingly like Sim City 2000 at first glance.

Rather than being a criticism of Maxis' latest offering, it is a tribute to possibly the finest PC game. After all, if it ain't broke, why fix it?

What Sim City 3000 does is take a game that was designed for fledgling 486 processors and zap it into the Pentium age.

The most obvious change is much better graphics. The buildings are in fine-textured 3D, even at high zoom levels, and you can see individual citizens walking the streets.

The ability to zoom in and get close-up 3D views is a big improvement, but the macro views could be mistaken for Sim City 2000.

The terrain set-up is the same, with a grid on which you place residential, industrial and commercial zones, connect power and water and sit back as your city grows.

But as your fledgling city develops, you soon get to understand some of the changes to the game. Pollution plays a much bigger role, and crime can get out of control if you don't attend to matters such as jobs and education.

The micro-management of planning and budgets has been much improved. You get more control but the process is understandably more complex.

Thankfully, you have a whole host of planners and advisers on hand for help.

Watch them - they have agendas to push. For example, transport manager Moe Biehl is always urging you to build more roads. "We can soon fill them up," he says.

And the financial manager Mortimer Green is a bit of an Act supporter, who is always telling you that low taxes encourage growth.

They certainly do in Sim City - put up taxes and residents flee in disgust.

It's an interesting game, sociologically speaking. On one hand, the concept of an all-powerful mayor is rather a totalitarian idea. But a strong emphasis on environmental values shows a more caring side. Let pollution get out of control and the hippie population of your city riots.

All up, Sim City 3000 is a non-violent (apart from the odd tornado or alien attack) game that's heaps of fun to play and educational to boot.

Required: Pentium 166, 32Mb Ram and a 2Mb video card.

* Send your comments e-mail to peter_eley@herald.co.nz

* Games are given a star rating of one to five.

Pictured: The fine-textured 3D detail, which is readily apparent in Sim City 3000, even when viewed at high zoom levels, is a significant improvement on its popular predecessor, Sim City 2000.