Valley24.com shares their take on the highs and lows of all Sim games which branched over 3 decades. This week is Part One and covers SimCity, SimCity 2000, The Sims and SimCity 4. Man, it’s almost SimCity’s 20 year anniversary… That was my first true sims game played on a very old 486 PC.
And that’s exactly where the beauty of Wright’s games lie; they’re “pointless” in the best sense of the world. While the term has never been entirely pinned down, Wright’s games are essentially of the “sandbox” variety: you’re given a space to play in with some confines, and the goals are determined by the player rather than the sandbox itself. So, if you were the type of kid who loved building intricate sand castles, your personal goal in a SimCity game may be to make a one-horse town grow to the size of a teeming metropolis; but for any juvenile delinquents out there who buried their sisters’ Barbies head-first in the sand, the SimCity series offers many natural disasters to inflict on a terrified populace with just the push of a button. And unlike a lot of other games featuring the hot topic of morality, SimCity will never judge you.
Next week – The worst moments of the Sim- series, and the copycats that tried (and possibly failed) to capture that Sim-Magic.
