Shacknews – SimCity iPhone impressions

Of course, the iPhone-specific features will gather the most attention. Dragging and zooming with the touchscreen works well overall, making tasks like deleting large swaths of city with the bulldozer relatively easy. Panning around can feel laggy at times, as the game re-renders the scene with each drag of the screen, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

Similarly annoying, but not quite unwarranted, is the way the building lists have been implemented. Players can build roads, lay zones and other typical actions within the overworld map. But due to screen size restrictions, the game unfortunately loads a separate menu screen for the selection of larger buildings.

To its credit, the menu features a cover-flow style interface, allowing you to flick through power plants and police departments fairly quickly.

Probably the most lacking area of the game can be found in the roads, those basic SimCity building blocks that almost define each version of the game. After playing SimCity 4, it’s a bit depressing to head back to a world of non-diagonal road work. To make matters worse, zones don’t automatically lay roads as you build them, requiring an entirely manual approach. For road fans, this is probably a plus–for me, a frustrating setback.

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