With a new SimCity game on the horizon for the first time in too many years, I decided to break my usual habit of boycotting Facebook games for being wastes of good gaming time and try SimCity Social.
I was hoping it might scratch my SimCity itch, but it’s pretty much a standard free-to-play model Facebook game. It has pretty graphics and works very smoothly, but still relies on spamming your friends to get anywhere at a decent pace. It still requires almost no thought or strategy to play. The only way it captures any real Sims flavor is in the humor.
It’s been forever since I played a SimCity game — forever meaning the heyday of SimCity 3000. I don’t know if SimCity 4 included the kind of humor that has become one of the hallmarks of The Sims. But that humor is present in SimCity Social. One of the interactions you can have with your police stations is “Taze Someone”. If you do the status bar for the action is labelled “GZZZZTTT!!!”. That’s a large part of why (coupled with a lack of time to play games I value more highly) I’m still playing it.
To end on a mostly-unrelated note: since last I posted anything I was finally convinced to try League of Legends. I’m rather taken with it. Last week I figured out how to farm decently with Ryze. Hooray!