EA just released a new version of the forever popular Sim City games just at the beginning of this month. The game was launched to slow servers, derision from gamers, and a famous NFL kicker going on a rampage about the game. In other words, it wasn’t the most successful launch.
I defended the game when it was first out, but after going back and playing the penultimate release of the series (not counting Sim City Societies…the less said about that one, the better), I’ve decided that while SimCity is a decent upgrade of the game, EA/Maxis sucked the meat of the game in the process, leaving it a shell of a glory. There is a good game in there, and it is quite fun once you play. It’s like this – a hot dog is a perfectly serviceable meal. But if you spent some time eating filet mignon, it is hard as hell to get back to eating a hot dog.*
So, this is not really a review, but more of a comparison of the major game mechanics in the games, and why Sim City 4 kicks it’s younger brother’s ass. Note: pictures from Sim City 2013 are PR snapshots because the screenshot option doesn’t seem to work for me and Windows + Print Screen doesn’t work either. Sim City 4 screen shots are from my own city! It should be easy to determine which picture is which, but they are just for fun and have no actual value in the article. So, read the damn text.
Zoning
So, zoning is a major part of the game play in the Sim Cities. You lay down residential, commercial or industrial zones (or in Sim City 3000, agricultural 
zones), and people move in if certain conditions happen. Sim City 4 had a decent model when it came to zoning – depending on the size of the zone, you’ll also lay down roads with the zones. This is because different types of zones has to be within a certain radius of some sort of road in order to grow and develop. The game won’t let you plop down too large of a zone or too small of a zone in some situations (low density industrial aka agricultural zoning). Each zone type had three levels of density: low (trailer homes, small homes, small businesses and shops, farms), medium (tenements, apartments, large family homes, bigger businesses, factories) and high (condos, skyscrapers, bigger factories and high tech industry). Land value also plays in to what buildings develop – if you have high land value, you’ll get nicer homes and neighborhoods. There are other factors that determine whether or not a zone grows – unemployment is a huge factor in Sim City 4 (although not as much as it was in 3000), as well as the aforemention land value, crime, safety, fire protection, etc.
Sim City 2013 makes zoning mindless – which at first makes sense. See, when you zone, you essentially only zone 1×2 lots that are attached to a road. Which makes sense – in previous games, zones needed a road to develop. The issue is that you don’t determine zone density – the road does. This makes no sense from a simulation standpoint – there is a trailer park near my house that is off a pretty high density street. In Sim City 2013, this would be impossible. There are a lot of really nice houses off of dirt roads around here as well. Also, it seems easier for medium and high density zones to develop – land value doesn’t seem to be a major factor, as well as crime and protection. Heck, in my current city I was able to get a nice city going without any crime or fire protection. My main drag was filled with skyscrapers, and no one was there to protect the banks.
Water Management
Water was a thing that was added in Sim City 2000, and is essential to larger cities. You need water to get medium and high density people to come to your city. Sim City 4 really didn’t mess with the model established by previous games – you lay down pipes that are connected to water pumps, and…that’s it. Update your infrastructure once your sprawl gets out of control.
Sim City 2013 does actually change the model a bit – pipes are automatically laid down under the roads, so you just need to worry about your water pumps or what not. The only thing I have to complain about is what seems to be a bug in the game where water availability is serverly laggy. The UI will say that I have 80 gallons of water in excess or whatever, and buildings will complain that they can’t get after water. This is after several in-game days of upgrading the water supply!
Transportation
The Sim Cities gave you a lot of fun transportation options. The original just had roads and trains. 2000 added a subway and buses. I can’t remember what 3000 added. Sim City 4, with it’s Rush Hour expansion, includes highways, elevated rail lines (think the Chicago T or L? lines), non-elevated highways, and more ways to get to point A to point B that you can shake a stick at! Sim City 4 includes only four types of roads: street, road, avenues, and one-way streets. You can also build highways. Each of these are used for traffic congestion.
Mass transportation in Sim City 4 is a hard challenge, just like it is in real life (or at least when you live in a city where people have the idea they’re going to get stabbed by a liberal on the bus). Conditions have to be perfect. Rich and most medium wealth sims wouldn’t think to use the bus. Poor sims need a bus stop within walking distance of wherever their going, and where they live. Train and subway have similar issues. It’s a hard game to play. I’ve played one city before where for a good 10 years, my subway useage was at 0%.
Sim City 4 also has a fun little query tool where you can click on a building or house or car or sim and see the routes of everyone going to that place. It’s cool when managing your traffic flow.
So, transportation options in Sim City 2013 is actually quite a lot – you have dirt roads, low to high density streets, medium avenues, high density avenues, and avenues with streetcar tracks. You can have busses, streetcars, ferries, and municipal airports (which are in the previous games). Trains are only used for region-to-region travel, which is weird. You can’t have highways or train tracks – only one per region, which is a bit of a strange decision.
Sims in Sim City 2013 are more likely to use mass transportation, partly because when you lay bus stops down, you can see how effective it will be. The most interesting aspect of this is that you end up lying your bus stops at every corner, regardless whether that’s a busy corner! Can you see something like that in the real world? This also causes major congestion on the roads, because you get a bunch of buses blocking the way of people getting to work, which doesn’t help the problem you are trying to solve by having busses in the first place!
City Services
City Services (schools, police stations, fire stations, etc.) used to be global in the SimCity series, until Sim City 4, where they were changed to affect a certain radius. Which makes sense – my police needs are not done by the police station by my parents house (which is a good 40 miles away), but by one by my house.
Sim City 2013 makes the affect global again. So, a city will only have one school, one police station, one fire station, one medical clinic or hospital. What is cool is that you can upgrade – police stations can be given more jail cells. Schools can be given more classrooms. It’s a nice bit of micromanagment. At some point, you can’t upgrade anymore and thus must build another one, or build one in a region and gift your ambulances or what not over to another city.
Region Play
Sim City 2013 made region play front and center – you play on a server, in a premade region, and you can either play by yourself in a private region or in a public region, with other people and other mayors. I usually play in a private region, because 
people scare me. You are also can collaborate on big public works too. This means that you have to make your city to produce a certain commodity, in order to contribute. I take a big issue about this, because that to me doesn’t seem to be the point of the game to me. I’m supposed to create this awesome city that I would love to live in. What is this about digging up resources and competing in the global marketplace? That seems to be an extra layer of the game that…seems to be unnecessary. Was Maxis afraid that we’d get bored? It makes the game look confusing. Plus, since I am such a realist with my god games (ants aren’t yellow!), it’s usually the state or private companies that mine and deflower the virgin lands for oil, core, or whatever. Not the city itself. Plus, I’m not interested in resource economics.
Also, all the regions are preformed and are boring, because the cities you start will start to feel the same if you play on the same regions in different servers.
Sim City 4 has region play too, and none of that crazy resource management stuff. Unlike in Sim City 2013, you can claim anywhere in the region as a city, and they come in different size lots.
Miscellaneous
In Sim City 2013, you can’t rename any of the buildings. This is actually kinda sad, I thought that was a nice part of the Sim City games.
Sim City 2013, you have a vague happiness to keep track on how you’re doing as a mayor. In Sim City 4, you have an actual numeral rating that goes up and down like the wind at times.
Sim City 2013 walks like this, Sim City 4 walks like this.
Sim City 2013 has literally no graphs that are useful to chart your progress in killing crime, getting your approval rate up or what not. Sim City 4 has tons of data galore.
Sim City 2013 has no ordinances. Sim City 4 does. I like having ordinances, because they can give you some quick money or can increase education for some dough.
However, Sim City 2000 has this guy.
My verdict: Sim City 4 has more beef to it, it’s a more refreshing experience. While Sim City 2013 is also fun and is easier to dive in, I started losing interest in it. It seemed like there were too many times where, after I filled up all the space in my city, I went “Okay, what now?” and ended up just staring at how beautiful the game is. Sim City 4 had me look at graphs, see if I can get those damn Sims to use the bus or what not.
