Sim City 4: Rush Hour - The Sims all over again?

[vovan]

Well, I know there already is a Rush Hour thread around here, but I wanted to start a new one to sort of develop more around this idea: Maxis is making another the Sims out of SimCity. Agree, disagree? Post here.

Here are some of my ideas and clarifications on what I mean by another the Sims:

There are two aspects to this. First, is the marketing aspect and second is the gameplay aspect.

As far as the former is concerned, we would be asking: is SC going to have expansions stamped like crazy like the Sims did? Well, that isn't exactly the question I wanted to concentrate on here, because it is clear that they will want to do that (as the speedy delivery of Rush Hour shows), but it will all depend on the popularity of SC, which so far hasn't been nearly as great as that of the sims.

What I wanted to point out then, is the growing similarity between the gameplays of the two. I just read the new Rush Hour review on IGN (available here: http://pc.ign.com/articles/451/451058p1.html), and the reviewer, like a few of us here, finds the inclusion of the U-Drive-It feature into SimCity rather odd. The statement I found really curious (and the one that essentially triggered this thread) is: "By incorporating loads and loads of vehicle-based gameplay, Rush Hour shifts the series more towards personality and character." If you think about it, it is just a logical progression of the introduction of the My Sims feature. The game is, indeed, shifting from you being an abstract personality that makes fairly general decisions (well, other than placing the service buildings) to you being an actual entity on the map. It seems the next step would be to make the mayor one of the Sims and stick him into the Mayor house...

On the one hand this seems to be just an attempt to raise the popularity of an otherwise fairly niche game by attracting the proven support of the Sims fans. I can just see this idea: from the creators of the sims comes simcity. Let your sims move into a big city. Drive around it in a car. Etc., etc.. Looks indeed like the gameplays of the two games are starting to merge, slowly but surely.

On the other hand, you could argue: well, since this doesn't detract from the actual management side of the game that the fans of SimCity (and not the Sims) have come to love and expect from the series, why even bother grumbling about the new "personal" touches. But of course, that argument also has two sides: the time that was spent implementing those personal touches could have been spent improving on the existing systems in the game, some of which have a bit to be desired.

And also along the same line, from the IGN review, it seems that the expansion was kind of rushed along and some of the definite bugs the reviewer saw sound comical at first but then it really isn't all that funny, because you'd hope for some quality from the expansion, and what you get is even more bugs:

while it's nice that cars pull off the road to make way for emergency vehicles, the fact that they sometimes pull off to the wrong side of the road can lead to some unfortunate collisions.

Heh, yeah, that's funny in a GTA-ish kind of way, but this is SimCity, and you would expect a different kind of humor... Not a very cool bug if you think about it.

The tendency of road vehicles to pop in and out of the game is also a cause of frustration. Racing down the street behind vehicles that conveniently disappear moments before you crash in to them is fine, I suppose, but when you begin a mission and have a cement truck spawn right on top of your vehicle destroying it <...>

That one had me laughing for a while. But then I thought about it... Well, if they spent a bit of time implementing this feature that, according to the opinions in the other thread, isn't the most welcome one, and didn't get it right, what happened to everything else? Did they fix all the possible bugs in the part that the citybuilders will play most? Well, that's where we stumble upon the next exerpt from the review:

Though overall performance seems to have been smoothed over a bit with the expansion, there are still some moments where the game seems to chug a bit, even on high-end systems. <...> It was easier to put up with erratic performance before the team added this reflex-oriented vehicle gameplay. The drops in framerate are more irritating now, particularly when you consider the quality of the high-detail graphics. Since you'll be focused on the cars and streets, the pixilated buildings aren't too much of a problem, but it still seems as if the game should run better given the level of detail.

So, they didn't improve the performance much... Well, that's where some of that time developing the new and apparently still buggy (or poorly designed?) UDI could have gone. Would have been a much more welcome improvement, if you ask me.

-------------------

Yeah... That's a long ramble. Well, I think I will be buying the expansion one-the-less, since it is just $10 over here, but I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it from what I've read in reviews. Just as a final note, the closing comments from the IGN review include this:

It adds plenty of new features on the management end of the game, letting those more studious players delve deep in to the heart of the traffic patterns in the city. Serious players of SimCity will definitely find a wonderful range of options here, both in terms of new pieces and new reports. The details here are almost overwhelming and it's a real tribute to Maxis that they've been able to take such detailed, complicated information and present it in as useful and intuitive a format as possible.

Well, now to add the same level of complexity to all the other aspects of the game, and we will be satisfied, no? (Well, we will have to pay for upgrade, apparently, but...)

[vovan]

A couple after thoughs...

1. Does anybody have the game yet? If yes, what do you think?

2. Another great aspect of the UDI implementation is shown on the screenie attached... At IGN, they called it "Where's the d*mn road?" I second the sentiment...

[Joseph]

Originally posted by vovansim
A couple after thoughs...

1. Does anybody have the game yet? If yes, what do you think?

2. Another great aspect of the UDI implementation is shown on the screenie attached... At IGN, they called it "Where's the d*mn road?" I second the sentiment...

I have it. Only played it about an hour. Its Ok.

[DRoseDARs]

I bought it today (22nd) and played for an hour before class. Will be playing it again here soon...



Thoughts so far from my limited play and from what I've read from other people's experiances (some got early releases): I'm wasn't too fond of UDI when I first heard about it. I played Streets of SimCity ages ago and it was of limited appeal for me. I have a *cough* copy *cough* of Grand Theft Auto III (a VERY buggy "copy" at that...) and UDI does smack of the same taste in that the car is somewhat difficult to maintain control, with the added bonus of not being able to see the road [through buildings]...kinda important when one is driving. GTAIII's camera gets in the way sometimes, but nary a moment is there when it is unusable. UDI is less kind to the user it seems.



Performance: Definitely noticable drop in performance [during UDI mode]. I recently upgraded my computer with a new motherboard (AMD +2 ghz), new video card (new as in developed this year, forgot the specs), and over a gig of RAM. Vanilla SC4's performance improved considerably, but several times RH froze up [during UDI mode] for seconds at a time before carrying on its merry way.



Transportation: No, they didn't bother fixing the shortest time vs shortest distance problem. The7Trumpets over at Simtropolis is gonna be busy the next few days... For those unfamiliar with that problem, it IS NOT a bug. The programmers had to choose between more intelligent pathfinding coding and faster computing speeds. They chose the faster computing speeds since they would be more middle-of-the-road computers installing SC4 than there would be faster computers who would be able to handle the better coding. the7trumpets is part of the "Modd Squad: Transportation Department" over at Simtropolis. He (she?) modded that part of the coding so that individual players could decide for themselves how well the game handles pathfinding.

I don't have enough experience yet with the added transportation features, but they look promising...



Comparison to The Sims: Any relation between the two games will be very limited. Adding too much of The Sims into SC4 will simply bog down even the fastest systems if one tired to play both city building AND person training. Additionally, The Sims 2 is already being made and combining the two games would simply mean one less game title for EA to make a profit on. Would YOU buy a copy of SimCity 4 (plus umpteen expansion packs) and a seperate copy of The Sims (plus umpteen expansion packs) totalling, say $200...or would you buy a single copy of The SimSity 2.4 (plus umpteen expansion packs) for only, say $100? Nay, EA will keep the two games largely seperate because to totally combine them would bore The Sims players with features they don't understand and irritate SimCity players with features they find totally irrelevant...oh, wait.

EDIT: added bracketed clarrifiers to make meaning more clear.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Transportation: No, they didn't bother fixing the shortest time vs shortest distance problem.

I've heard they completely rewrote the code for this problem... don't have the game though, so I can't judge

[DRoseDARs]

I should now note, after a few hours of playing with the x-pack, that UDI has a toggle to make your vehicle stay on the road in the proper lane, making driving a litlle easier. That's a feature that would have been nice to have in GTAIII. :P

[Paddy]

it is not as good as I had hoped...!

[lord of the mark]

wait a minute guys - there is an old maxis game, streets of sim city, which allows you to drive around a city you built in Simcity 2000. I got it my simmania pack, but havent loaded it yet. Also Simcopter allows you to fly around a city you made in simcity.

So the idea of integrating different sim games is hardly new.

[vovan]

Originally posted by lord of the mark So the idea of integrating different sim games is hardly new.

Right, but my point in the little ramble about the Sims and SimCity converging to one another was that while Streets of SimCity and such do, indeed integrate the different genres of the games, they are still separate. Here we are seeing the integration of features in one game.

DRoseDARs, thanks for the feedback. Very interesting. Although what you say kind of reinfores y doubts. I may very well be the party-pooper here, but I would rather have them spend time on weeding out the old bugs than introducing new features that have the potential of putting new bugs in. Of course, they can't make any money off the patch, so I suppose, they would rather work on another expansion now... (Which, BTW makes a lot of sense - I, too, would rather make money off of what I do. Only thing is, it kind of sucks for the gamers...) Oh well.

[lord of the mark]

reread your post and it makes sense, from a hyper realist point of view, no?

Im Mayor of simcity. My advisors report that traffic congestion is ok, etc. But my citizens complain about how long it takes to get to work. I can scratch my head, or i can get in my car and go out and drive the routes theyre complaining about and see whats going on. Now which is the better way to be a mayor?


Im thinking of William Donald Schaefer, the real life former Mayor of Baltimore, who got into his car and followed garbage trucks around to see what they were doing.

[vovan]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
reread your post and it makes sense, from a hyper realist point of view, no?

Im Mayor of simcity. My advisors report that traffic congestion is ok, etc. But my citizens complain about how long it takes to get to work. I can scratch my head, or i can get in my car and go out and drive the routes theyre complaining about and see whats going on. Now which is the better way to be a mayor?


Im thinking of William Donald Schaefer, the real life former Mayor of Baltimore, who got into his car and followed garbage trucks around to see what they were doing.

Yes, it certainly makes sense. But what I am wondering about is this: what is the funner way to be the mayor? The more identity-oriented theme of the latest SimCity calls for more micromanagement (as in, following individul garbage trucls to see what they are doing), while the olde games in the series gave the mayor a more abstract role (get general data on what garbage trucks are doing and see what you can do about it). Now, I realize that part of the reason for such transition is: the older systems, for which the older games were developed simply weren't powerful enough to provide for all the micromanagement functionality. So, the high level of abstraction in, say classic SC, wasn't necessarily a result of conscious design decisions, but rather a "workaround" for the limitations of the available computing power. Modern machines allow for much more stuff to be done in a unit of time, and thus, it becomes possible for the mayor to manage every hospital, every electric plan, and every police station. Now, the question I am asking is: is that necessarily a good thing? Should such detail be implemented just because we can? Is there really a bigger fun factor behind it? Or maybe, on the contrary, we have grown to love that level of abstraction, and that is where the fun's at for us, and we don't want to set the individual wage for every teacher?

Now, I am not expecting a black&white answer to those questions, nor am I going to judge one answer incorrect and another correct, or even one answer as being superior to another, for there can be no such judgement. Where it comes to "fun", it is a very subjective, uhh... subject. ( ) I would like to know opinions though.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by vovansim


Yes, it certainly makes sense. But what I am wondering about is this: what is the funner way to be the mayor? The more identity-oriented theme of the latest SimCity calls for more micromanagement (as in, following individul garbage trucls to see what they are doing), while the olde games in the series gave the mayor a more abstract role (get general data on what garbage trucks are doing and see what you can do about it). Now, I realize that part of the reason for such transition is: the older systems, for which the older games were developed simply weren't powerful enough to provide for all the micromanagement functionality. So, the high level of abstraction in, say classic SC, wasn't necessarily a result of conscious design decisions, but rather a "workaround" for the limitations of the available computing power. Modern machines allow for much more stuff to be done in a unit of time, and thus, it becomes possible for the mayor to manage every hospital, every electric plan, and every police station. Now, the question I am asking is: is that necessarily a good thing? Should such detail be implemented just because we can? Is there really a bigger fun factor behind it? Or maybe, on the contrary, we have grown to love that level of abstraction, and that is where the fun's at for us, and we don't want to set the individual wage for every teacher?

Now, I am not expecting a black&white answer to those questions, nor am I going to judge one answer incorrect and another correct, or even one answer as being superior to another, for there can be no such judgement. Where it comes to "fun", it is a very subjective, uhh... subject. ( ) I would like to know opinions though.

well i dont want to HAVE to go in and micromanage, like I do in Civ. But its appealing to have different ways of being mayor - i can lean back and take the macro view, or I can go check on everything myself ( i daresay most mayors around the world dont want to be like Willie Don, but Willie Don sure liked being Willie Don) Its a drill down. Heck Id like to be able to play civ, and go down and see whats going on in a specific city. etc, etc. Youre right that theres some cost, some other feature thats lost. Kinda like with better graphics, theres some tradeoff. Without knowing what they left out its hard to say if they made the best choice.