I am an evil dictator.
It's totally true.
In Electronic Arts' society simulator, SimCity Societies, the first thing I did was build a world I would hate to live in. My city was run by authority: secret police and thought conditioning were the norm.
I should've added mimes.
The cool thing about SimCity Societies is its ease of use. Unlike its cousins, the traditional SimCity games, Societies is a society-simulator. You don't need to worry about proper placement of power plants or power lines or many of the things that make the older games so technical. In Societies, the goal is to make your city enjoyable for the Sims who live in it.
When first starting your city, you get to make a very lasting decision: do I want to play fairly, and earn everything, or do I want to have unlimited money and no limit to what I can do at any time? I chose the latter because, quite frankly, it seemed more fun. I'm also really bad at simulation games. This option, though, adds something to the game that other city-builders don't, the ability to freely build your city as you see fit from the get-go.
There are a few ways your city can go. The well-made tutorial will show you how the game works by having you build a creative and fun city. These will have clowns and other various jobs that people enjoy. It runs on creativity, and some of the buildings unique to that type of place are pretty fun.
I went down a very different route, building a world were creativity just wasn't very good.
It was like 1984 in 2008, which was pretty fun. My bleak landscape, dotted by pollution-pumping factories, was run by authority.
Societies is a lot of fun. It's very easy to pick up and play for a short time because it doesn't require the incredible patience and attention that its cousins do, and for that, I am very appreciative. With the customization you can have in each city, counting the huge number of buildings available, you can pretty much make whatever you want. What will your world be?
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Adam Wratten is the Online Editor and Resident Gamer for The Monitor. He also writes a World of Warcraft blog at moonkin.freedomblogging.com. He can be contacted at (956) 618-3929.
