Reviews

Sim City 3000

Gateway to the City Launching SimCity 3000 still revealssome vestiges of the 3D version thatexisted at E3. You pick a city name,starting budget, and mayor's name. Once in the game, you generate the terrain you want for your budding metropolis. You can change some of the starting assumptions by moving any of the three sliders; clicking on the terrain tile in the window alters some of the gross assumptions, such as water pattern. All you really must do is get the basic pattern you want in this screen.Each click of the Regenerate Terrain button creates a slightly different map. Later in the game, you can alter terrain features, but it costs a lot of money. There wasn't a map editor in the beta copy we previewed, but Maxis is planning on making a Building Architect Tool available on its web site once the game ships. This tool will allow the creation of custom buildings and city tiles.  As with past versions, when you start up SimCity, you're presented with blank terrain features. You begin by laying out aroad network and zoning areas for residential, commercial, or industrial regions. After laying out a power grid and underlying water supply matrix, you're off and running.   Of course, you can start with existing cities that Maxis will include with the game. New to SimCity are Starter Cities. These are complete, premade cities that still have a lot of development left. They're laid out in interesting patterns, and some represent historical growth patterns, albeit in an abstract way. There's also a set of custom maps whose terrain resembles the underlying terrain of real cities.  The user interface seems much more accessible than SimCity 2000's. Although the menu icons, laid out on the right side ofthe screen, are stylized, tooltips pop up to tell you what each represents. Advisors now reside in a single window, and it's easy to get advice from them due to the clean andeasy-to-understand layout.