One of the newest of the Facebook games, SimCity Social, has all of the favorites for fans of the Sims and Facebook. The free online game has content similar to previous Sims games but also features new developments that are made just for Facebook and that come from the newest and upcoming Sim game.

In SimCity Social, the focus is on socializing and city-building according to All Things Digital. The city-building is similar to previous Sim games and to Facebook games such as CityVille and FarmVille. However, unlike the Sims there is no need to take care of the utilities within the city and there are no taxes.

The city-building in the game happens through using one’s resources wisely. The game currency is called simoleans, which can be used to buy things like houses. Diamonds are also used as currency but they are normally used for upgrading factories or larger projects. Players can buy game diamonds with real money in order to get a boost in the game. Some of the things players can buy include things that one could consider advertisements, such as Dunkin’ Donuts or a billboard advertising a Mercedes.

The game has several features, including 3D graphics and even more creative freedom than in previous Sim games according to IBN Live. There are no set paths, although players can gain experience points from completing certain tasks and building new things in their cities in order to reach the next mayor level.

SimCity Social provides the players with real social issues to deal with spontaneously such as natural disasters and climate change. Players can also experience different scenery depending on whether they choose to be in German, British, or French style neighborhoods.

SimCity Social, even more than city-building, is about socializing with friends. Within SimCity Social, players can interact with their friends and send gifts to each other – much like in FarmVille. Players can hire each other for certain tasks and can become allies or enemies with different cities. A player can also visit a friend’s city in order to get an energy boost and can receive more resources and higher property values if a friend visits his or her city.

Jami Laes, Vice President of Playfish Global Studios, claimed that the game provides many different options for every path a player could want to choose when interacting with his or her friends. Laes stated, “whether you… [act through] kindness by helping put out a fire or through mischievous acts like helping a criminal escape, the decisions you make with your friends will determine how the story of your city plays out.”

Currently there are around 750,000 Sims Facebook fans. The game creators have announced that if someone is playing the game and adds his or her ‘like’ to the Facebook page they can receive free access to exclusive content from the next Sims game.

SimCity Social is essentially a prototype version of the latest Sims game that will be coming out in 2013. In the newest version there will be multiplayer support and will allow up to sixteen friends to play together at once.

According to Kotaku, what SimCity Social lacks is the depth of the PC version of the game. Because the game focuses more on city-building, making it similar to Facebook games like CityVille and FarmVille, other aspects such as the collection of taxes and taking care of utilities that made the game more complicated are lost.

Kotaku states, “[it's] strategic enough to distract players from the fact that they’re caught in an endless cycle of earning enough residents to expand their city, buying new land, and starting the whole process over again…SimCity Social is a cute and capable social city-builder. It’s also a shameless attempt to capitalize on the success of Zynga’s wildly popular CityVille, slapping a powerful name on a game that could never live up to its legacy.”

However, Kotaku does admit that the upcoming PC version of SimCity Social will be much more exciting and complicated. “What’s exciting about this new Sim City is how alive it feels, how much it makes the earliest games in the series feel as static as board games. This one feels alive.”

It looks as if most fans of Facebook’s city-building games will enjoy this latest addition, but fans of previous Sims games should wait for the next PC version.

Image Courtesy of   SimCity Social

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At EA’s Press Conference from E3 2012 on Tuesday June 5^th, they announced several games, mostly involving their sports department, EA Sports. EA offered three first-person shooters, a third-person shooter, a Sim game, a massive multiplayer online (MMO) expansion, a racing game, and four sports titles. Part one will cover from EA’s first-person shooters to their racing game.

The first-person shooters that EA announced were Battlefield 3 Premium, Medal of Honor Warfighter, and Crysis 3. Battlefield 3 Premium is a special network system that incorporates early access to future downloadable content (DLC) along with special customization for characters and dog tags. It also includes new weapons and vehicles. Four new DLC game maps will be available, including Close Quarters (a special infantry-only map), Armor Kill (A special vehicle focus map, which is one of the largest game maps to date), Aftermath (A game map that takes place at a city struck by an earthquake), and End Game (which introduces motorcycle combat vehicles). Battlefield 3 Premium is currently out for $49.99, along with the Close Quarters DLC.

The next first-person shooter EA announced was Medal of Honor Warfighter. After the failure of the reboot, simply known as Medal of Honor, this is another attempt by EA’s to revive the Medal of Honor series. However, the only selling points EA expressed for this series revival were the game’s use of the Frostbite engine, and, according to the promo video, the ability to choose which side you want to be on. Will this truly be the revival of the classic series or will it fade off like its previous title?

The last first-person shooter that EA announced was Crysis 3. Using its self-titled “Crysis Engine”, Crysis 3 seems to be a fresh light into the futuristic first-person shooter. Complete with beautiful details and cinematics, Crysis 3 brings intense first person action to this futuristic sandbox shooter.

The third-person shooter EA announced was Dead Space 3. Dead Space 3 seemed to take the survival horror out of third-person survival horror. With amazing action and beautiful direction, Dead Space 3 at first appeared to be a nice continuation of the Dead Space series. Yet this game completely ignores the basis of the Dead Space series. There was a lack in the survival horror aspect as well as the space aspect. With the press conference putting a heavy focus on the drop-in/drop-out multiplayer aspect, will Dead Space 3 be another Resident Evil 5, or will Dead Space break the boundaries between survival horror and action shooter?

EA also announced a return of the Sim builder series with SimCity. SimCity worked to push the limits of what the series was known for, and with the use of the Blast Box Innovation Engine, SimCity hopes to revolutionize the city building genre and bring the series back from its continuous slump. Some features of the New Sim City include trading with neighboring cities, global market trading, city specialization (which will influence the look of the city), as well as many multiplayer features including a shared city, trading with online neighboring cities, and controlling different cities in an open online region. Many of these features were not detailed during the EA Press Conference, but more details will can be found here.

Bioware, owned by EA, also came up to the stage to announce new expansions to their MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. Bioware announced that there will be new Player versus Player (PvP) warzone maps, ranked PvP character transfers, new available companions, a new playable species, and a new planet to explore. Bioware also announced that there will be a higher level cap, new challenges including a nightmare difficulty, and lastly, starting in July, Old Republic will be free to play up to level 15. Bioware promises to keep Old Republic fresh and up to date for their hardcore fans.

In the field of racing games, EA announced the new addition to the Need for Speed (NFS) series with Need for Speed Most Wanted. With the accepted reboot of Hot Pursuit and the failures that were Shift 2 and The Run, the Need for Speed series hopes to make another comeback with a reboot of Most Wanted. NFS hopes to continue with the more than acceptable success of Hot Pursuit by bringing back the autolog system and making it even more integrated than before, so that there would be a more in-depth competition between fellow online players as they compete to become the most wanted in this open world driving adventure.

The overall presentation of EA’s new games was a bit lackluster this year. But with a few highly anticipated games like Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3, EA hopes to bring its title out of the slump it had gotten itself into. Part 2 will continue with EA Sports’ game releases.

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Earlier this week it was revealed in the German magazine GameStar that a new game in the popular “SimCity” series was in the works.  Although no worldwide announcement has followed, a host of details are already available.

The game will be called SimCity, with no number or subtitle following it.  The graphics have been reworked, leading to more intricate and beautiful details, such as signs plastered up around town and on buildings along with people walking around and going through their lives, occasionally visiting eateries and other stores.

These details also add an extra element to the gameplay: it is now possible to see how a factory is running based on its animation.  At this point, however, there are no screenshots that actually depict how the finished game will look, as currently the only thing available is concept art.

The camera can also now be repositioned, moved around, and zoomed in and out, meaning fixed viewpoints are a thing of the past.  It is possible to zoom in on individual buildings and people, and doing so has a quirky effect: the closer the camera is zoomed in on the city, the louder the noises of the streets and people will become, but the farther out it is, the more quiet everything will seem.

The grid format the series has become associated with is getting redone, and it is now possible to create curved roads, as opposed to only straight ones, which will give the game a more realistic appearance.

Multiplayer has also been added, enabling trade between friends for different materials and resources, as well as leaderboards to show how individual players rank in terms of things like finance.  In addition, prices for resources in single-player may be regulated by the actual online economy of the game (although GameStar was vague here, leaving room for the possibility that the economy will be actually fluctuate based on events that happen in the real world).

Other bits shown reveal that buildings do not stay the same over the course of the game.  As time goes on buildings can unlock new powers, like a fire station being able to put out a fire that much quicker.  Graphs and charts telling the player the status of their city have also been simplified and made more modern in order to help make them more player-friendly.

At this time there is little other information available, but stay tuned for more details in coming months.

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