Yet more iPad strategy goodness
I hate to continue to bombard this blog with game reviews, but I feel the need to post this as it’s a rebuttal to a previous post.
I had mentioned that SimCity for iPad was a buggy piece of junk, not worth the $6.99 price tag and not worth playing. I now realize, I was half wrong.
The iPad version shares many of its features with SimCity 4, thankfully, and not the later versions which were essentially a perversion of the franchise. Some things have been changed, of course (the building selection is smaller, for example), and notably absent is any feature of SimNation connectivity (dragging a road to the city edge does nothing in the iPad version, and there are no neighbor deals).
Gameplay is smooth as silk, most of the time, except during autosaves and while scrolling in build mode. Still, these minor issues don’t detract from play. I should mention here that I play it on an iPad 2; your iPad 1 mileage may vary as far as smoothness is concerned.
The game certainly isn’t without bugs. Most notable is the water supply issue; once your city passes around 30,000 inhabitants, the game oscillates back and forth between reporting an excellent water system and a water shortage. While this can make RCI vary wildly for a minute, I found that it tends to clear up, especially if you leave auto plumbing off and draw your own water pipes.
Is it worth $6.99? No. I got it on sale for $1.99; it’s worth exactly that much until it gets bug fixes. Once it does, it would be a good buy. It’s worth mentioning that it is very similar to the iPhone version, but with better controls and less tedium from a smaller screen.
Anyway, as always, if you like strategy and specifically this franchise, see if you can grab it while it’s still on sale.
