SimCity 3000 Unlimited

"It's good to play God sometimes..."

In the world of playing God and otherwise, you run into simulation games at are done no better than the Maxis Sim-Series games. Everything from building cities to setting up a virtual world with virtual relationships and people are becoming something that is quite the craze and has no intention of letting up anytime soon. In this little outing, Maxis takes the already great playing and wonderful game of Sim City 3000 and expands it into the world of Unlimited. With a ton of extra options that include an Architect Builder and a ton of land marks that weren’t seen or even thought off in the first 3000 game, Unlimited is a type of super expansion pack that pretty much is its own game in most rights. Adding in the extra options as well as an online trading option really makes this a must have for Sim City fans and players!

The Game Play is relatively simple in its explanation, but requires not only a steel nerve, but also the patient of a saint. When you start out in your little venture, you can choose to either create your own little place on Earth, or you can select one of several different scenarios that will put your skills to the test. With missions like making a literal toxic wasteland a full blown city again, or rebuild after extensive flooding is threatening to send your pre-built city into the sea really makes for some challenging game play and keeps the interest up to a maximum with some of the brain busting puzzles! If you decide that it isn’t your cup of tea, you can always create your own little world where you are the mayor and the citizens of your land are at your mercy or whim. When creating, you have a small ticker that will tell you what the major concerns of your city are and it is up to you to stop and completely fulfill what it is that they need and want.

Through these situations, you’ll find that playing God is just what you’re doing with the amount of in-depth building that you can do and the types of places that you can create. You want to build an airport? Then do it near the Commercial District for maximum income. Your citizens want less crime? Create and fully fund a dominating police force to control the criminals. In all reality, you’re looking at a game in which you can do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, but in order to really succeed at the game, you have to bow down in some cases to just what your citizens want! This only proves to mold you into a better ruler of your little land, and as the ‘king’ of the Castle, you’ll find that you can’t please everyone but you can well try.

An interesting and personally wonderful feature to me is the ability to create your own custom made buildings with the Architect Builder option. In this little feature, you can build something from the ground up, save it, use it in your game and then take it to an online forum where you can trade in your building for other people to download and vice versa! This merely adds another bit of God-mode play that allows you to create what you see in your head as your own vision. Through this little feature, you may find that hours upon hours could and probably will be spent just tinkering with all of the neat things that you can build, even if it isn’t structurally sound.

The control function requires a little patience and a full understanding of just what hot keys do what actions, what you can and cannot create and just basic navigation through the different menus. When I say menus, there are several of menus and several different options that you can choose from whether it is the construction of your future mega-plex or the control of finances in the city that you’re running. You’ll have to learn what to do and how to do it even though the learning curve is merely based at whatever speed you understand things at. There are other control options, such as the drive through your wondrous city or making deals with other cities for services, all of which are easy enough to control and perform with enough practice and otherwise!

Visually, Sim City 3000 Unlimited is a breath-taking game that has a few minor quirks such as the inability to control the camera correctly when placing building zones in high rise places. The different views that you have are about as real to life as you’ll get in a simulation game, with camera zooms allowing you to see the traffic driving by and even the citizens out for a walk through the streets of your fair town! You can also create disasters that range from the realistic to the absurd and there is nothing like a huge UFO Attack to really spice things up. Different buildings will pop up depending on the rent district that you’re in so you'll end up with trailer parks or huge high rise apartment buildings, commercial technology buildings or little mom and pop shops. You’ll find that the real life landmarks that are located throughout the world are found here and in shocking detail, all depending of course on your graphics card and the speed of your computer!

The sound is pretty good, with music tracks that change throughout the game depending on how big your city is getting. Probably one of the best tracks is the Desert Nights track, which gives a subtle yet haunting tone to the game while you play. The sound effects here are also first rate, leaving out voice acting and otherwise which really isn’t needed in a game that creates things on a scope such as this! Regardless of that, when you zoom in your camera, you’ll hear the sounds of cars moving or riots happening when your citizens are finally fed up with you and your tyrannical ways.

Overall, I’d have to say that Sim City 3000 Unlimited is pretty much a game all in itself. Done with some exceptional detail, plenty of game play options and the simple fact that you can play God, all in one game, you’re looking at a simulation fans dream, and a PC gamers holiday. Fans of the series need only apply as the wait on some of the building times can be down right evil and test your patience. As one of those games that doesn’t require you to just sit there and if you’re willing to leave your computer on, you can simply set up your city and let it grow without you tinkering around with it too much!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/19/01, Updated 11/19/01