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Rating: 
Sometimes, I’m sure, we’ve all looked to the sky and asked aloud, “God, why do bad things happen?”
(Unless you happen to be an atheist, of course.)
Were God anything like the city planner I found myself as in SimCity on my iPod Touch, his response would be “listen, I’m really not trying to make bad things happen. I’m just clumsy. I’ve got these huge fingers, you see, and sometimes when I’m trying place a road it doesn’t go where I want it; or I zone areas incorrectly; or I accidentally hit the disaster button and destroy huge swathes of the city. I really can’t help it.”
Fiddly.
That’s the one thing you’re going to come away from SimCity thinking — about how fiddly it is. Before that, you’ll spend some time thinking about how remarkable it is — after all, it’s a port of SimCity 3000 in your hands, with nary a feature missing — but very quickly you may come to the idea that it’s just not worth the effort.
The problem with SimCity is that while it’s admirable that they’ve crammed SimCity 3000 onto the iPod Touch/iPhone, the already tiny, isometric graphics aren’t especially suited for such a small screen (even one as high fidelity as the iPod Touch’s) and as a result it will be rare, if ever, that you manage to select the area on screen that you wanted to first time.
Of course, you can zoom in, but then you lose the (always important) bigger picture, and in a comedy of errors, if you wish to zoom in while placing features (such as roads), you’ll often find yourself placing them instead of zooming, and then have to fiddle about with the on-screen helpers trying to resize the what you’ve just drawn to what (and where) you want it to be.
Indeed, the “fun” in SimCity to me has always been the planning and creation of the town — drawing roads, zoning areas, preparing for people to move in and live into your utopia — and the clumsiness of the input here essentially ruins it. Planning out a whole town will take literally hours longer than it would with a mouse, and it’s simply the fault that they’ve been too ambitious.
I know there are probably many players out there who’d scoff at this suggestion, but what was so bad with the original SimCity, eh? It had nice, clear, blocky graphics and an easy to use overhead view; it would have been far more successful as something fun to play than what has been released.
Strange as it sounds to say, SimCity on iPod Touch/iPhone is one of the most hardcore titles that you can get on the system, because you have to be a hardcore fan of the game to put up with the controls and get anything out of it. For those gamers who just wish to enjoy building cities on the go, I have to recommend you give it a miss.
Fair rating. I found this game too fiddly (and slow, too) to be enjoyable. Wasted money.
Great game, hard to find high scores and top buildings to figure out if I have maxed it out. Anyone know what the max #’s are in this game?
I disagree completely with this review. when you do place something, it isnt permanent and you can change it however you want to help with the fact that you may not get it right the first time. It is not hard at all to control. and “For those gamers who just wish to enjoy building cities on the go, I have to recommend you give it a miss.” is definitely an incorrect statement.
OMG – Sim City is the most awesome game ever! i love it and can’t stop playing it. Maybe I’m not the hardcore designer but i am lovin’ this game! Get it if you liked Sim 3000- now you’ve got it in your pocket!
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