Continuing our review in progress I finally got to play for a significant chunk of time. I built up my city, Land of Bud in a flat, shady corner of AAGH Woods with the intent of, hell – just playing for a while.

I like the graphics, as I said before. They’re not really high res or high poly, but they fit the game to a tee. It’s like playing with a nice model town for a train set. After two hours of solid play, I had built a strong, self-sufficient community built around wind power and grid roads. My single wind turbine powered me fine for the first hour-plus before I had to improve the station with more turbines. I kind of mismanaged my trash situation and didn’t have enough room for a 2nd garbage dump when it my city eventually needed it.

SimCityEarly picture from Land of Bud

I don’t quite grasp the whole road density-to-building quality yet. I have a mishmash of high-end roads and mid-range roads throughout town and I don’t see a building difference on the various road types. What I do get is the service radius for various city utilities and the like. Placing my first grade school required me to place bus stops so I could expand the range of which students could get to school, for example. Bus depots and stops are a nice (and relatively cheap) way to learn this concept.

The varied map overlays are a treat as well. Being able to see power flowing from your power stations in real time or know exactly where your education plan is reaching helps more than a chart of numbers ever could.

My biggest complaint right now, though, is that I’m writing this right now because I can’t log in again. Fix this, EA.

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