I still remember the feeling that ran through my nerves while playing the earlier titles of Sim City. Every time I ran that ‘.exe’ file of the game, it instantly triggered a sensation of being God. That game allowed us to become the creator and the controller, by offering the freedom to build and manage a city of our own. Though many games of the same genre such as Civilization and Metropolis have prevailed, the completeness and the sense of fulfillment this franchise offered was/is unparallel. And that magnificent feeling is going to make a comeback as Maxis Studios, an Electronic Arts subsidiary, has planned to roll out a reboot of the popular franchise. The title will be available for PC, both Windows and OS X and is scheduled for a March 2013 release. So, let’s take a quick sneak-peek on what the game is all about.

Sim City Features:

The sixth installment from the Sim City family will run on a GlassBox engine that is developed to give a real time experience based on the happenings in the city. For instance, if the city that you build runs out of power, you won’t be able to see lights in the buildings during nights and when you’re city has an improper trash disposal system, you can actually see the garbage getting piled up around the streets. So, the game is likely to offer a gaming experience with an essence of realism.

The engine also replaces the older grid type layout and offers the gamers a complete freedom to lay curved roads, just by selecting a starting and an ending point. This is a huge change in the franchise as the game’s layout experiences have been quite redundant. The other features of the game include:

  • Different zones in the city such as commercial , industrial and residential
  • Cities in this game will be interconnected via highways, waterways and railways
  • Real time visibility of air pollution and civilian traffic
  • Inclusion of transportation facilities such as buses, cars, boats and planes
  • Supposedly support modding options
  • Fixed cameras replaced by free-roaming cameras that allow the gamers to hover around the city and zoom into the buildings and architectures
  • Finesse in audio details, where the more you zoom in, the more you can hear the sounds of the city streets and vice versa
  • In-game reports based on infographics

Multiplayer Mode:

Multiplayer mode will very well be a part of this upcoming game and is anticipated to be one of the most realistic one. The online players will be classified into different regions and the action of each player in his city will have a counteraction on the others. The game also features an option where two cities in a region (network) interconnected by road, rail or water, can exchange civilians and labors.

Leaderboards:

Leaderboards in this title are claimed to be advanced. They can keep track of almost everything that happens in the city and generate a corresponding report. The leaderboard will take into consideration, factors such as the overall volume of goods produced in the city, the levels of sadness and happiness experienced by the citizens and even death rates. This means, the game will possibly attract more levels of player-participation and competition.

As of now, the game is scheduled only for a PC release with no information on the release for the consoles. The game sure looks promising with its newly added features and tweaked gameplay options but will it really make an impact like its earlier titles? We will have to wait and find out.

This is a guest post by Sofia Fern. She is a guest writer who writes more about digital cable and high speed internet. Start to find cable deals today.