I'm a SimCity freak, and I have been since the Commodore 64 version hit in 1989, but I had no idea that EA had finally released a version for the iPhone. (thanks calebcherry).
First impressions? Good! I was actually a little skeptical until my first city started building, and bam, my old SimCity addiction kicked in.
The interface is not as clunky as one would expect considering the small screen size. The menus take advantage of the iPhone interface, and have iPhoneisms, so it jives nicely with the rest of the iPhone platform.
The music still has that same SimCity, "I'm watching re-runs of Beyond 2000" feel, which I quite enjoy. I haven't heard any tracks I recognize from previous SimCity games yet but I wouldn't doubt that they're in there.
Advisors aren't blocky sims, which I'll kind of miss. They're oddly "anime" looking as others have noted. I understand that choice though, why render 3D dudes to yell at you when a cartoon will do?
From a complexity standpoint it sits smack in the middle of the original SimCity and SimCity 3000. In fact it shares a lot of traits with SimCity 3000, and early screens of the iPhone version were dead ringers for the SC3000 interface. The game is not anywhere near as complex as SimCity 4 (of course), but it still has a satisfying number of knobs to tweak.
In summary, should you pick it up?
This will certainly be one of the apps that eats up my battery life. Coming soon to this blog: a post about "poor battery life" on the iPod Touch! In no way related to my 8-hour road-planning stints.
Points of interest
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