Those who have
played the fabled city simulator SimCity know what a bear it can be. At times it
feels simple, but just as you are getting comfortable, the game makes you feel
like you need to have a degree in city planning to survive. Your beautiful
little dream town turns into a congested nightmare.
So EA Games
came up with SimCity Societies, a title that made the experience a lot more
friendly and inviting. The game was sort of SimCity meets Tropico. Now EA Games
is bringing in an expansion for SC Societies entitled Destinations. Though in
this expansion, rather than continue to build your city for living sims, you are
building to attract tourism. That’s it, in a nutshell.
Destinations in
not a change in the core game, nor does it bring depth to the core game. Rather
it acts like an expansion that just brings in new items to put into
your city. For example, if you want sims to visit, why not plan for and drop in
a theme park? From the smaller items, like casinos, to all-inclusive resorts,
Destinations asks players to boost the local economy by attracting tourists.
There are new
maps for your towns, and some of these do have natural attractions that can
serve as a basis for your town. And, of course, because you have set goals in
place when building your town – benchmarks by which to measure your success …
consider them scenario objectives – Destinations also brings in tourist-industry
goals.
But there seems
to be a bit of a problem with the game in that the sims of your town won’t
benefit directly by visiting any attractions you build. In fact, they don’t even
seem to visit them. But if you plan your town well, tourists – drawn by your
attractions – will visit local shops and stores, bringing more economic growth
to your town.
All that aside,
though, not much else has changed. The game still has the same general look
(with a few new effects – more on that in a moment), the same sound and plays
the same. Destinations does add a new layer of challenges and makes city
planning a bit more involved, but in all honesty, because you could create a
viable town with the free downloads and the tools in place, catering to tourists
is not a must-have addition.
Of course, the
game does have some fun stuff. There are new disasters that can be unleashed in
your town and some of the effects that go along with the tourist attractions are
a decent bit of eye candy.
Perhaps the key
issue with this game is that if you had already built a very solid city, you may
find yourself starting anew simply to plan for your resort areas. You have to
plan these carefully and the game does have new landmarks that can be used when
creating the local for your city. For example, you can’t simply drop a snowy
mountain or volcano anywhere; they have to be planned for and the community
needs to be considered before you spend vast amounts of simoleans in creating
your tourist-based burg.
Societies has
had a share of free downloads. In some regards, the content of Destinations
might have been handled the same way or maybe as a reduced-price downloadable
package. The content and challenges are decent, but this is not one of those
packages that truly create a new gaming vibe. It’s just a slightly different
take on a familiar theme.
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Gameplay: 7.5
The rating does not
reflect the original game, but rather what this expansion brings to the game.
Nothing much is new here.
Graphics: 8.5
Solid graphics that
are pleasant and get the job done. This is still a nice element to the game.
Destinations does not go for that realistic approach but rather pulls off the
light-hearted simulation very nicely.
Sound: 7.5
A few new sounds
associated with the attractions, but this just does not have anything you will
be cranking up the volume for.
Difficulty: Easy/Medium
Concept: 7.8
Something feels
awfully familiar here … What should be a fresh addition just doesn’t have much
depth.
Overall: 7.8
Destinations does a
nice job with the packaging. The disk GameZone received was a rather robust
version, with all the Societies’ updates and the new content. What is included
here is fine, but it seems that Societies is heading in the same direction as
The Sims 2 – offer an expansion with just enough content to make it new but
without delving deeply into the game and bringing a whole new robust experience.
This is a decent expansion, but it is not a must-have one.
