After previewing SimCity Societies at a pre-E3 event in Los Angeles, IGN appears to be slightly reassured of the quality of the SimCity series. They have posted a preview article and video on their website, which outline the basic gameplay items and also describe the various types of cities you can build. There are six “societal energies” that you will have to take care of, but the main element of SimCity has been reduced to the following:

If you don’t really want to think that hard, all you need to know is that there’s homes, workplaces, and venues, and that there’s the six societal energies which each building produces. But when you want to get right into it, you’ll see that every single building has its own unique attributes, and some of them have direct action that you can click on, so there’s always something for you to do

You build homes when you want more people, you build workplaces when you want more money, you build more venues when you want more happiness

IGN appears to be on the fence about whether this is good or bad, but they do say the demo lifted their spirits a bit. What they do say, though is that “It probably won’t be the SimCity that fans were hoping for, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be its own brand of good.”

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Thanks to Gil for the tip!