EA has just released the third patch for SimCity Societies. The update can be downloaded from the official SCS site, and features:
The complete update notes are described in a pdf that’s downloadable from the official site.
Even though a page on SCS Destinations appeared at the official SCS site a week ago already, it wasn’t until today that EA released a press statement on the upcoming Expansion Pack. Erm: make that City Pack.
Today Electronic Arts Inc. unveiled SimCity™ Societies Destinations, the first city pack in the popular SimCity Societies line-up of games.
As shown earlier at the official site, the focus of the City Pack is on tourism:
The city pack add-on moves the SimCity Societies experience into exciting, new – and sometimes exotic—locales, allowing players to create the perfect vacation spot.
In the words of Rod Humble, Head of The Sims Studio
SimCity Societies Destinations is the perfect game to let your imagination go on vacation, while at the same time provides deeper, challenges for the player. Whether you want to forge a mini republic or build a spiritual retreat, you’ll have all the tools to make your destination admired by citizens far and wide.
The press release comes with a set of screenshots:
About two weeks ago Simphoni reported on a possible expansion pack for Simcity Societies with the possible name Destinations. This rumour has now officially been confirmed by Tilted Mill at the official SCS site. According to the SimCity Societies Destinations product page the expansion pack will feature all kinds of new functionality. It doesn’t look like something along the lines of Rush Hour for SC4, but more like The Sims on Vacation. For screenshots, check out the official SCS site.
From unspoiled nature parks with campgrounds and hiking trails to tropical beach resorts with water sports and fine dining, from humble county fairs with hay rides and midway games, to sprawling modern theme parks with all the bells and whistles, you’ll build an entire city based on attracting visitors, and keeping them entertained and satisfied.
Create amazing destinations — Turn your romantic city into a tropical beach resort, your authoritarian city into a banana republic, or your meditative city into a spiritual getaway for the rich and famous. Create attractions that are high class or low brow or bizarre.
More than 100 new buildings with new abilities, from 5 star beach resorts to UFO crash sites.
More than 35 new special Sims with new behaviors – traveling business men, religious pilgrims, political devotees, cult members, adventures and more.
New tourism and tourist functionality – Make your city attractive, working to bring more visitors who bring in more cash to our city’s coffers.
Expanded transit functionality, including air and water travel.
The Australia based British comedian “Yahtzee” reviewed Simcity:Societies in his weekly column in the escapist. He uses some strong words, so if you are easily offended, be careful.
New reviews by Zero Punctuation appear every Wednesday on the Escapistmagazine.com
Due to people paying a lot of attention, a pre-ordering page was discovered for a SimCity Societies expansion pack that will apparently be titled “SimCity Societies Destinations”. According to that pre-ordering page the price will be GBP 19.99 and its release is scheduled for the 23rd of May 2008. No confirmation yet as to whether this is real, or what will be in the expansion pack yet.
Update: screenshot of the ordering page in question in case it mysteriously disappears:
1Up reports that a new SimCity Societies patch is being worked on by Tilted Mill and will be made available in the coming weeks. This will be the third patch for SimCity Societies. According to 1Up the new update will feature:
Just in time for the holidays, the SimCity Societies team has released a new patch for the game. This second patch includes the new strategic modes SIMphoni reported on earlier this week, along with several other fixes.
A complete list of updates follows below the cut.
Earlier on EA announced that they would release some news on the second patch for SCS this week. Although no release date for the second patch has been set as yet, details of it are emerging on the official SCS forums.
It appears critique on SCS being too easy has been taken to heart:
We are proud to announce the introduction of three new Strategic Modes of play, Basic, Hardcore and Nightmare, which will stretch your city-building skills to the limit.
According to the SimCity Team these new Strategic Modes impact gameplay all over the board, making it harder to balance finance and Sims happiness. These Strategic Modes are said to differ greatly from the Creative Modes that the team apparently decided to dub the current difficulty settings. The patch also includes polishing of the UI to match the atmosphere of your cities, optimisations, and (very important!) bug fixes.
Rod Humble, head of EA’s The Sims Studio, sat down for an interview with CNET covering The Sims, with a few remarks on SimCity Societies.
Humble says that the strategy on the development of SCS was similar to the one used with The Sims 2:
Hey how can we broaden this? How can we make it less challenging, easier to use, and make it more into a creativity tool?
The reviews SCS received after launch have been a mixed bunch. Humble promises though to stand by his customers and deliver what they want:
Our job now is to deliver to our customers who are giving us feedback (and we’re giving them) free updates to make sure they get what they want. We’re going to stand by them and add that challenge that they’re looking for and add that extra depth.
Humble seems to admit that SCS may have become a bit too easy for some players:
We got the (general) accessibility bit down and now we need to address their concerns, “Hey, I want more push back. I want more challenge.” It’s usually been the opposite: “Hey, your game’s too complicated. Make it easier.”
On the question whether there will be a The Sims 3 Humble says:
Well, who knows? Yeah, of course, there will be. We are looking forward to talking about it in the future, but not now.
A critique for the established SimCity fan base
SimCity Societies is a fun and entertaining game, and can provide hours of computer-gaming enjoyment. Now, stop thinking of it as SimCity and that can continue to be the case. The fact is, Electronic Arts (EA) did not do this game any favors by lending the name of SimCity, one of the most successful electronic games of all time1, to it. It is the same disservice that was done to the 9142; when Porsche attached its name and prestigious chrome insignias though everyone knew it was really just a very sporty Volkswagen. Like the 914, Societies runs and handles well, does exactly as it’s told, is fun to drive, and is found lacking only when compared to its famous namesake cousins.
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