I picked up Simcity Societies shortly after announcing that it was being released, and I can say, it’s simcity.

I have always enjoyed the simcity games, they are a perfect game to get away from the usual FPS, MMO, RTS games, they don’t require a lot of time up front, but allow you to sink as much time as you want. This makes simcity a great couple game, not only does it not take you away from the family for hours on end, like other games *cough* wow *cough* but also lets the whole family play, either by each person creating their city and comparing it to other family members cities, or letting each member give input in one city.

Simcity makes you constantly think about what you’re doing, and as your city grows you have a sense of accomplishment, which as a bonus can be given even in a very short time frame of say, 10 minutes. In societies they make the game even more challenging, with each building having a “filter” or multiple filters for instance a vocational school gives you +5 to productivity and +5 to knowledge, and as you progress certain buildings require a certain amount of any given filter, so you must not only balance the normal polution, transportation, crime, etc of a city, but now as you build you must choose each building carefully to allow growth to continue. All of this may seem like a lot, but I have found the addition a nice feature, as it makes the game just a tad more challenging.

The graphics are up to date and of course become a system hog once your city is large enough, there are a lot of settings to turn things down, but I wager even with everything on low, a big city will bring your system to a crawl. But unless you’re a harcore gamer, this should take you awhile and by then I am sure you will want to create a new one.

Overall if you’re a fan of the simcity games, I recommend Simcity Societies, if you aren’t, then there is nothing new that would tempt you.