This next game has been around for different platforms for quite some time now. When it arrived for the iPhone, unquestionably, this is the time we take a stab at the game.

SimCity ($5.99)

According to Wikipedia, the first SimCity was released 1989. It was not until the 1990′s early 2000′s though that SimCity became ultra successful hits for PC. Years later, SimCity arrives for the iPhone complete with multi touch controls to suit the platform.

Gameplay

We think most of you know the general scope of SimCity, you build and run a city and try to increase city income and population.

You can build buildings…

and bridges among the few.

You pretty much try to sustain your city by keeping track of your RCI bars on the top right of the screen. R = residential, C = commercial and I = industrial. If the bar gets high, you need to create more land for that type of land.

Controls

All the options are on the left edge of the screen. The first symbol is for land, roads, utility pipes, community buildings and demolish buttons follow it. Tapping on any of those main buttons branch out to more menus to specifically tap on the one you need. The system and rules are far too complex and grand that telling you each and every button would take us forever.

SimCity comes with a tutorial and help documentation in game that should help you along the way. Read EVERYTHING. Make sure you have a great understanding of the game.

Lands and roads can be drawn by intuitive buttons that get placed on your terrain by the click of a button.

You can either widen or make the roads/pipes longer by the little buttons. You can also move it and drag the feature to a different location with the, well, move button.

As seen above, the views can be changed to either on a building level or on the underground level. Undergound level is usually turned on for laying pipes.

Bonuses

Everytime you accomplish something, you’re given a gift. These are special buildings like the one we got: the Mayor’s house:

There is also the Star building button in which you can access and build the more famous buildings and structures, like the Eifel Tower:

As regular SimCity games, city ordinances, rules, budgetting etc can be altered. Even the advisor is included in the game just in case you need any consulting. You’ll see cars and smoke appear as you un-pause the date.

You can also fast-forward, double-fast-forward and pause date so you can build your city and earn income at your own pace.

The news ticker at the bottom gives you the feeling of watching The Insider or TMZ. But kidding aside, this is a nice addition.

Conclusion

Overall, we think SimCity is a great value and easy enough to pick up for people new to the franchise. Mutli touch controls, and tapping the screen sure helped a lot in getting acquainted to the game.

From what we’ve read, this version of the game lacks inter city connections and vast array of roads. As is though, being new to the franchise, we didn’t feel that something is lacking as the game is very full featured. There are also some reports that once you reach 100-200K, the game starts to hog memory and crash. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten to 100K in population yet so we’re going to say neutral regarding that “bug”, if such does exists.

For $5.99, we already are big fans of the franchise, and we do get why it’s very popular. There’s nothing better than dumping the Parthenon right smack at middle of your city. We find ourselves adding buildings, and water pipes whenever we find time. Oh! The soundtrack is also cool and suits the game a lot. Judging from the fairly decent store review average… it looks like other people dug it too!

BTW, we heard another SimCity game is making its way to the store pretty soon. We’ll definitely be watching that one out since we loved the first iSimCity a lot!