For this hardcover release, the 214 pages have a good thickness and feel with a strong binding holding it all together. A short bio for Dimopoulos and Kallikaki can be found just beneath this, giving us insight into the minds that brought this book to life. Moving on to the back cover we have a number of illustrations of the cities contained within the book and a nice outline of what it is about. As most of you all hopefully know by now, I love it when a cover gives an excellent representation of what it contains inside and Virtual Cities does exactly that! The subtext for this being a video game atlas is also proudly displayed along with author Konstantinos Dimopoulos’ name. Yes I know, you aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, but when it looks good I want to take a minute to appreciate it! The base cover is pure white and accented with a red and black overhead map with the Virtual Cities title taking center stage. Fans of the Build-a-lot series will probably enjoy this game, though trying out the demo beforehand is always a good idea.Before we dive in, let’s take a moment to look at the overall quality of the book as a whole. The game isn’t as complex as SimCity by any means, but it’s still a nice, dumbed down version that can fill your entire afternoon if you aren’t careful. The early missions don’t take that long to beat, maybe a minute or two…but later on you’ll be spending about five minutes (or longer) trying to manage everything that the game throws at you. I enjoyed my time with Virtual City…I sometimes ignored the time limit and just built what I wanted to and other times I raced to beat my previous best time. You’ll also contend with things like fire and health emergencies as they arise. Likewise, not addressing eyesore buildings and letting your city rot with garbage will cause your satisfaction rating to plummet. Building parks or busses nearby (you’ll need to set the routes for bus stops) will increase overall satisfaction. Good luck trying to keep track of it all, especially if you have ADD.įrom a residential standpoint, you can build houses or upgrade them to increase your city’s population. You’ll often have many trucks going at once just to move raw materials to the factory, then from the factory to the store. As the game progresses, you’ll often have to create finished goods by creating the raw materials for them first…and of course…one truck per route to move things back and forth. Some missions task you with raising the population, while others task you with transporting goods from one building to another. What will you be doing in Virtual City? Well, running a city, mainly…but each mission’s goals are a tad different. I occasionally upgraded them as I needed to, but I did that through the vehicle listing tabs along the bottom of the screen. I personally stopped keeping track of vehicles…I built them, set their route, and forgot about them. Towards the later episodes, you’ll be creating so many trucks, busses, dumpsters (garbage trucks)…to the point where your eyes will be darting around the screen trying to keep track of what is going on. I’m surprised that they didn’t call this game, “Director of Transportation Simulator” or something to that effect. What made this game stand apart from every city time management game out there? Mainly, it’s how many vehicles you’ll be creating and setting routes for.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |