SimCity Cities of Tomorrow

SimCity Cities of Tomorrow Developer Gameplay Walkthrough

SimCity - Cities of Tomorrow Expansion Coming November 14th

Sydney, Australia – September 20, 2013 – Bring the cities of today into the world of tomorrow. Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced that the SimCity™ Cities of Tomorrow* expansion pack is currently in development for Mac and PC and will be arriving November 14. Built upon the foundation of the ultimate city building simulation that has more than 2 million players worldwide, SimCity Cities of Tomorrow gives players the ability to transform their cities as they take them on a journey 50 years into the future. Using new technologies and experimental urban planning techniques, mayors will shape the destinies of their cities, thriving in a utopia of clean technologies, or a dystopia of hyper-commercialism.
 
“Will the world of tomorrow be a utopia powered by clean energy or an industrial society consumed by mass commercialism?” said Patrick Buechner, General Manager, Maxis Emeryville. “With SimCity Cities of Tomorrow, players can build the future as they imagine it. Transport your Sims on MagLev, power your cities with fusion reactors or tidal wave generators, manufacture a legion of drones to serve your Sims and build massive MegaTowers that dwarf modern skyscrapers. We’re giving you plausible technologies to take your cities onto a journey 50 years into the future. What will you create?”

                                                     

 



SimCity Cities of Tomorrow gives players an entirely new way to dream about their city of the future. New regions, new future technology, new city specializations and new transportation methods will transform the way that cities take shape and evolve. Will they create a utopian society underpinned by clean technology under the auspices of the Academy, or encourage giant corporation OmegaCo to strip-mine natural resources and pollute in the name of feeding consumerism? For the first time in the history of the franchise, cities can be built vertically with enormous multi-zone MegaTowers that extend high into the sky and dwarf the rest of the city. Education and research will help players discover new technologies that make their cities less polluted, less reliant on natural resources, managed day-to-day by service drones and fueled by green energy. As the population increases, Sims will live, work, and play closer together. When players have finished deciding whether they want their Sims to live together in harmony, or as members of an exploited workforce, they can rain chaos upon them by unleashing an all-new disaster exclusive to this expansion pack.

The SimCity base game is available now on Mac and PC and developed by Maxis. SimCity is cross-platform compatible, so all players play together across the same servers. Players can play both versions with the same Origin account, allowing them to seamlessly continue their cities, achievements and leaderboard progress across the Mac and PC. Since its launch in March, SimCity has had seven major game updates that have made upgrades to the core simulation and provided game content and features at no additional charge.

SimCity Cities of Tomorrow will be available for Mac and PC and is not yet rated for the OFLC. Pre-orders will begin soon at www.simcity.com/en_AU/tomorrow

The Sims 3 Movie Stuff now available‏

The Sims 3 Movie Stuff is now available! Bring the glitz and glamour of Hollywood straight into your Sims’ homes. Set the stage for even more unique stories including distinctively themed décor, furnishing and clothing all inspired by iconic movie genres. 

 

Featuring three unique themes: Comic Book Blockbusters, Western Epics and Creepy Features, players can pick and choose the décor and items that they wish to incorporate into their game. Whether it’s creating a lair fit for a masked hero, or costuming Sims in frilled chaps, smart vests or ornate Victorian dresses, the possibilities are endless. The Sims 3 Movie Stuff brings the silver screen straight to players’ own home computer screens. 

 

The Sims 3 Movie Stuff is now available for purchase online and at retail stores worldwide. Those who purchase The Sims 3 Movie Stuff via Origin will also receive The Director’s Set, which includes exclusive items and props.

The Sims 4 - First Gameplay

New Details for The Sims 4 & new screens

What is The Sims 4?

The Sims 4 is the highly anticipated life simulation game that lets you play with life like never before. Create and control new Sims with mind, body, and heart. Build their unique worlds. Direct and explore the stories of your Sims and experience delightful and exciting results.

Create and control the most intelligent and relatable Sims ever with new, intuitive design tools. Customize your Sims’ appearances, personalities, aspirations, walk styles, and even their relationship to others.

Select from diverse environments for your Sims to live in and build their home with fun, intuitive design tools that allow you to effortlessly create the homes of your dreams.

Play with life like never before in The Sims 4. The choices you make influence your Sims and everyone and everything around them. These moments create delightful and exciting results throughout gameplay.

How you play The Sims 4 is up to you. Help your Sims start a new career, find love, and start their family. Construct and design the homes of your dreams. Fulfill your Sims’ needs, explore their aspirations, and experience how they respond to life’s moments

The Sims 4 allows you to play with life like never before. The Sims live with rich physical and emotional characteristics and their worlds and stories are influenced by your choices and creativity. Welcome to The Sims 4!

Features

• New Sims – Create and control more intelligent, more relatable, and emotionally rich Sims.

• Intelligence – Your Sims move and act more naturally than ever before, from multitasking to expressing their emotions by the way they walk. Choose the personalities of your Sims, select their aspirations, and explore the depth of their lifelong goals through your Sims’ thoughts, social skills, careers, and memories.

• Emotional Depth – For the first time, Sims feel and express emotions. Your Sims can experience a diverse range and depth of emotional states and are influenced through other Sims, actions, events, memories, or even by the clothing and objects you choose. Emotions offer you more choice by giving you the opportunity to create richer stories with even more possibilities.

• New Creative Tools – Create A Sim and Build are more powerful, intuitive, and fun than ever before. You have the freedom to sculpt Sims with tactile precision. Effortlessly construct the home of your dreams with the all new room-based Build Mode.

• Vibrant Neighborhoods – Chose among brilliant and diverse lots for your Sims to live in. Vivid visuals bring your Sim’s home to life.

• Rich Rewards – Earn new objects, outfits, and traits by completing events, discovering collectables, and unlocking achievements.

• Share Your Creations – Share your Sims’ households with your friends and the community. Download community creations for an all-new look. 

SimCity lets you build a bridge, so you can get over it

Well its about time. This feature is something that should have been in the game from day 1, but for whatever reason it was not. SimCity now features the ability to raise and lower roads. Creating bridges is easy enough, or if you want create your own tunnels. Check out the video for how its done.

SIMCITY FOR MAC IS AVAILABLE ON AUGUST 30‏

While a little behind the times, EA have now confirmed that SimCity will be out for Mac on August 30th

SimCity^TM will be available for Mac exclusively as a digital release on August 30, 2013. SimCity is cross-platform compatible, so all players, whether on Mac or PC, will be able to play SimCity together in the online connected world and will be able to jump back and forth into their cities regardless of the platform.

Those players who have previously purchased digital and boxed copies of SimCity for PC will receive an automatic entitlement for SimCity for Mac via Origin^TM.

SimCity for Mac and PC allows players to create and destroy the cities of their imaginations, and has been rated G by the OFLC for both PC and Mac. For more information regarding SimCity, please visit www.SimCity.com/au.

Explore the Sim World of Tomorrow with The Sims 3 Into the Future

Revealed today is The Sims 3 Into the Future Expansion Pack, the latest title from The Sims Studio shipping this Spring.

It’s a brave new world for the Sims as they go where they’ve never gone before – into the future and back. In The Sims 3 Into the Future, Sims can transport themselves hundreds of years forward where they can explore the world of tomorrow, meet their descendants, master the technology of the future, like hoverboards, jetpacks and food synthesizers and more. Have your fun, but be prepared for the consequences. Your Sims actions in the present will have surprising effects on the future.

Also revealed today, was The Sims 3 Movie Stuff pack. With The Sims 3 Movie Stuff pack, you can be inspired to tell all-new stories inspired by iconic movie genres like Western, Comic Book Blockbuster and Creepy Features. What story will you tell with the movie making stuff?

To find out more about The Sims 3 Into the Future and The Sims 3 Movie Stuff pack, tune in to our live broadcast today, July 23rd at 10 AM PDT (24 July 2013 at 3:00:00 AM). The Sims Studio will be showing off The Sims 3 Into the Future gameplay for the first time and will be debuting the first-look at the Western-themed stuff for The Sims 3 Movie Stuff. After the broadcast is over be sure to visitwww.TheSims.com to read about how time travel came to The Sims 3 Into the Future by Producer Sarah Nelson.

Developed by The Sims Studio, The Sims 3 Into the Future and The Sims Movie Stuff pack are for Win/Mac. The Sims 3 Into the Future is still pending its rating from the OFLC. Pre-orders start on July 23rd for The Sims 3 Into the Future:http://www.thesims.com/au/the-sims-3-into-the-future and The Sims 3 Movie Stuff pack: http://thesims.com/au/the-sims-3-movie-stuff.

The Sims 3 Island Paradise Launch Trailer

The Sims 3 Dragon Valley

The Sims 4 announced for PC and Mac in 2014

Sul Sul! Maxis and Electronic Arts today announced that The Sims™ 4 is currently in development at The Sims Studio for release on PC and Mac in 2014. The Sims 4 celebrates the heart and soul of the Sims themselves, giving players a deeper connection with the most expressive, surprising and charming Sims ever in this single-player offline experience. The Sims 4 encourages players to personalize their world with new and intuitive tools while offering them the ability to effortlessly share their creativity with friends and fans.

The Sims franchise is fueled by the passion and creativity of its millions of fans around the world. Their continued devotion to the franchise ignites the fire of creativity of the team at The Sims Studio, driving them to continually improve and innovate on one of the world’s most popular simulation games that has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide.

As a thank you for the support of the more than 30 million fans that share and discuss stories about The Sims across global social networks, a special VIP briefing was held this morning where several of the world’s top fans were amongst the first to hear the news about The Sims 4. This select group was the first in the world to hear from the creative team for The Sims 4, and they will receive special access to the development team as the game progresses.

The Sims 4 is not yet rated by the Australian Classification Board. To stay up to date with the latest information please visit www.thesims.com/thesims4.

SimCity Review - Maxi-Geek

Ok, let’s get the bad news out of the way first, yes SimCity has been plagued with issues since day 1. Yes, they even affected me. And yes, that pissed me off. But outside of that, does this new game have what it takes to make it into today’s gaming world.

Gameplay

So what’s new about this game? Well, where to start. First off, gone are the days of customizing your map. You are given a nice selection of regions to choose from, and when within those regions you can choose where to place your city. However, if you don’t like the amount of water in any given region, you cannot change it. You can’t raise or lower the terrain, nor can you populate the map with heaps of trees first. So right now you might think, this is a bad thing.

Well you are right, and yet also wrong. Having set lands makes you think about the type of city you will build before you even plant you first piece of road down. If you build next to a large body of water, you have some options that are not present in a mountainous region. Trade Ports and Ferry Terminals can only be placed next to water, so right away you need to choose if you’re going to build a big industrial town or a tourist town. Such a hard choice right? But this is where the city limits come into play.

Whilst you’re building your dream city, another player can be building the city that is the polar opposite of yours. And it’s in this way that SimCity takes flight. Sharing resources, emergency services or even workers is needed to ensure that your city and the ones around you prosper. You can’t just plop down a massive stadium and expect to draw tourists. You need workers, without them your city wont grow.

Adding houses in the new SimCity has nothing to do with zoning some lower, middle and high land areas. It is all road based now. You need to start out small, just with some light roads, and when you place down some residential zones, the people build to the street level. So after a while, when you’re doing well, you can upgrade that street to a medium and people will then upgrade their house. You are no longer required to go in and demolish everything in order to build newer homes for your Sim’s.

Graphics

Right off the bat you will notice that SimCity looks very different from the previous games, and that’s a blessing. After the last game, Societies, changing your look would never hurt. But thankfully the team at Maxis have gone and smashed all the preconceptions for what the sim genre could look like.

SimCity has a level of detail that will amaze you, should you take the time to lower yourself down to street level and watch the goings on of your city. And even looking from up high, you can see some amazing detail.

Now this is not without issues, there are some problems when it comes to zooming out, or in, or anywhere in-between. The issue comes in the form of roads not appearing to be done correctly. There is nothing worse than spending heaps of your hard earned simoleans on a great new road, only to see bits missing. Of course if you move in closer you would see that it’s all there, but that initial look of seeing something missing, well it makes for a sigh moment at least.

Sound

How does the game compare, it was always fun to have a disaster occur just to hear the roar of the invading monster, whilst your large buildings collapse and burn. But outside of that, the general sound effects are not really that impressive. They work just about as well as you would expect them too. The music however is another story. The further you zoom out, the louder the background music becomes, and I find myself zooming out a lot, just so I can listen to that soundtrack.

When you zoom in, you get the full city soundscape thrown at you, and whilst its fine when you have a small town, once you get into the larger cities, having so much noise can be distracting. That’s not to say it detracts from the game, its all a part of the charm of the city.

Final Thoughts

SimCity is a game that gets a great many things right. And that’s a testament to the design of the core gameplay. Each time you load up a new city, your choice of what type of city you plan to build can easily determine if you will succeed or fail, straight out of the gate. For a great experience, especially with some mates, you can’t pass up SimCity.

Intro Video for SimCity