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While the thought of purchasing what is essentially a 20-year-old game may not be one of the first items on your to-do list, SimCity DS offers enough flourishes to make your favorite metropolis worth revisiting. Yes, you can go home again, especially if you’re the one footing the bill for repairs, new roads, and aesthetic improvements.

Welcome to the Concrete Jungle

For those who missed the computer versions of SimCity, gameplay involves developing three distinct zones (residential, commercial, and industrial) on a choice of maps by connecting each zone to power sources, water supplies, roads, train tracks, and so forth. The strategy comes from how best to allocate funds to promote city growth while satisfying current residents, who enjoy zoos, libraries, parks, long walks on the beach, and not getting mugged.

Sure, you can crank out enough coal plants to make Al Gore turn a whiter shade of pale, but the resulting pollution may cause your citizens to pack their bags and head to greener pastures, eroding your precious tax base. Buildings such as police and fire departments incur a monthly expense but are necessary to keep crime and fires under control. Sadly, there are no rehab facilities to "treat" the Sim equivalents of a Lindsay Lohan or Nicole Richie, but there are hospitals and prisons.

Mayor Mc-Ease

There is a lot of information to sift through as mayor, and the handheld's relatively tiny display could have made this game a disaster worthy of a Godzilla film. Yet an extremely well designed interface makes the DS version a snap to play. The bottom screen provides a color-coded, top-down view of the city, allowing players to quickly scroll across the landscape to find a particular point of interest. Tapping a specific location switches the overhead view to a grid-based isometric display, where players can create buildings, roads, and so forth by using the stylus to draw or position them directly on the grid.

The results of your construction or demolition efforts appear on the top screen, while a series of charts, graphs, and other helpful information is a mere a tap away on the bottom display. A meter continuously tracks the percentage of residential, commercial, and industrial zones in your city, so you always know what's needed to balance development for utmost efficiency. In short, the design team took a potentially complicated interface and simplified it to the point where you'll only worry about managing your city, not the controls.

A Tale of Two Cities

Where SimCity DS starts to crumble is in its pedestrian presentation, with buildings as vibrant as a wet newspaper and animation bordering on non-existent. A cartoon look would have been preferable, especially considering the whimsical art style of the city's advisors and its incessantly disappointed residents. Other cracks in the foundation include a single save file and a surprising lack of options -- you can't even unleash disasters at your command. SimCity DS nonetheless manages to stay off skid row, thanks to a reward system that earns players surprises after attaining certain milestones, a sense of humor, a slick interface, and some time-tested gameplay.

Review by: Scott Alan Marriott
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