Metropolis 2
No summary available.
Link
Last modified 2012-08-30 17:31:51
Having played a few ZZcrook games previously (and needing to fix them to even finish them), I was expecting a mess of silly errors and insidious little issues that seemingly plague all of his games to exist here in spades, a simulation game that relies pretty much entirely on the solidity of the programming behind it. This game surprised me in that it had minor issues here and there, but it managed ti actually work quite well and be to a certain extent, pretty entertaining.
On my first try, I managed to build an economy and a city that crumbled within 10 years... Just like when I used to play SimCity... On the second try, it took 60 years and some tweaking, but I got a stable economy in a polluted mess of a city. I have to say, figuring out the mechanic and how to work the system was actually pretty gratifying. In fact, the game made me want to take further risks to my economy by expanding, which is pretty much what any SimCity game's gameplay stood on. However, the extent and limits of things in this game is quite unclear. There is no explanation of what each component does, there is no sure way of telling (without looking into the robotic itself) if some things do things or are in fact happening the way they are supposed to happen, so I'm ever so slightly dubious of some things.
Like I mentioned earlier, there are fewer bugs than I've become used to seeing in JPX games, but there are a few. One is a game breaking bug where if you go to the help menu (which is entirely useless anyways because it doesn't tell the player what each thing really does) and try to come back to the gameplay board, it just fade out and in on the help screen and your trapped. Another one worth noting is that when you repay loans, it only counts how many loans you've taken vs how many you've paid back, not the amount. Your loan total can $-1500 and still owe money or it can be $4000 and not owe anything. Another silly issue is that I never saw any need to pay back the loans anyways....
Overall, this game is actualy entertaining for as long as it takes to make a working city, and more than that, it makes you want to do BETTER than just make a working city. That describes to me a solid game... That is still only worthy of 3 stars.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, the interface is not AWFUL, but it aint good. The cursor is moved by directional pad and you can't just hold space+direction to lay things out in a line, but it really could be worse. A mouse based system for this would be nice, but only if it was done correctly and I doubt that it would work as well given THIS specific product's quality.
On my first try, I managed to build an economy and a city that crumbled within 10 years... Just like when I used to play SimCity... On the second try, it took 60 years and some tweaking, but I got a stable economy in a polluted mess of a city. I have to say, figuring out the mechanic and how to work the system was actually pretty gratifying. In fact, the game made me want to take further risks to my economy by expanding, which is pretty much what any SimCity game's gameplay stood on. However, the extent and limits of things in this game is quite unclear. There is no explanation of what each component does, there is no sure way of telling (without looking into the robotic itself) if some things do things or are in fact happening the way they are supposed to happen, so I'm ever so slightly dubious of some things.
Like I mentioned earlier, there are fewer bugs than I've become used to seeing in JPX games, but there are a few. One is a game breaking bug where if you go to the help menu (which is entirely useless anyways because it doesn't tell the player what each thing really does) and try to come back to the gameplay board, it just fade out and in on the help screen and your trapped. Another one worth noting is that when you repay loans, it only counts how many loans you've taken vs how many you've paid back, not the amount. Your loan total can $-1500 and still owe money or it can be $4000 and not owe anything. Another silly issue is that I never saw any need to pay back the loans anyways....
Overall, this game is actualy entertaining for as long as it takes to make a working city, and more than that, it makes you want to do BETTER than just make a working city. That describes to me a solid game... That is still only worthy of 3 stars.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, the interface is not AWFUL, but it aint good. The cursor is moved by directional pad and you can't just hold space+direction to lay things out in a line, but it really could be worse. A mouse based system for this would be nice, but only if it was done correctly and I doubt that it would work as well given THIS specific product's quality.