SimCity's citizens are simple-minded folk, but their sheer quantity makes the technical feat of keeping track of each one's name, home address, work address, happiness level, education level, wants, fears, and around a dozen other stats absolutely astonishing. I've heard real power defined as control over other people surely dominion over virtual masses is the next best thing.

If anyone were to tell you differently, you could bulldoze their house to the ground and replace it with a sewage outlet, consequence-free. In a break from reality, it has no concepts of private property or democracy, and no checks on your power, so the world is your oyster. This 'simulation,' by the way, is a very gamey one. Guiding a city through the first few hours of its life as its all-seeing despotic demigod mayor starts out as delightfully creative and empowering. Prevalent bugs and some awkward design decisions, including a mandatory always-online connection, make the long-awaited return of this most famous of city builders somewhat less than triumphant. Yet while it constantly does some astonishing things with its meticulously detailed simulation, it never works quite as well as I expect it to. What's behind that now-infamous login screen, when you actually play SimCity, is an incredibly complex and stunning game unlike anything I've ever seen. But the terrible server problems that justifiably enraged fans are already fading into just that: history.

The botched launch of SimCity will go down in PC gaming history as one of the worst ever.

Simcity complete edition review 2017