SimCity Creator wasn’t on my radar before seeing a demo from the development team, after which I was fairly excited for the game. I grew up playing SimCity games on the PC and spent countless hours in SimCity 3000 making and destroying all kinda of cities. The Wii seems to be a good fit for this style of game, but the implementation here in SimCity Creator just doesn’t hold up to the game’s legacy and even the demo I saw from the developers.

Graphically, SimCity Creator looks decent. It’s a Wii title, so 480p is the best it can do. You’ll see jaggies on buildings, which is to be expected on the platform. Characters on screen are plucked from last year’s MySims game, so you’ll easily recognize some of them if you played the title. If not, they provide some decent eye candy as you go through Tutorials, etc. I would have liked to see a higher level of zoom to get closer to the action in your city, especially with the helicopter and plane flying you can do in the game. On the sound front, the background music is okay, but gets repetitive after a while. It would have been nice if the game had a bit more to hear.

SimCity Creator is controlled with the Wii Remote only, so no Nunchuck is needed. Some aspects are controlled by pointing and clicking, others by using the D-pad to select various items. It’s a bit confusing as to why the pointing actions aren’t used or available for everything. In the same menu, you might point and press A to select one thing, but that sub-menu you choose will force you to use the D-pad only. Not a deal breaker, but a bit of an annoyance. Once you get in the game, you have various options from Mission Mode, Free Mode, and an Contest Mode where you can complete missions and upload your scores over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Mission Mode has eight tasks you can complete ranging from connecting power lines to destroying your entire town. Free Mode is where you’ll spend most of your time creating your own cities and destroying them, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Like most SimCity games, you get to build all aspects of your city as the Mayor. For the first time, you can draw your own roads and not get pigeon-holed into a grid system. Did I draw out a curse word the first time? You bet! But after that, it gets tough to make any semblance of a decent road system without 1:1 mapping with the Wii Remote. As you go through, you can hire Advisers and Assistants to aid in creating your city. Advisers are pretty much worthless, as you get advice that makes no sense or has zero implication on the game. Assistants are more valuable as you can place them somewhere in your city and have them develop resources while you focus on another area.

The biggest problem with SimCity Creator is the camera, which is controlled by pointing the Wii Remote. If you’re drawing a road or creating a new Zone, moving the cursor closer to the edge of the screen will cause the camera to jump off in that direction. If you want to put your Wii Remote and arm down, the camera is doing to shoot down on you. I ended up covering the Wii Remote with my hand and putting it down so the camera wouldn’t move off to an area of no interest. Maybe this could have been controlled with a button press (hold a button and move the Wii Remote to change the camera) or using the Nunchuck?

There is a pseudo online Contest Mode in the game where you can complete various missions to upload your scores over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Problem is, you can’t easily view leader boards or scores from your friends. After you complete a mission, you can see where you rank, but that’s about it. There’s no way to view other scores before completing one of the thirty contests available. It’s also limited to those thirty contests which are shipped on the disk and no more will be coming over the internet.

While the PC versions of SimCity provided a huge amount of replay value, SimCity Creator on the Wii doesn’t have that lasting appeal. After playing for a couple hours, I really didn’t have any desire to go back. The major factors involved were the long and frequent load times as well as the control issues. A follow-up title fixing those factors would be a better fit for gamers. In its current form, I wouldn’t recommend this for more than a rental.

Overall: 6 out of 10

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