June 24, 1997
Review: Sim Copter
Part 2
While the game is fun, it does get tedious after a while, especially the missions where you need to transport people from location to location. In practice mode, you're allowed to adjust the frequency of the various events, but not so in the "career" mode. Why? However, when things start to get boring, several things happen. First, the city you are in may change (there are many cities, for a reason which I will explain later), or you'll get a really cool task to do, like putting out a fire or tracking a criminal. The latter is amazingly fun... you first find the guy, shine your spotlight in his face, then bark some orders to him over your loudspeaker. If he doesn't give up to you, you can summon police cars to head the guy off at the pass. The 3-D engine really is amazing -- kudos to the programming team responsible. Buildings have excellent textures, but not so high-resolution as to slow down the game. In many missions, you need to land and leave your helicopter and walk around -- it really feels like you're walking around in a real city. The city is dynamic as well -- when you land to rescue a hurt citizen, you'll notice that several other sims have gathered around the scene. Sometimes it's hard enough getting through the crowd to get to the hurt person! And if that isn't enough, the 3-D engine is based around the SimCity 2000 city format, which means that you can actually import your own S2000 cities into the game and fly around in them! This feature basically pays for the game in itself, in my opinion. The whole idea of building a city, then watching it evolve from a 3-D perspective is really amazing. If I had to nit-pick, I'd say that while this game is excellent and has almost infinite replay value, I would have liked to see other, more varied tasks to complete in addition to the ones that come with the game. Also, while the music is good, the designers have decided to throw in some "commercials" of their own creation, which are just not funny. Fortunately, you can turn this feature off. All in all, this is an excellent game, and despite the negative press the game got when it was released earlier this year (a programmer was fired from Maxis for putting supposed "inappropriate" code into the game), it is a definite must for any SimCity fan, or any simulation or action game fan for that matter.
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