Before you notice the many graphical errors, and often in spite of them, the presentation is spectacular the game's Glassbox engine impresses with its incredible variety and attention to detail. It was morning in America and I was starting to build the consumerist dream. Nobody needs to go to school in the city that doesn't make sense.ġ5 hours previously, I was sometimes having a great time with SimCity, Maxis' troubled revival of its famous city-building series. That school, incidentally, is closed, because since the opening of Jefferson's university there's been no need to keep any of the antecedent educational establishments. One wing of the grade school is a strange and misshapen pile of grey rubble. A house sits in the middle of one street while another is buried under a strange pile of earth. This is SimCity at its best, standing proud.Ī trip about town reveals roads overlapped by jagged ground textures and sometimes even buildings. The water table never refreshes because there is almost never any rain. According to a utilities advisor, Jefferson has a substantial surplus of water and the option to import more from its neighbour, yet hundreds of buildings that are connected to the main report dry taps. While the clinic is oversubscribed, the hospital nearby has fifty beds free and almost never treats anyone.

The police precincts are packed with patrol cars, supplemented by advanced dispatch services and community outreach. There is almost no crime to complain about. We have to look deeper into the problems that plague its public. At first glance, it might appear that Jefferson has its struggles, but these issues require a little more investigation. The downtown clinic can't find the space to treat the sick. The main road out of Jefferson haemorrhages traffic. Crowds protest outside City Hall, complaining first about crime and later about a lack of clean water. But look a little closer and you find much that is wrong.

A park fills with children, the air with their laughter, and those skyscrapers become sundials as afternoon shadows creep from block to block. One by one, their lights wink out and, with the setting of the sun, workers become residents, making their way to redbrick apartments, two story townhouses, or the static homes sat amongst the trees at the city limits. Downtown stands tall, great sentinels of concrete and steel that stare out over the huddled, homely neighbourhoods towards the edge of town. It's a carefully sculpted city, the lines of which I scored into the landscape many hours ago and from which a relief has sprung more spectacular than anything I could have imagined.

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