Seething In SimCity

simcity-winceAs newly elected mayor of SimCity (thanks to my Virtual Console) I pledged to finally do what I had never been able to when I originally played this as a kid: create a town with a population of 500,000 citizens. As I write this, I have 460,000 people and things have been running very smoothly…until now.

See, my citizens have developed a case of the dreaded, “We So Stupid” Syndrome. For those of you that don’t know, WSSS is a horrible disease that affects people all over the world, not just in video game simulations. I have used all the land in my city. I have been a decent leader, who built all industrial zones around the edge of town, minimizing pollution. Of course, that didn’t stop the little artificial bastards from bitching about it!

I built all their houses far away, so the only time they would ever enter an area with anything less than pristine air would be…IF THEY WORKED THERE! And if you work in a place that pollutes the air, but rather than get a job at the mall (I built lots of those, too!), you would prefer to blame the mayor for the desecration of the air, which you in fact cause by working there… kill yourself.

No, wait. I need you for the population count. Which brings me to next point: if I build a residential zone, I want houses built there, not schools or hospitals! All I want is to cram enough of these little morons into the limited space I have available to me (apparently, invading the neighboring towns is out of the questions) in order to get to the half million mark to get that damn Mario statue I have always longed for. And these fools decide to build 14 hospitals and 12 schools, including 2 hospitals right next to each other!

Well, I certainly hope there weren’t that many sick or enfeebled people in 13 of those hospitals because I got a little trigger happy with my bulldozer and kinda demolished them all. Course, my little resiliant Sim-tards decided to rebuild one of them right in the same spot. I felt like the Joker in The Dark Knight, walking out of Gotham County General, tapping that detonator. Eventually the mooks learned their lesson. And as for those schools, well…that was just fun. Don’t worry, I left one of them standing. Too bad it’s all the way on the other side of the river! Good luck with that commute everyday!

sim3-winceSpeaking of commutes, when you to a certain point, the Sim-jerks start getting uppity and demanding things. “Residents Demand A Stadium” started flashing on the bottom of the screen. Well, sure they do. But that’s going to raise the tax rate and if it dares hover anywhere over 3%, they start tea bagging each other! I mean, throwing tea parties. Or something. Then they wanted an airport. Now, I am not a cruel leader. I like to think of myself as a benevolent dictator. So I granted them their airport. Hell, can’t be bad for growth and business right?

Wrong. Literally 2 minutes later, a plane crashed. So either I built my airport just before happy hour ended or I have terrorists running around my city, which is a giant problem since I didn’t build any fire departments. And we all know fire departments is how you fight terrorism. So I had to lock the city down for a bit, demolish the nuclear power plants in order to prevent any yellow cake from getting stolen and then I realized I had better destroy any bakeries as well, because I am pretty sure they have yellow cake, too.

Crisis averted, I think. I saw one of our planes take off and fly over the city, so I am going to assume that was my personal army on its way to Borat’s country to deliver giant cans of whip-ass to anyone who speaks a different language. With any luck, I will manage to sardine some more Sim-fools into my city and get that Mario statue and finally achieve a boyhood dream. Wow…games sure do make you feel like a loser sometimes, but God, is it worth it.

Anyhow, what’s the hardest you’ve ever worked for an in-game secret?

Written by

Age: 34 PSN ID: Starkiller81. I've played games since before I can remember, starting with my dad's Atari and I haven't stopped yet. Keep them coming and I will keep playing them.

18 thoughts on “Seething In SimCity”

  1. That teabagging comment was low and unnecessary. I thought you guys were classy enough to avoid throwing random political jabs in your features. I guess not.

  2. [quote comment=”6381″]That teabagging comment was low and unnecessary. I thought you guys were classy enough to avoid throwing random political jabs in your features. I guess not.[/quote]

    It wasn’t a jab, it was a joke. Yeesh. Lighten up! 🙂 I can’t believe someone would even think about getting offended for such a slight jest.

    Anywho, nice rant Anthony. I think we’ve all run into these situations trying to get some secret item before. For me, I remember trying to get the Golden Chocobo in FF7. It takes forever because it’s almost completely random. Trying to get blue or green chocobos (of the right gender, even) is such a pain in the ass.

  3. The only one I can think of off the top of my head would have to be the achievement in half life 2:ep2 where you have to take that damn lawn gnome to the end of the game. I cant tell you how many times I had to go back an hour because of that damn thing.

    I guess going through Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 to get all of the character dialogs would have to be high up there as well.

    So much time…wasted.

  4. It appears even the yellow cake is, infact, a lie! =D

    good luck to achieving the Red-Capped Crusader. I’ve never played any of the Sim games, but I’d love a screeny if you accomplish such a task!

  5. [quote comment=”6381″]That teabagging comment was low and unnecessary. I thought you guys were classy enough to avoid throwing random political jabs in your features. I guess not.[/quote]

    Bit, trust me, it was all in fun. I have made jokes about all sides in other posts. I literally had a tax rate of 4% and 18% of my citizens were complaining about it. Seemed like an appropiate joke.

  6. The only secret that I can think was the handcannon in RE4 and that’s it I don’t think I’ve ever cared enough. Although I do put a lot of effort nto getting trophies.

  7. Beat all the challenge levels on Pikmin 2 on perfect just to get the final movie. I can’t believe i did that because I usually don’t care about achievements/bonuses in single player games cause I never replay them. But the internet was down so…

    *Spoiler*

    It turned out Louie was the one who ate the golden pikpik carrots, not a space bunny. For anyone that might have played it.

  8. Btw, this post brought up all kinds of memories. Sim City was amazing. My favorite thing to do after I built cities was to let natural disasters or monsters tear them apart. I loved doing that.

  9. I guess in my post I forgot to answer your question! XD.

    One would have to be back in GTA 3 when I legitametly found 95 of the secret packages without using any maps/cheats. Never found the other 5 though… that was frustrating.

    Also in Fallout 3, I have extremely High Karma all the time and always try to do the right things, which often means going way out of your way (Gal Ink for Decleration of Independance anyone?). But, often the rewards are worth it in that game.

  10. Ha, I just recently got into a SimCity game myself. SimCity 3000, to be precise. My city is hovering at around 60,000 people, so it’s doing pretty well. I have the same problem with taxing, as well; I lowered my residential tax down to 5%, and not even five minutes later, they were complaining that it was too high! That, and as soon as I put down any zones that are a tiny distance away from police, fire, or water, my advisers start honking at me like I’ve started eating babies in public.

    Anyways, that was a pretty entertaining rant. No game makes you want to kill random people and demolish hospitals like SimCity. Sometimes, those natural disasters are so cathartic.

  11. ROFL Yellow Cake; loltastic rant

    WSSS also affects Civilization games. I recently had an urge to play Civ 2, and I was the Aztecs or something. Apparently, people really like silk in ancient Aztec. I…didn’t know they had that, but okay! I love Civ 2, but sometimes it’s ridiculous when people start revolting because I’m asking for a bit more gold because THE ENEMY IS FRIGGIN’ INVADING MAH CITIES!

  12. Good God I LOVE Sim City. I got Sim City 4 w/ rush hour expansion but my favorite is SC3K. I remember when I first figured out how to run a city effectively in SC4, what a great feeling!

  13. Ace Combat 4. I worked so hard to get that darned X02 plane. Seriously getting S on all missions on hard was a challenge! Well worth it. Sick plane.

  14. Right now! I searched the internet for the best way to gather up as much Drebin Points as I can in the least amount of time (in MGS4). This weekend I’ll try this one thing I found on youtube about taking out certain guys in London (or whatever that city is). I really want that invisible cloak thing, unlimited ammo, and that crazy shotgun-like thing. about 300,000 Drebin points now, about 5,700,000 to go…

  15. I tend to repress all those memories but the last one I remember is attempting to get inside the statue of liberty on GTA4 about 20 times (which is harder then it sounds because I was on multi player and of course every time I die I have to grab a heli fly there and bail out again) It was so not worth it.

    I also remember back in the day fining all those Mario Kart times down by a couple of seconds to get A ranks and unlock stuff. That was pretty irritating.

    Or perhaps the most irritating and totally not worth it thing ever, Pokemon. I had a COMPLETE mint condition Base 1 set of Pokemon cards that I spent probably hundreds of pounds on and many hours bartering trades. Then my dad burnt them all for reasons I won’t go into (One of my friends actually burst out crying when I told him about it and I dare not look up the price they sell for on eBay.) Same goes for the original Pokemon games, I caught ’em all after convincing friends to trade with me etc. All for a fuckin’ little message saying “Well done.” I died a little inside at that point. Overall I would put about an entire year of my life doing all that stuff.

  16. 5,000 people away and a plane crashed! Now, I am 10,000 people away! Who the hell moves out of a place just cause of a plane crash!

    Time to start waterboarding.

  17. DID IT! Got my Mario Statue!

    Tragically, minutes later, Bowser, an earthquake and a Tornado all hit at the same time. Strange.

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