With the success of the SimCity games and historical city-builders such as
the Caesar games, it’s surprising that we don’t see more city sim games. If
you’re a fan of designing and building your own little virtual metropolis,
you’ll be happy to hear that the latest city sim drought has ended with the
release of Tycoon City: New York. This game is a bit different in that instead
of challenging you to create a fictional city it gives you the opportunity to
see if you could build New York into the city it is today. Sounds like quite the
challenge, right? Well, not necessarily so…
Tycoon City can be played in one of two modes, campaign and sandbox. The
sandbox mode is what you’d expect; you’re free to build in any part of the city
as you please without those pesky goals telling you what to do. The campaign
mode restricts you to one district initially and challenges you to unlock the
others by completing various goals. Other than this there’s not that much
difference between the two modes. In fact, the campaign mode is basically a
structured sandbox mode as I don’t think that it is really possible to fail at
anything in this game.
City simulations have always been challenging games. Budgets, taxes, supply
chains, infrastructure, citizen satisfaction, and more had to be managed
properly or your city would soon become a bankrupt ghost town. Well if you
always hated this kind of challenge and just wanted to build to your heart’s
content, then Tycoon City is the game for you. Everything that you build makes a
profit, the only question is how much. There are no fees, licenses, or building
codes to worry about, you just need to find an open space in which to plop your
next building. There does not seem to be any consequence to where a building is
placed, so plopping a tenement next to upscale shopping won’t eat into the
stores’ profits. The game does populate your city with virtual citizens, and
these people all have their own wants and needs, but they don’t seem to care
whether or not you satisfy them and will live, work, and shop in whatever
buildings you decide to build. You won’t even have to worry about those pesky
issues of crime, fire, and disasters in this version of New York.
Take the sim out of a city building game and you’re basically left with a
construction set. Unless you really enjoy building a virtual New York over and
over again, the total lack of challenge will lead to a total lack of interest
before too long. This is a real shame as a lot of work has obviously gone into
creating the game’s impressive graphics. The level of detail is amazing, and you
can zoom in on your city down to the street level. You can even walk the streets
to get a close look at the beautiful people who inhabit your city.
The game includes a large number of buildings for you to build, including
some name brand stores to give your city a more realistic feel. An interesting
aspect of the game is that structures can be upgraded to include new amenities,
decorations, or services. Each building has a limited number of upgrade slots so
you can’t have it all, but it doesn’t really matter that much which ones you
choose since as mentioned above it seems to be impossible to lose the game.
So what you’ve got in the end is a great looking game filled with a myriad of
structures to build but pretty much devoid of anything that makes it a
challenge, or even a game. If you’re looking for a city construction set you may
enjoy Tycoon City for a little while, but if you’re looking for a challenge (or
any kind of real gameplay) you’ll probably want to pass this one up.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
68%. If building a real estate empire were
this easy, we’d all be bored millionaires by now. 
