SimCity has always been about building the utopia of your dreams, as thousands of residents, various weather conditions and other factors fall under your control. While we were curious to see how motion-sensitive controls and online features would work. Unfortunately, SimCity Creator tears itself apart before you construct a foundation.
The interface is is similar to other games in the series. You have access to a number of resources to help you create and maintain your city, separating it into residential, business and retail divisions. As each area thrives, you receive other tools to expand your bounderies, although you'll occasionally overcome spending challenges and disasters. It all comes with the territory, as you build the next great place to live, or a location that people can't wait to move out of.
Like previous games, SimCity Creator has lots of ambition. You can go at your own pace building the city any way you choose in Free Mode, or take on individual timed challenges to see how your mayoral skills hold up under pressure. The game's online functionality lets you compete with a fellow builder to see who can complete challenges in the quickest amount of time. Sadly, this mode never lives up to its promise. You can't see who's won a match until it's done, which takes most of the competition out of it. There are also no leaderboards, so you can't see who's "King (or Queen) of the City".
Despite these cool ideas, the game isn't fun. EA mapped the Wii remote to handle both screen movement and item placement. As a result, you'll often lay roads and then accidentally pave in the wrong direction because the screen moves. There's no way to switch between these two functions manually, leaving you stuck with errors. The fact that you only have one active save slot for city progress doesn't help either, in case you make a huge mistake.
Although the game has plenty of text, most of it is useless factoids and news, a desperate (and failed) attempt at a sense of humor. In-game advisors also pop up, but they too are mostly a distraction. Instead of dealing with serious business types or even helpful Mii characters from your library, you put up with stereotypical folks that would rather complain about the happenings in their own lives rather than helping you.
At least the presentation isn't a waste. The boring music is probably best left muted, but the graphics look excellent on the Wii. Being able to zoom in and out of your city to check its finer details is nice. It's just too bad that you have to struggle so much with the controls to do it.
Unless you're a forgiving SimCity fan, you'll want to leave Creator alone. Its twitchy gameplay and flawed multiplayer will leave you sulking in the sewer, rather than building your dreams.
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