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Sep
26
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We City Review
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Price: FREEMIUM
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.65 out of 5 stars
This “We” game formula is turning people, ages 12-36, into brain sludge. I have no possible way of proving this, but I’m fairly certain that people who consistently play “We” (We Farm, We Rule) games, as well as anything that has ever been made by Zynga, have shed great deals of knowledge in the pursuit of completing pointless tasks. I wonder if the CEO of Zynga ever wonders about what would’ve happened if Mark Z. of Facebook had been able to play Farmville during his Freshman year in college. Would he have ever made the platform that launched the game, or would he, as well as social gaming, be reduced to conformist drivel.
I’ll backtrack a bit.. maybe I’m being a bit harsh. It’s hard to blame people for playing ngmoco’s “We” games because they do offer an extreme exercise in persistence. Not only do they require you to pop in every so often to make sure a product doesn’t go unsold, but they also shout at you, via push message, to stop what you are doing so you can do something in the game. These games grip people like the Tamagotchi used to do for baby crazy 13 year old girls. If you didn’t tend to those little creatures in the eggs, they’d die. Dead. Finito.
Wait, this is a review of We Farm?
Ok, so We Farm, as you might have suspected, follows the same addiction formula that the rest of the “We” trilogy games follow. Basically, you have to build something for constant money, construct items to sell to your sucker “friends”, upgrade your land area as you grow, and buy/use potions and such to make the game move along at a reasonable pace.
This time, the crops are replaced by houses, toy shops and such are replaced by convenience stores… and such, and your barn/castle is replaced by city hall. There does seem to be more of an emphasis on aesthetics though, as it looks silly to stack houses upon one another like I used to do with my crop fields. There’s a sort of zen feeling that comes over you when you know that all of your virtual inhabitants have street access and an ample amount of trees. As you build your city up, you are also treated with more and more pedestrians and vehicles walking around your city, adding a sense of interaction that the other “We” games just can’t reproduce.
In the end though, you are still playing We Farm, just with a different overlay. The same problems arise in my head every time I pick any of these games up. Why should I wait an entire day for my boat to build? Why am I buying convenience store items from my friends when I have a perfectly acceptable convenience store in my own town? They sell the same items!!! Why is my business degree nullified if I take too long to accept it? Why do I need multiple business degrees? What sense does it make to buy “Zap”? If I wanted things to grow faster, I could just buy Sim City.
So many questions, so few answers.
Here’s my big question, what do people really get out of playing games like this? There’s no plot, nothing to destroy, no sense of competition, no winner, no loser, no true social interaction (I’m sorry, but buying items from neighboring stores isn’t building any friendships), and no continuous gameplay. Is it the fact that it is free? Does the knowledge that you will never truly be done with the game excite people? I just don’t understand.
[ We City Review is a post from 148Apps ]
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