We City Review
iPhone App
FREE! Buy now!

We City Review

Our Review by Chris Hall on September 27th, 2010
Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar :: NOTHING NEW
Share This:

We City takes the same formula that the other "We" games prescribe to, and puts on a city building overlay. You'll either love it or hate it.

Developer: ngmoco:)
Price: FREEMIUM
Version Reviewed: 1.0

Graphics / Sound Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Game Controls Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Gameplay Rating: starstarhalfstarblankstarblankstar
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar

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 almost unlimited gameplay and are great for people that don't have hours upon hours to sit and play a game with a plot. They also do a good job of sucking you into the game world with reminders to play that pop up every so often to make sure that in-game events don't go unnoticed. We City will grip you like the Tamagotchi's used to suck in baby crazy 13 year old girls.

So We City, as you may 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 just playing We Farm or We Rule 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.

There's definitely a large group of people that will be interested in We City, and these fans will be overjoyed to have a new game to play with. We City has more interesting graphics than the other games in the "We" trilogy and is much more approachable, to me, because of the Sim City-esque overlay. For those of you who don't like these "freemium" Farmville type games though, there's not much in We City that will change your mind. You'll either love it or hate it, and there's really no in-between.

iPhone Screenshots

(click to enlarge)

We City screenshot 1 We City screenshot 2 We City screenshot 3 We City screenshot 4 We City screenshot 5
Share This: