I've written five different openings to this SimCity review over three days. Some felt ignorant of the game's disastrous launch, an element I openly wrestled with before writing this review. Others were too aggressive and awkwardly angry. I fired blindly with some fluffy paragraph about the fun of building, but that seemed disingenuous. I'm unlikely to go back to SimCity for some time. The game simply isn't fun.

Like 2003's SimCity 4, this new SimCity uses a regional map divided into playable zones that interact with one another, transporting commuters and allowing for a level of specialization in particular zones. Unlike SimCity 4's sprawling megalopolis created from a massive grid of connected tiles, the new SimCity's region zones are separated by gaps (think of a subway map where you play the stations but not the lines between). The current region selection supports as little as two and up to 16 zones.

SimCity is very user friendly and a hallmark of modern interface design and simulation transparency. I must stress that I'm speaking specifically about when players are in their particular zone, not when they are trying to discern anything from a regional perspective. Pipes and electricity now run along roads, removing two dull mayoral duties seen in previous games. Crime, pollution, education, and just about every other chart is no longer presented in some tiny pop-up window, but is instead delivered in full graphical glory as an overlay on the main game screen. It's also great that players can now expand on buildings, like giving the police more cars or adding classrooms to schools, but this also begins to highlight the cramped size of the actual zones.