Hands on with SimCity Deluxe for iPhone

Pick any mainstream games-playing machine made in the last two decades and it will have a version of SimCity sheepishly hanging around somewhere in its library.

In fact, it’s been on so many systems over the years that it can occasionally feel like EA is just putting it out because it feels it has to.

This was certainly the impression left by the original iPhone effort, which managed to cram the game onto the smartphone, but wasn’t particularly smart when it came to adapting the controls to the touchscreen.

Construction was fiddly, menus were unintuitive, scrolling was awful, and newcomers were pointed to the exit door with one of the briefest tutorials for a complicated game I’ve experienced in a long time.

It’s been almost two years since then, and EA is hoping that this latest version, the deceptively named SimCity Deluxe, will win back those long-standing fans that were turned away by the original.

The title is deceptive, because it’s more of a sequel than merely a respray with a fresh lick of paint.

That’s not to say the graphics haven’t been updated. Zooming into buildings no longer ends up with blurry, nondescript shapes, but crisp images of your mighty tower blocks and factories.

This view can be rotated 360 degrees in four steps, allowing a full view of the new seasonal effects like snowflakes on the camera in the process, with the game reacting quickly on the 3GS even with a fully built city on screen.

In fact, the whole game feels far quicker than before, with scrolling no longer jerking about and losing the buildings, and menus popping up quickly with barely any downtime.

This refinement is carried over to the controls themselves, with the building system receiving improvements to its accuracy and the advisors less awkward to reach, which should relieve a lot of players from the previous game.

EA is hoping that SimCity Deluxe will not just appeal to this group of players, but to young city-building whippersnappers, too.

A much improved tutorial is the first step towards achieving this aim, but there have also been a number of new, helpful additions like automated piping and electrical lines that can be turned on in the menus as well.

There’s also more of a passing nod to the portable nature of the platform in the shape of seven scenarios and seven pre-built cities based around real-life locations like London and New York.

While the graphical overhaul and title may suggest that SimCity Deluxe is purely cosmetic step up from the first title, it’s the improvements going on under the hood that make it stand out from its predecessor.

We’ll find out whether these improvements are enough to earn it a more prestigious Pocket Gamer medal when the game launches in the ‘summer’.