Tycoon City: New York

Ah, New York, the Big Apple! I was fortunate enough to visit New York last summer with my husband for a week, and it was wonderful. I was the typical tourist, rubbernecking and gawking up at the buildings as we walked around. I loved everything about it, even riding the subways and buses. So, needless to say, I was happy to have the chance to play around and build the New York of my dreams with Tycoon City: New York.

To begin the game, players can enter the Campaign mode immediately, try out the tutorial, or go straight to the Sandbox mode and access all the scenarios at once. The tutorial is narrated by a native New Yorker, complete with accent. It is short and sweet, but covers all the essentials of the game, which actually are few. This is a fun and pretty game, but there’s not a whole lot of in-depth strategy involved. This guy instructs players on how to move the camera viewpoint and angles around, and how to build the structures. He also instructs on how to keep up with data involving the citizens, as in their wants and needs.

Once the tutorial is finished, it’s on to Greenwich Village, a mecca for the artsy people and students, alike. As in typical Campaign modes in city-building games, the first goal is to ascertain the needs of the populace and build accordingly. Cutscenes of people up-close and personal relate in conversational mode amongst themselves just what type of shops and restaurants they would like to have in their area. The menus are easy to understand and navigate, and everyone should have their neighborhoods up and running shortly. There are 13 neighborhoods in all to be unlocked in Campaign mode. All of these scenarios are available instantly in Sandbox mode.

This is New York, after all, and there are tons of branded stores to choose from, which is a lot of fun. There are also plenty of generic type shops, such as thrift stores and specialty shops. There are many citizens in this city, and they’re very eager to try out your wares. In fact, making money is no problem at all in the city that never sleeps. Soon after starting any of the campaigns, players will be raking in the dough hand over fist. It really doesn’t matter what type of buildings players build, or where they put them – there is no way to lose this game. And that is a slight problem, if it’s strategy that is wanted.

Caesar III, this ain’t. There are no barbarians at the gate, no angry mobs of out-of-work people, and no fires breaking out because of a lack of fire stations. In fact, there are no problems to solve at all, which tends to take some of the possible enjoyment from the game. Having some sort of challenge is necessary in order to keep interest alive. In this version of New York City, no one has any real problems. Even though wants and needs are shown in the people’s menus, it’s absolutely irrelevant if they’re filled or not, as nothing bad happens when they’re not met.

On the other hand, this sure is an eye-catching game to play around with. The graphics are very nicely done, and the detail of the outward essence of New York is right on the money. My machine barely meets the minimum requirements for this game, so I had to bump down the graphics a tad, but everything still looked fabulous. The various computer characters are also fun to watch and hear. The voice acting is better than many games of this type. The camera work is excellent – the team that did the work on the various viewpoints of zooming in and out should be proud.

If it’s a hard-core strategy game you’re looking for, this isn’t it. While the game at first is fun to play and seems to offer lots of choices for building the metropolis of your dreams, it soon becomes apparent that there’s not much to do besides endlessly upgrade buildings. No worries, be happy.

On the other hand, Tycoon City: New York is great at evoking a sense of being in New York City. For people who may want to relive visiting, or for people who have always wanted to visit, this is a good game to stimulate interest. Whether this is a worthy choice for purchase depends entirely on the type of computer gaming experience people want, light or heavy. If light, this is your game. If heavy, a game with deeper strategy will be wanted.

One technical note: This game evidently comes with copy protection that can interfere with running the game. A PC that has a DVD emulator will cause an error message of a security module not being enabled. The emulator will have to be deleted in order to run the game.

Gameplay: 6.0
While the gameplay works well and is fun at first, it soon becomes boring due to an utter lack of any significant challenge or goals. There really should have been more thought put into making this game more challenging.

Graphics: 9.0
Wonderful graphics!

Sound: 8.0
The sound, ambient noises and voice-acting are above average.

Difficulty: Easy
This game is very easy to play from the beginning. This is due in part to good design of the menu system, but mostly due to a lack of any real challenge.

Concept: 6.0
There really is nothing new here, and while the presentation is good, there is a lack of in depth or intriguing details.

Overall: 7.0
I enjoyed playing Tycoon City New York, but not nearly as much as I enjoyed Caesar III. It literally took me months of playing to get through that game, and I’ve played it several times all the way through the campaigns since. I can’t see that happening with this game. However, for a light session with a favored city, this is a fun enough game for short periods at the computer. Even though the sound and graphics received higher marks, the gameplay is what makes a game, and it falls short of the mark.