I've already said how excited I am for the new SimCity game coming out next year. EA put together a beautiful trailer that showed off the newest version of the popular city management and creation simulation very well. Now, they're releasing videos exploring how the game actually plays. The first video focuses on what you have to do in the early stages of SimCity. It shows off features like a free landscape to build upon, "paint" zoning, and the early stages of large industry specialization. The menus look intuitive and the landscape responsive to the basic actions you have to perform.

It might seem silly to point out how easy it is to build a city in a city simulation game. The fact is that many simulation games in the SimCity fold--all those theme park, mall, and even farm simulators are cut from the same cloth--are so complicated that you lose interest quickly. An intuitive menu system and responsive layout are not a hindrance to difficulty settings. Challenge comes from deciding which path is the right path for you and handling the consequences.