The graphics in Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort are bright and colorful, but since this is a top-down simulation, everything is on the small side. Still, things like the mall and buses looks appropriate and the sunny beaches and scrabby mountainous areas look like they should. As you progress, you will be able to upgrade things like the factories in the towns you are working in, as well as the housing and when you do, you can see the improvements pretty much immediately.

Sound effects do the job, such as the whoosh of a plane arriving to import/export goods or the shudder and clank of a bus breaking down and dying on the side of a road. If you have a problem with waste removal that you need to address immediately, you'll hear an alarm to get your attention and if you build something to raise the happiness level of the community, such as a fountain in the town square, you'll hear cheering once it is completed.

For starters, I am not a typical sim gamer, but typically prefer time management. However, when the code came in for Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort I decided to take it on, since our sim experts on staff don't have iPads. In Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort, when you begin each level/city, you will first be given a list of goals to attain. These can be anything from attaining a certain daily income level, to a number of residents in your town, to a number of visitors, or a certain happiness or environmental rating. Initially, when a level starts up, there may already be ongoing production of goods, so you don't necessarily have to initiate everything, but this would often throw me off, as I didn't know how much micromanaging I needed to do. For instance, if one of your goals was to build a ski resort, you would first have to determine what materials were needed to build it. Then, you might need to construct the appropriate factory to obtain said materials. If you needed things from a neighboring city, you may need to craft items to trade with them to get what you need. Throughout all of this, you need to keep your people happy and, to do that, you have to create bus routes to bring them to places to raise their happiness level, like the mall, restaurants, theaters, etc.

All of this fun increases the garbage level, so you need to make sure you have enough waste removal trucks and that every location is being visited by a dump truck and having the garbage removed. Otherwise, you'll hear one of those alarms I mentioned earlier, although you can still get those from time to time. You can buy buses, recycling trucks and transport trucks and each can also be upgraded several times to maximize their use. Likewise, factories and recreational places can also be upgraded. Every action has a reaction, however, so putting a bunch of buses out on the road will have an environmental impact on your community.

Honestly, I found Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort pretty difficult. Like I said, I don't typically play these simulation types of games, so I often had a hard time wrapping my mind around exactly what needed to be done to accomplish all of the goals. Mind you, the goals aren't confusing, but each goal requires multiple things to be set in motion to accomplish the goal and sometimes I just didn't think about the fact that in order to export cakes, I had to make sure that the granary and the dairy were making the required goods to bake a cake and that trucks were transporting those goods to the bakery, then other trucks were transporting the cakes to where they needed to go. When I would get stuck, I'd call Geck0 in to help me puzzle it out and his computer-programming mind would almost immediately see what needed to be done. So clearly, my mind is not mapped to whiz through sim games like some people. If you do get stuck, there are helpful tips available for each level you need to achieve that you can access by hovering over them. For instance, the happiness level is achieved by upgrading existing buildings and homes and also building entertainment venues, but I still would manage to get stuck even after I had upgraded every possible thing on the map.

Another thing that would get me would be when I had purchased lots of transport trucks and they were all running the roads, but somehow something would happen with production of a particular item and said item could no longer be transported out of its facility (whether it was because another item had halted production and wasn't being delivered like grain to the bakery, for instance). This would cause the trucks to pile up in the facility (not visually, mind you, just an icon showing a truck and a number beside it indicating how many trucks are at that facility). I couldn't figure out how to get those trucks out of rotation because when you look at the route, it only shows you what you can change it to, not what it is currently set to do. The only option then becomes selling them, which is what I ended up doing and then setting them off on another path.

Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort is all about tapping to get what you need accomplished. You have an interface at the bottom of the screen with various tabs like Goals and Build, plus there are tabs for the vehicles in play such as Buses, Dump Trucks and Trucks. Under the Build tab, you'll find sub-headings like Destroy for removing an existing building, Road and Forest for building up your surrounding environments, plus headings like Environment, Tourism, Entertainment and such. You can go into the vehicle tabs to either sell or upgrade your vehicles or change the route.

When you want to build something, you'll click the correct tab then click what you want to build and the map will show a translucent version of the building to aid you in placement. You need plenty of room around your building, so even if it seems as though you have lots of places to build, your options are actually somewhat limited.

Once you build a structure, you then need to set up the recycling truck's route to include them so they don't become overrun with waste. If it is an entertainment venue, you'll want to ship people to and from the location, and if it's a production facility, you'll need to make sure that transport trucks are taking goods to and from it so that what you need gets brought in and what you create gets shipped to the appropriate places. If you have neighboring cities that are seeking specific goods, you'll need to set up trucking routes to bring them the goods by clicking the green city signs on the edges of your city. As you meet your goals, you will progress from city to city, working your way across the country setting up resorts and vacation destinations in your wake.

I have to admit that I didn't fall in love with Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort, simply because it was too much micromanaging for me. However, if you really get into controlling every aspect of production, you will absolutely love Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort. It just wasn't my particular cup of tea.