My game of the year

I've been playing Sim City a lot lately. It seems to be the most pointless game on the planet. You place roads and buildings, and hope people move in and find jobs. I can never get the roads to connect how I want, and I think "someone's going to drive up to this road and see another road a few feet away and wonder why they don't connect..." then I feel stupid for not being able to connect them. I always end up over polluting the planet, and my city always has way to much crime. Yet it has entertained me for hours these last few days. The funnest part is when I feel it is time to make a new city, I destroy my current one with natural disasters. A city never lasts more then a few hours in my hands.
I have played a few other Sim games, but this is the only one that has stuck. This game bugs me though because its so unrealistic. Buildings take mere milliseconds to be built, and the town seems to not need water or sewage. When you build a house that claims to hold 15 people, thousands move in. I played an older Sim City a few years ago, and it drove me crazy because you had to place water pipes underground and there had to be power lines connected to the buildings before the workers would even start building. And you couldn't build just any building you wanted, you could only build categories and the game would decide what would show up there. I need an in between game...close to reality but not quite there.
Even though sometimes it drives me crazy, Sim City Societies is my game of the year!