SimCity Review Thread - the curse of reboots to strike again?

partyphone said:
from what I've been reading it either kicks you to the main menu or just sits there doing nothing waiting for the server to respond. but this is from reviewers who have pre-release code connected to a private server EA set up just for them. so we'll have to wait and see how it behaves in the wild.
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In the beta, if you lost connection, you can play for about 10 or so minutes before the game boots you out. If you regain your connection within that window, your game will continue undisturbed.
 
http://www.shacknews.com/article/78062/simcity-review-return-of-a-classic

The always-on connection requirement isn't quite as welcome if you enjoy playing solo, though, as the lack of manual saving leads to some silly complications in single player. Most notably, every action you take is immediately irrevocable: there's no rewind button or grace period when placing a building. Normally, that's not a big deal, but if you accidentally lay a road too close to a hill, you may find yourself forced to bulldoze and rebuild it (at significant cost) to actually zone the area around it. More frustratingly, if you find yourself mis-clicking when attempting to place a building, you can find yourself making very expensive mistakes. If you place a very, very costly water treatment plant and immediately discover that it's a bit closer to your wealthy residences than you intended, there's no recourse, which can be frustrating if you value efficient play. (In the absence of manual saves, disabling your internet connection is the only way to test out a risky move before actually making it permanent, which isn't an outcome that anyone can describe as ideal.) And, of course, if the master server goes down, you're unable to play even single-player. Alt-tabbing out of the game for more than a few minutes will likewise often cause you to lose your sync and be forced to restart the client entirely.

For all these avoidable limitations, SimCity is still a gorgeous and often captivating strategy game. The ever-present tension between investing and saving is a constant presence as you play, and the numerous city specializations (oil drilling, ore collection, gambling, tourism, etc.) will help each city that you create feel different than the one before, and the design is smooth enough to encourage you to try your hand at multiple cities, both alone and with friends (or strangers) online. This isn't a radically different experience than what's come before, but considering SimCity's refined UI and mechanics, it's easy to consider this the best city-building strategy game to arrive in years.
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N-Bomb said:
Thanks! But how is this set up without the game being out yet? I've pre-ordered, but what am I missing?
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MetalMurphy basically created a sign up sheet. when the game is out there will be one person in each region that will be the person that invites all the people in said region to game. just makes it somewhat easy when the game is out.
 
perfectly engineered to dispense the maximum amount of fun in the most efficient way possible.
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Whoever wrote this line should be embarrassed. It's like something copied straight from a PR leaflet.
 
The parallels to Diablo 3 are a little sad/scary. It's shitty to see big PC titles become the testing ground for these anti-consumer practises.
 
The Wizard said:
The parallels to Diablo 3 are a little sad/scary. It's shitty to see big PC titles become the testing ground for these anti-consumer practises.
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Isn't it just. My biggest beef is no user generated mods. That really saddens me given the vast potential a game like simcity has for that kind of thing. I would say that the potential is even greater than an Elder Scrolls game, because a really good city sim is infinitely repayable. oops, I meant replayable.

edit: one funny thing about diablo III is I bet the best version of the game will be on ps4 because I'm assuming that Sony won't allow the real money auction house because it is too much like gambling; and Blizzard is apparently dialing back the regular auction house because it has turned the game into a boring gold farming exercise. Which kinda makes the PC release a beta test for the console.
 
Untalkative_Bunny said:
Isn't it just. My biggest beef is no user generated mods. That really saddens me given the vast potential a game like simcity has for that kind of thing. I would say that the potential is even greater than an Elder Scrolls game, because a really good city sim is infinitely repayable. opps, I meant replayable.
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The game is going to have user mods.
 
Polygon review seems pretty ridiculous.

Telling people you need to upgrade your network equipment and connection just to play a mostly single player game, along with all the little bugs, ridiculous omission (no subway?) yet it is a 9.5?
 
Jeuxvideo.com (biggest EU website) - 12/20

SimCity is far, far from being what we were expecting. The city specialization system and the regional and international trading seemed to be a real improvement, carried by the Glassbox engine and a much awaited 3D perspective. But damn is the final product frightening. The miniscule size of the cities and proliferation of administrative buildings force you to constantly destroy to rebuild and the poor ergonomics, in part because of the roads system, makes it extra tedious. Furthermore, the AI of the Sims, which now has a real impact on the gameplay, proved to be buggy, which often results in nonsensical situations. In short, THE deception of ths beginning of the year.
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elty said:
Telling people you need to upgrade your network equipment and connection just to play a mostly single player game,
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That's... not what he says though. He said it's up to gamers to decide if they want this game so bad that they'd be willing to change they router to play it seamlessly.
 
elty said:
Polygon review seems pretty ridiculous.

Telling people you need to upgrade your network equipment and connection just to play a mostly single player game, along with all the little bugs, ridiculous omission (no subway?) yet it is a 9.5?
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SLQJc.gif
 
elty said:
Polygon review seems pretty ridiculous.

Telling people you need to upgrade your network equipment and connection just to play a mostly single player game, along with all the little bugs, ridiculous omission (no subway?) yet it is a 9.5?
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As far as the no subway thing is concerned, their reason (or excuse, depending on how you want to look at it) is that since they designed the game in a way where you can zoom in and watch your city run, that having something underground out of sight didn't fit, so they went with the above ground rail cars instead.
 
That polygon review is so overly positive that its hard to take seriously. It reads almost like an advert. It was the same with their diablo III review, hyperbole mixed with just a basic explanation of the game mechanics, no real "review" in there.
 
bigdaddygamebot said:
EA fucks up another IP.

Shocker.
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Are we reading the same article, the shacknews review I just read, praises the game... the only negative points are the usual, always connected and the lack of an undo button and the alt-tabbing but as some people have mentioned, they tried this in the beta with no affect, so I can't see how this one article which overall praises the game differs from the others.
 
BeauRoger said:
That polygon review is so overly positive that its hard to take seriously. It reads almost like an advert. It was the same with their diablo III review, hyperbole mixed with just a basic explanation of the game mechanics, no real "review" in there.
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yeah, I thought of their dIII review as well.
 
I kind of want a new SimCity, I just don't know if I want this version of it. It sounds like it's a blast for 4 hours and then you'll never want to play it again.
 
drewface said:
Does this look like SimCITY to you?
small-size.jpg
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Sim Neighborhood.

BeauRoger said:
That polygon review is so overly positive that its hard to take seriously. It reads almost like an advert. It was the same with their diablo III review, hyperbole mixed with just a basic explanation of the game mechanics, no real "review" in there.
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From Aegis I was not surprised (see Mass Effect 3 too and "people didn't like it because it wasn't a happy ending") from Pitts I kinda was. The constant use of the word "perfect" in reviews is always jarring. It's like no one taught them the difference between that and marketing materials.
 
Man I can’t believe you can’t manually save the game or revert. That’s a huge issue; they’re going to be inundated with spam of people complaining about that. For me half the fun was building a new city with infinite cash as a pure sandbox type game with the ability to destroy it with disasters, etc.

Also the small city sizes; wasn’t expecting that. New tech is supposed to make the cities bigger, not smaller.
 
I like how the auto save "keeps people honest" and doesn't let you game the system by reloading, but then again, I play XCOM on ironman mode.

Save/reload should have been an option for sandbox mode, though.


Or a goddamned offline mode.
 
Rentahamster said:
I like how the auto save "keeps people honest" and doesn't let you game the system by reloading, but then again, I play XCOM on ironman mode.

Save/reload should have been an option for sandbox mode, though.


Or a goddamned offline mode.
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According to Rorie's review you can replicate that mode by manually disconnecting from the Internet.
 
munroe said:
Obviously you can "save" them, it automatically saves, you can't manually save and reload. So if you make a mistake you have to live with that mistake and recover from it.
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BearPawB said:
If you mess up your city you live with the consequences until you can recover.
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Yay, no screwing around with my city, errr... town. Just careful paint by numbers.

Czigga said:
Man I can’t believe you can’t manually save the game or revert. That’s a huge issue; they’re going to be inundated with spam of people complaining about that. For me half the fun was building a new city with infinite cash as a pure sandbox type game with the ability to destroy it with disasters, etc.

Also the small city sizes; wasn’t expecting that. New tech is supposed to make the cities bigger, not smaller.
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Agreed, also the tech was used to drill down to the citizen level and expand out to the regional level. It doesn't look like it was used to expand and develop the city aspect. Oh well, not like city is in the title anyways.
 
Czigga said:
Also the small city sizes; wasn’t expecting that. New tech is supposed to make the cities bigger, not smaller.
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It made the simulation engine much, much, MUCH bigger. They had to compromise on performance by reducing the city size.

The game is not longer an Excel spreadsheet with buildings (You can literally reproduce the previous simcity games in an Excel spreadsheet and run it).

It's a much more complicated game. Larger cities are in the works, though.
 
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