SimCity 5

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Started with the SNES adaption of simcity. Bowser! lol.
but damn, was that adaption pretty!

[Razgovory]

Started with the SNES adaption of simcity. Bowser! lol.
but damn, was that adaption pretty!

Heh.  Yeah.  That was fun.  I remember that rail was better then streets so everything would be connected with rail and there would  be no roads.  Everyone seemed cool with that.  You could also leave the game on overnight and make a reap in taxes if you had a stable city.

[Josquius]

The online focus worries me.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Started with the SNES adaption of simcity. Bowser! lol.
but damn, was that adaption pretty!

Heh.  Yeah.  That was fun.  I remember that rail was better then streets so everything would be connected with rail and there would  be no roads.  Everyone seemed cool with that.  You could also leave the game on overnight and make a reap in taxes if you had a stable city.

haha, yeah. That's so true.

[FunkMonk]

I would love to see a SimEarth remake. Probably won't ever happen though. 

[KRonn]

I would love to see a SimEarth remake. Probably won't ever happen though. 

I like to see that too! This SC5 graphics look great. Now I want to get back into SC4! Great games. 

[Razgovory]

I would love to see a SimEarth remake. Probably won't ever happen though. 

Yeah.  I suppose Spore was suppose to be kinda like that.  Problem was, that I found Spore dreadfully dull.

[garbon]

I would love to see a SimEarth remake. Probably won't ever happen though. 

Yeah.  I suppose Spore was suppose to be kinda like that.  Problem was, that I found Spore dreadfully dull.

Spore was definitely a failed attempt. A bunch of mini-games does not equal SimEarth.

[Syt]

It's out in the U.S. Gameplay previews from beta testers were encouraging, but it seems marred by technical implementation.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/05/gamers-line-up-to-play-simcity/

Hey, want to play the freshly US-released SimCity? Well, stand in line. As Total Biscuit reveals (video below), there are already 30 minute queues. And this is just for those who've stayed up past midnight to be able to play. In just one country.

I note with some pride that my "oceans" notion for criticising release dates seems to have entered the vernacular. So it is that EA have astonishingly released this DRM-riddled, online-only, server-based game with a three day delay for Europe. Yet keeping the numbers lower doesn't seem to have helped with some of the servers. So why is that a problem? Because despite the game being saved on that oh-so ethereal cloud, your cities are still server-specific. Want to play that city? Sit in the queue for that server.

Remember how SimCity 2000 was this game you could play on your laptop, or PC, anywhere, any time? Remember how you could just enjoy huge amounts of time with what is surely one of the best games ever made whenever and however you wanted? Not any more! And at this point we're only just beginning to see the issues arising from this online entangling. Softpedia say that it's taking up to three hours for the game to unlock due to server struggles. Kotaku are reporting that neighbouring cities can ruin your game. And Ars Technica discussing how many ways the game has let them down.

Reviews are scarce, since thankfully most sites recognised that reviewing either in EA's offices, or via EA's very quiet test server, wouldn't have been at all useful for readers, as the version they'd play wouldn't represent the released version. In the UK we've not even been offered a way to review ahead of launch, nor – impressively – offered access to the US released version. So a review from us will come some time next week, we're afraid.

Here's Total Biscuit getting pretty fed up of waiting in line:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RUl_Cj2_KWU

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Origin-Errors-Affect-SimCity-Release-and-Digital-Deluxe-Editions-334343.shtml

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/

Though most depressing might be this:
http://kotaku.com/5988286/?post=57955552

I'm still fuming at Mike for destroying his city and therefore ruining mine. It killed the fun I was having with my city and got me worrying that this game, which more or less requires that you cooperate with neighbor cities could be ruined by griefers who pull the plug on your cities to screw you over.

You can't have a great time just running your own city independently. You'll have to set up some connections with other cities. I was depending on Mike for power, as he noted; I was supplying our region with a university, though once he destroyed his city, I lost a ton of revenue from out-of-town students.

One of the EA PR people on this game told me that other players can take over abandoned cities. And you can manually abandon a city pretty easily. I'm more worried about people who let their city crumble and don't fully abandon it.

It could be a drag, especially because you need other players to pitch in when making great works in your region. I'd just started the great work of making an Arcology in a valley between our two cities (we were playing on a map made for three cities), but without Mike pitching in, I couldn't build it, which pretty much put me at my internal population and economic limit. The ideal, I think, would be to have at least three engaged players, with their respective cities helping each other's out. The game is clearly designed for this, as many of the buildings you construct have regional benefits and enable upgrades across the map.

We'll be able to judge all this better once the game goes live to the public and we can see how well all this networked stuff works.

NOTE: Just to be clear... you CAN run all the cities in one region yourself in a private mode. It's possible, just doesn't seem like the way they intended for you to play. I'm going to give that a shot and see how that goes, too.

[FunkMonk]

Yet another game ruined. 

[Syt]

From the main kotaku article linked above:

[...]Well, that's not technically true. The only time you're really on your own in this latest SimCity is when you create your own Region and set it to private as I did with my Secret Squirrel region. I figured I might have more fun without having to trade and pool resources with other players in the same region. I thought an obligation-free sandbox would be right up my alley.

I was mistaken.

SimCity Won (and Broke) My Heart in Just Three Days

As immediately satisfying as it was to just plop (that's the official term) down Germany's Kölner Dom without having to spend hours developing my tourism industry, ultimately the single-player sandbox I thought I wanted left me feeling empty and unfulfilled. It might be good for folks looking to make movies, but this SimCity is designed to play with other people, and it's a lot less fun without them.

So I hooked up with Kotaku's Stephen Totilo to see if we'd make good neighbors. He did. Me? Not so much.

This sprawling coal-mining town is where I learned the intricacies of city planning. From a small road leading away from the highway I built houses. I placed water towers. I powered them with coal. Soon that single small road became many small roads crisscrossing the land. I painted the roads with zones commercial, residential and industrial, attempting to balance a trio of meters that never seemed satisfied with my choices (except for commercial, which was barely ever in demand).

I discovered (read a preview, Fahey!) that upgrading roads helped maximize building density, and that strategically placing parks attracts more affluent residents.

Totilo's town helped me during those early days, supplying waste management and emergency services as I struggled to balance utilities and facilities with explosive growth. Eventually I returned the favor, letting him tap into my nuclear reactor to power his city. It was a good relationship. We worked well together.

When I destroyed everything I had built in order to start over, the effect on Totilo's town was devastating. Without my nuclear reactor he had no power. Businesses closed. People left town. His city plunged into an economic nosedive he couldn't pull out of. He wound up abandoning the city and moving on to a new region.

So basically, unless you hook up with an active community and have similar goals, you'll miss out one way or the other. Seeing the sprawling Sims community I have no doubt this will happen. Still, if you like to build a city now and then from scratch, this is not the way to go.

Guess it's time to dust off SC4 again and see if I can get it to run properly in Win7.

[CountDeMoney]

It killed the fun I was having with my city and got me worrying that this game, which more or less requires that you cooperate with neighbor cities could be ruined by griefers who pull the plug on your cities to screw you over.

So, it's Detroit: The Video Game.

[Ed Anger]

I want to shut Josq's coal mines down. Can I do that?

[CountDeMoney]

Why is Syt building labor camps on my side of the map?  Is that why my population is dropping?

[garbon]

Why is Syt building labor camps on my side of the map?  Is that why my population is dropping?

Yeah these reviews look dreadful.