Simcity "Beta" review.

[Catchin22 299]

Since I just finished playing 2 games via the Beta (more like demo) and thought I would share my thoughts. I've been a pretty big critic of the game here on the forums. If you've read my posts you would have seen I made comments about how this game feels more catered to younger kids, soccer moms, FB game players and the like. I've also been vocal about city size and other features being lacking. I had a fairly negative outlook on the game to say the least going in.

I've been playing Sims games since the 80s, I'm in my 30s now. I played all of the sim games from Sim Ant to Sim City and have purchased and played every single version of SC ever made like a lot of us here. When Societys came out I got the feeling that the people who were a core part of Sim City in the old days were long gone and the game was dead.

Like many of us I still hoped for a revival of Sim City. Perhaps something where SC4 left off, a newer cleaner version of SC4 with more options than the last and an upgraded visual experience. We've come a long way in technology in the last 10 years, surely a new version of Sim City 4 could be quite an experience on todays hardware.

I was fairly excited to get into the "Beta". Though I might have been a pretty hard critic I really hoped for the best, I hoped this "beta" would change my mind and I could pre order the game post haste. Upon booting up the game the first thing I noticed was that the GUI or Graphical User Interface looked fairly good (intiail view), but not polished. As a Professional Graphic designer I feel it could have been much much better looking. It's not terrble but it's not great. I'm not sure if I would call it good but I wouldn't call it bad, more like acceptable.

While running through the initial tutorial I had a few thoughts like "When will this tutorial end already?" not that it was long and not that I was so eager to play but because I found it slightly annoying. I also thought "these graphics look pretty mundane" I couldn't wait to get into the graphics and up everything to the max which is exactly what I did before starting on my new map. My intial worry was this game was going to be like Sims 3 and during the tutorial all I heard was sims "babble" which did not set well with me.

Once the graphics were upped I thought things were looking better. I still thought the lighting looked pretty bad but I had yet to start building a town. You only get 1 hour which is hardly time to build a town let alone a city.

First, the city size is small. It's as small as I suspected even though many on these forums argued with me. I can plop a main avenue from one side of the city to the next without even remotely scrolling for about $10,000. The map size is small even for a town let alone a city.

To be clear, there is absolutely NO possible way to build a city and have it look like a real city in ANY respect of your imagination. It will look silly to have a map size too small for a town with high rise buildings.

To be honest at this point writing this review I feel like I am wasting my time so I am going to shorten this up without going into a ton of detail with this:

1. The graphics are bad, in some most cases terrible. You should NOT expect them to get better on final release. I guarantee you they wont be upped by much.

2. The town sizes are WAY too small.

3. This is a town simulator not a city simulator first.

4. No terraforming and bad / ugly pre terraformed land.

5. Not so great lighting

6. Lack of detail in modeling

7. Sims 3 babble

8. Graphical slow downs even on a high end system at random times for no apparent reason even though the game looks like it could be ran on a P4 machine from 10 years ago.

9. Jagged edges everywhere, generally bad AA.

10. Crappy enviromental effects (pratically none) For instance you wont see dust floating in the air or anything done to give you a sense of actually being there.

11. Unpolished in so many respects that it would be impossible to fix by release.

12. Feels strange laying out zoning and roads. Often leads to problems getting the right fix without destroying something.

13. So awkward to play.

14. Depressing to play, yes depressing! Mostly because how bad the models and lighting looks. Bad models under what feels like some sort of winter artificial light...

15. Mutiple little things that are annoying, such as the screen shaking when planting trees.. completely not needed!

16. Laying zones out is total guess work. No idea on how large zones should be between roads results in dead space, something you dont want in a lot this small! This is VERY annoying.

17. Business signage throughout the game looks bland and very uninspired. Hire a better graphics designer NOW and put them on full time fixing up graphics and making LOGOS! Make the city POP!

18. Lawns look bad, not just on low income homes but middle class homes as well.

19. Dirt roads have sharp cut off edges like paved / concrete roads.

Playing this game no matter how hard I tried was not a joy. Not once did it bring a smile to my face. The only people who will enjoy this game are kids aged 8-15. People who grew up not experiencing SC4 who have nothing good to compare it with and lack the maturity or perfectionism you get with age. That's not to say that I feel many in that age range would even enjoy it, it's flat out bad.

I had no desire to keep playing past the 1 hour mark. I'm glad it stopped. I hate to say it, I really do, I wanted nothing more than to be totally wrong, to be surprised, to pre order the game.

The game looks bad, the game play is bad, the graphics are bad... bad bad bad.

If I were forced to say anything good about this game I would say that their ideas with having sims go to work / home and being able to follow them was a good one but their focus on that aspect of the game ruined everything else. It is "okay" (not terribly exciting) to watch cars go back and forth.

This is not a new Sim City to me, this more like... Sims 3 City, and done poorly at that.

If you are a Designer, an Architect, an Engineer, a lover of all previous Sim City games and over the age of 15 you will very unlikely enjoy this game.

If I had to pick a price point at which I would purchase this game it would ABSOLUTELY NOT BE $60! I would pay $7-$10. I'm not kidding and I would have reservations about paying that much.

I highly recommend you do NOT pre order this game, if you have, get a refund!. On top of all these issues and the game being bad you are paying $60 and being treated like a pirate. Terrible. These guys should be ashamed of what they have made and how bad they have taken for granted the community that supported them for so long. As much as I disliked what I saw before playing the Beta I feel duped, the game is much worse than I expected in every aspect. I feel they took the best they could in screen shots and video and enhanced them to fool the customer.

[Sunbird 2]

Very negative post.

But in my opinion most of the critic is correct.

But for me there is still hope that they could fix a lot, improve things and maybe give modders a chance.

We will see.

Problem ist i feel realy sick because i aspected much more.

[RyanSim 5]

When i first heard it was getting a reboot I was extremely excited and couldn't wait to get a hold of it. But with every new picture they put on the website my hopes diminished, nothing you have said really surprises me.

I think the only good thing that will come out of this game is the glassbox engine, its an awesome concept but obviously too far ahead of its time. Perhaps in 5 to 10 years we will see the true power of this engine, if you think about it, it has the potential to replicate almost every aspect of the physical world starting from the ground up, resources through all manufacturing layers up to the final product, and then onto the use of that product, repairs, disposal. You then end up with a true simulation of how a city (the World) grows. The impact on spore type evolution based games could be incredible. Glassbox engine plus some kind of mutation manipulator WOWZA.

[oregondude 3]

I would also have to agree with the poster. I turned the graphics all the way up and was still wondering where those screen shots we've seen are coming from. Perhaps the final textures and lighting are only present in the final version? The game looked like sim city 3000 which was totally bland and washed out. The map size was pretty pathetic also. I was able to fill about 1/4 in just an hour play. I was just disappointed in the game. I like the concept, however the execution is poor, unfortunately.

I would also have to agree with the poster. I turned the graphics all the way up and was still wondering where those screen shots we've seen are coming from. Perhaps the final textures and lighting are only present in the final version? The game looked like sim city 3000 which was totally bland and washed out. The map size was pretty pathetic also. I was able to fill about 1/4 in just an hour play. I was just disappointed in the game. I like the concept, however the execution is poor, unfortunately.

[malaric 7]

Very good review and, unfortunately, spot on. I'm still in kinda stunned. I suspected it was going to be bad from everything I've seen and heard and, like this reviewer, wanted very much to be wrong. As it was in the case of "Microsoft Flight", "Sid Meijer's Railroads", etc. it seems like the people who are revisiting and attempting to reinvent games after 5-10 years have no clue what made the previous versions so enjoyable. This new version of Sim City sucks. I'm not going to waste my time listing everything. I went to the Sim City site to vent my anger and it was closed so I came here. I was familiar with this site but I've never posted before.

Catchin 22, it's amazing how similar our experience with this beta has been. I was annoyed with the tutorial, went straight to the graphic settings, etc. I wonder how many others are feeling the same way we are right about now.

I pre-ordered from Amazon to make sure I got a beta key and I went immediately and canceled the order. They wont charge your card till the order ships so, if you did the same thing, it's not too late. I wonder how many will.

[RRtexasranger 45]

8. Graphical slow downs even on a high end system at random times for no apparent reason even though the game looks like it could be ran on a P4 machine from 10 years ago.

What are you running? Because I actually noticed the game ran stunningly fast even with a nearly full city, and max graphics/AA. I felt like my computer could have ran a city twice the current size. I have a high end system, but it isn't state of the art or anything, only a 5870/i860,

But I couldn't agree more with the town sizes being WAY to small. And Catchin hit the nail on the head. This is a town simulator, not a city simulator. There is virtually no room to expand at all. I wish I could get all creative and decorative with the curved roads, but most of the time I don't want to because needlessly curving them takes up too much of the precious land.

[anandus 15]

8. Graphical slow downs even on a high end system at random times for no apparent reason even though the game looks like it could be ran on a P4 machine from 10 years ago.

What are you running? Because I actually noticed the game ran stunningly fast even with a nearly full city, and max graphics/AA. I felt like my computer could have ran a city twice the current size.

Same here.

I have a medium system*, but it runs fine, with everything maxed out (ultra, AA, etc) it's as smooth as a puppy, even with a full map.

Although, must be said that I would've liked to have seen higher resolution textures. Bricks aren't 'bricky' enough, etc. Love the lightinng, though.

(* quad-core 2,5Ghz, 7Gb RAM, nVidia 460 1Gb)

[magicrobbie 77]

Great review, thanks. Sums up my impression/opinion as well. It might be very negative but I hope our complaints will make EA listen. The game has promise and can be fixed (if EA delays the release). EA - there is consensus here - long-time players are really unhappy and they are all complaining about the same points. And if we all sound too pessimistic - more than 10 years have passed since the last Sim City and technology has made incredible progress in the meantime. This game should feel like an iPhone5 vs a cell phone from 2003 (oh wow, some actually had text messaging! - but it doesn't.

[Catchin22 299]

No idea why it slowed down but it did it again recently while only playing for a bit. My specs on this machine

i7 920 @ 3.8ghz, GTX 275, 6GB ram.

While I was very hard on this game and I think it's justified I do have to say after playing it more I did find some charm in it. If you play it as a TOWN simulator and play while zoomed in mostly it's definately much more interesting.

That said, I found something about it VERY creepy. I don't know what, or how to explain it... just creepy. Anyone else get that creepy feeling!? Maybe it's just me.

Some things they should really think about fixing...

1. Squared off odd edges on roads, mostly noticed this on dirt roads last I played.

2. Low res ugly textures throughout the game.

3. VERY annoying child like yelling / screaming in residential areas, for the love of god tone that down.

4. Prevent duplicate buildings from building next to each other. I had 3 gas stations on the same block.

5. Better / more building models to prevent duplicates.

If they do this, and people play the game more as a town simulator... Unfortunately even with all the flaws fixed I would never recommend anyone buy it.

[Gokulee40 2]

I enjoyed the beta. I also have to disagree with the price and age range. In my opinion the graphics ate pretty good even though they could be more polished. The city sizes are extremely small, it's almost a joke. The gameplay was very enjoyable however. I just wish they would have 8k by 8k cities.

[vonCork 4]

New account here but I used to download tons of stuff from this site back when I played SC4 constantly - and I agree with the OP 100 percent. I don't care at all about the DRM methods used but the game itself looked bad visually. I'm really glad they had this beta because I would have wasted 60 dollars.

[BeanBoy 10]

Yeah... The Simish language drives me nuts! It just reinforces the fact that Maxis is aiming for a younger audience.

Probably reflected by all the dumbing down...

[G Parent 6]

Just played the Beta for one hour. I have to agree with the reviewer: this game has some major flaws. I've been playing since SimCity Classic and I don't think this game is worth 60$.

I was able to fill 3/4 of this way too small map in one hour. Total population was about 16k. This is SimTown, not Simcity. Zoning is awkward.

However, the abilty to upgrade some traditionnal buildings is a big plus. Simulation is also more complex and I appreciate it. It ran perfectly on my computer (Acer i7-970). No glitches, but poor graphics.

Sorry guys at Maxis, but I don't think I will buy this game unless you add more features and much bigger maps. I don't care for regions or multiplayers. I just want a game like Sim City 4, but with some improvements.

[someperson 1]

After having played the 'beta' for my hour, I must admit that I both love the game, and yet, dislike it. (And not just because it was really, really slow on my laptop.) I just mostly wish that the game had more options for things like the power and water buildings, and I would hope that more options for such buildings come about soon.

Hopefully, there will also be better graphics sometime. Well, I can always hope for this anyway.

Anyway, the 'beta' seemed alright, I'd give it a 6/10. The game could give me something to do in my spare time. May not be as great as Simcity 4, but I can still see myself playing this every now and then.

[Zakkho 3]

I feel exactly the same way about this, though I started in the early early 90s (got a hold of simcity on snes then) and I am just under 30. Anyways, this feels like simtown 2... Nothing in it reminded me of a true Simcity game, as it was so dumbed down that it reminded me of watching my sister play simtown growing up cause simcity 2k was out of her league.

Anyways, I cancelled my pre-order through amazon, even though I used a $10 promo credit and they were offering a $20 credit with pre-order effectively making it $30 off for me and I still didn't want this garbage.

I also experienced minor slow downs, with my 3570k sitting @ 4.5ghz and a 7870 with the typical 8gb of ram (low voltage samsung). The graphics were abhorrent, watching the cops battle the robbers in the tutorial reminded me of the sprites while playing commodore 64 games on my dads c64. They dropped the ball big time on this. To me this is a larger failure than simcity4 was, I remember signing up for waiting lists and chances to try it in 2002 from the college library pcs, though I think mods made that one semi playable for me.

I would score this in the 20s range on a scale of 100. Stay away at any price above $9.99, and even then only get it if you have a curiosity...

[RRtexasranger 45]

I've played through now several times and I 'm going to give my opinion:

1) I simply don't see how anyone can call this game ugly or have performance issues with the game. I think the graphics are gorgeous (or you guys sure everything is turned up to max? Hint: "High isn't the highest setting, Ultra is.") I have had absolutely no performance problems on my 5870/i7 860, but people with better computers are telling me they are having slowdowns. If you are having bad performance even with a ticket, I'd submit a ticket, it may be possible performance may vary on a GPU by GPU basis, and is something they can optimize. I also don't see any problems with the lighting/models/AA. It sounds like some people may have a problem with the art style rather than the actual graphic quality.

2) The city is small. VERY small. So small in fact, that it is by far the biggest downfall of the entire game. Two or three times in my run thrus I was able to completely fill up the map twice. Part of the reason for Glassbox was that it could help you pull you in and make you feel like you were watching a real life city, but that effect is completely ruined by having a city with absolutely no sprawl in it whatsoever. It seems like instead of spending hours perfecting one, giant city. Maxis wants us to spend a little bit of time in several cities. Horrible call imo.

3) Roads were done much better than in Cities XL, the guides were pretty useful on occasion for me. My only complaint is that we can't insert highways (which is a consequence of small maps)

As its own game, it isn't too bad. 7.8/10 maybe. It will definitely keep you entertained, but I don't think it will have anywhere near the replayability of SC4, even without mods. If you play the game expecting a true successor to SC4, you will be very disappointed.

[Catchin22 299]

I'd say the graphics are FAR from gorgeous, there's such a lack of detail and care put into stuff like signage and most other textures... I would say any performance problems are probably more CPU than GPU, those with older i7s which perform lower on single thread tasks may have some slow downs due to glassbox, I suspect at least.

The city is super small, if you play it as a town simulator... its not bad. If they marketed it as a town simulator, put more effort into polishing the game up and dropped the DRM I would consider buying it.

[MapleNormandy 6]

Have to agree with OP here... I've always had an outlook of cautious optimism for the new SimCity but after playing the beta there are just some fundamental flaws in its design that make me think they were going for a SimTown feel rather than a SimCity feel. Glassbox is pretty amazing, which is probably the only thing I enjoyed outright about the beta. Extendable buildings were also pretty fun, but since they made the buildings irregularly shaped they tended to leave lots of open grass around them. The curved roads are fun, but the total lack of space and boring maps (though I hope that changes by release...) make the curved roads pretty useless. My verdict: "Maybe the sequel will be SimCity again". Or alternatively, "Maybe when Maxis gets creative control back, it will be SimCity again".

[CaptCity 4,694]

A reminder to stay on topic... This is a discussion of the beta experience. Off topic comments removed....

[Aragorn 21]

Completely agree with the first comment.

One hour was more than enough to see the potential and quality of the game and it's bad.

Surely there are some nice things, but the size of the map and overall restrictions are killing the game.

Even if they had 10 Ocean Quedley guys they couldn't convince me to buy this game.

If we look at it from a different, new perspective, as a stand alone game, it is not bad. Nice little Facebook like game to play and share with your "friends".

Can't play CXL because of lag, can't play new SC5 because it's boring, guess i'm gonna go back to SC4

[Duvad 26]

The graphics on Ultra completely destroy SC4, btw. The game engine that includes the lighting, tilt-shift, and all the detail that is included at ground-level makes SC4's sprites look exactly what they are... decade-old graphics.

SimCity pre-release

SimCity 4 pre-release

[JaniceHope 0]

Played the beta liked and disliked it on parts.

Most of the reason that I disliked is that this "one hour experience" didn't give me enough time to explore what is possible. I wanted to see as much as possible so I tried to make the city big. In hour I about covered 3/4 of the land and had about 17k inhabitants... mid rise buildings etc... but it was all rush... rush... rush... make money make it fast... of course i could have slowed down... but as mentioned above i want to see as much as possible and try as much features as possible... so in the end it felt like nothing at all. One hour is not enough to tour the game. Even if many features aren't available in the beta version. Which gave me the impression that a lot is hidden or to come... this spoils the fun given that you seem to just scratch the surface of the game.

To me the gaming experience of simcity is to run it on slow speed enjoying everything unfold... watch my sims, the buildings, ponder the stats etc... plan ahead for the next projects... all that was for me not possible in that beta... which is why I am very disapointed by the beta.

[Aragorn 21]

@Duvad

You are talking about the graphics and how great they are compared to 10 year old game.

[Catchin22 299]

Something else you should know, if you want to name your city "Sucksville" Forget it, expect to have it changed to "**********"

I'm not kidding.

[Hoipus 292]

You have to be creative with your names. I made a city shaped like a giant butt and named it "Lunar Colony."

[paeng 2,510]

You are talking about the graphics and how great they are compared to 10 year old game.

Yeah, that irks me as well - what's the point of complaining how "bad" vanilla SC4 has looked 10 years ago? This is the year 2013 and I'm looking at SC4 now, and I expected SC2013 to take it as far, if not beyond the current look and visual appearance.

click for full size

Not only for the green stuff, but generally for textures, building styles, details and so on...

[Charizard 284]

The graphics on Ultra completely destroy SC4, btw. The game engine that includes the lighting, tilt-shift, and all the detail that is included at ground-level makes SC4's sprites look exactly what they are... decade-old graphics.

SimCity pre-release

SimCity 4 pre-release

No one here is saying that SC2013 graphics are worse than SC4 graphics. Why would you even think such a thing? Of course SC2013 graphics will be better since SimCity 4 is 10 years old now. What we're complaining about is the quality and the style of graphics. SC4 had top-notch 2D graphics and a very beautiful style at the time of its release. Compare that to the graphics of SC2013. I don't know about you but my beta doesn't look anything like the pre-release screenshot you posted. Basically this game looks like it could have been made in 2008. I have a very powerful system (GTX 670, 8 gb RAM, i7 3770) and even with everything on max the game looked very ugly. Even with anti-aliasing at its max the buildings had choppy edges and the Sims looked like stiff mannequins. Furthermore, the terrain itself looked very bland. There were no animals, nicely modeled trees/bushes, etc. at all. When you zoom in at street level some of the buildings appear very blurry and for a lot of them there are no props/visuals in an otherwise empty lot. These graphics could have been done in 2008, plain and simple. We all know the only reason EA/Maxis made the graphics this way is so that online multiplayer would be as stable as possible. EA's philosophy: Sacrifice visual quality for the sake of online gameplay so our game can reach the greatest number of customers. Let's not forget that the style of the game is not that good either. It's very cartoonish and it honestly looks like they took some of the models from the Sims 3. Why would you try and make a city simulation game look like a cartoon? The models in general are very bland and remind me of SC3000. The game is clearly marketed towards a different age group than the previous games.

[pyanodon 218]

SimCity 4 pre-release

That buildings are great.... look the details... wow, imagine that in 3D.

[ars4314 4]

I never-ever posted on simtropolis, I usually just download what I need I play SC4. I played the beta too, and I agree with most things Catchin22 wrote. But I can turn my back to all those things, if they just made the maps bigger! The modders will fix the rest, when and if EA enables modding. My 2 cents.

[London-b 90]

I think 2x2k would be ok if it were an all tiled region.