Just Played Beta

[Haljackey 17,355]

Can't say much based on the EULA other than 'I really like it', but I really need more than an hour to form an opinion of the game.

It's ridiculously easy to stay in the black, and there are still a lot of bugs to be worked out which is understandable. I had two suggestions for them so far:

1. There is no windowed fullscreen mode. I have two monitors and like to alt-tab the game to use something like an internet browser on my secondary monitor. Fullscreen minimizes the game and windowed doesn't give me the full experience. Most modern games have this like Starcraft II, and even old games like SimCity 4 were capable of this.

2. There needs to be an undo button. While this function was never in any previous SimCity title, there is no save feature this time around... Anything you do is permanent due to always-online. If I made a huge mistake in earlier titles I would quit without saving... That fail-safe is no longer there.

Everything else I have to say about it has pretty much been said before.

Oh, and based on the what I've experienced in the beta so far, SC13 will need a NAM of it's own.

[woodstok 5]

After having played the beta for 2 or 3 hours now I'm going to have to admit defeat and say that I will not be buying the game.

For me its one simple reason: the cities are to small.

I've been playing simcity 4 for years, on and off, and to try and play simcity on a tile size this small will be just way to frustrating.

I was looking at the mass transit options in game and there are trains and buses street cars and all sorts ... If I was a sim I could walk the length of the city that I would be able to build. it should really be called "sim-small-town" instead.

to be honest I'm just very disappointed

Paul.

[Cob92 360]

I would say that I found it thoroughly enjoyable, and quite challenging actually. Only time will tell if the challenge holds up, but this new SimCity so far seems to be deeper and more engaging than SC4 (especially in the trailer park/small town phase). What it has lost in breadth, it makes up for in depth.

The other way around more likely. It's got a wider perspective, but has lost depth. Both in features and in content. But as mentioned before, that is why DLC was invented. To buy the full game

But honestly, you find it challenging?

If you actually try to build up your city, yes. I found it more difficult to get zones to upgrade wealth and density than in SC4; they made land value hard to raise like in SC3K, and if land values stay low your city will remain a slum. The city also throws more problems at you as it grows, whereas in SC4 things are pretty stable once you plop everything. Maybe it's just because I have 10 years experience playing SC4+ mods, but I find this game to be more difficult than SC4 (which in my opinion is the easiest SimCity).

I also appreciate the fact that this game doesn't lag at all. My biggest gripe, besides map size, is that the zoning tool does not give you any clear idea as to whether zones you draw will actually be buildable.

[Trioxis 32]

My biggest gripe, besides map size, is that the zoning tool does not give you any clear idea as to whether zones you draw will actually be buildable.

This is one of my concerns as well. I had zoned a small enclosed area for residential, only to notice later on no houses were being build there. I think they should go back to how it was displayed in the early strategy vids they did.

[Gurning_Chimp 398]

Remember it's still a beta. Yet again it's released in a month.

That thing was not a beta. Betas aren't released with limits and with so little time to launch. That there was a marketing stunt at best and a demo at worst.

[craigio86 12]

I've played three one hour games and here are my initial impressions.

Positive

I found the game engaging. Data views are much more intuitive. It's good that city services no longer just need to be duplicated in order to achieve citywide coverage - building additions are a much better way (although it's sometimes frustrating being unable to further develop say, a school, because there's not enough space around where you placed it).

Negative

This is a city/town/region simulator - in no way, shape or form is it a city designer in the way previous titles have been. The biggest flaw in my eyes is the zoning system. I never felt I had any overall control over how my city would develop and found it difficult to plan and design. The new way of just dragging zones along the edges of roads, with no real indicator of how much space the resulting buildings will occupy makes building in anything other than square blocks a headache. Furthermore, as density increases and larger buildings replace smaller ones, existing blocks no longer have buildings facing both roads. I filled the map, but still my 'city' felt like little more than a mixed-land-use neighbourhood. I suppose it's difficult to establish whether full region play will make this feel any different though. I struggled to keep residential, commercial and industrial districts seperate, as expanding more than a couple of blocks in any direction resulted in them bleeding together. Again, the map size might not have been such a problem if it was easier to pack streets tightly.

Although the graphics were good looking, the overall look of cities leaves a lot to be desired. Zoom down close and, if you've used curvy roads, the empty spaces are glaringly obvious. At street level - or as close as you can get - nothing looks appealing. Buildings just appear to be randomly plonked anywhere. Honestly, I think I would have liked it a lot more if the grid was still here. I suppose this is something that would get better through practice though.

[Cob92 360]

My biggest gripe, besides map size, is that the zoning tool does not give you any clear idea as to whether zones you draw will actually be buildable.

This is one of my concerns as well. I had zoned a small enclosed area for residential, only to notice later on no houses were being build there. I think they should go back to how it was displayed in the early strategy vids they did.

I had the same problem, which led to the change from small blocks at the beginning of my city to big blocks at the end. It also led to wasted space in my city, which I don't like. Maxis needs to add something that shows how much land you need to leave open for development.

[flyer2359 92]

@Craigio

I agree about the zoning, it's really hard to tell how big or small a block needs to be to fit in the maximum amount of buildings. I don't know why they didn't just stick with the larger zoning tiles like we saw in gameplay video #1.

[anandus 15]

I'm fascinated by all the negative reviews.

I've played it eight hours now (eight times an hour) and am thoroughly enjoying it.

And I'm not a newcomer to the game, I've played SC4 thoroughly.

I don't feel it's particularly shallow and even with the limited possibilities in this beta I found it quite versatile. I've made different cities/districts from rural-ish stuff to more city-like stuff.

[Conny 7]

So many threads/ threats about the beta...

As many of you I’m a fan of SimCity since the very beginning. Actually playing the very first SimCity on a friends Atari computer as a kid made me want to have my own computer in order to play it over and over again. And so I played SimCity 4 alot too. My personal focus was more on aesthetics and immersion than on the actual simulation. So I had tons of buildings and mods. You want a vivid city and not a web of lifeless streets. But of course the whole needs to make sense to be fun.

But I stopped playing SC4 a while ago. Reasons were:

· The grid and its limitations

· Massive lag when you fill a big map (even with a very good PC)

· Messed up scale

· Unreasonable traffic and simulation issues (commute, water, population, employment, growth, etc.)

THE NEW SIMCITY!

I have to admit the expectations are damn high, so the chances of a disappointment are huge. Well, after I played the beta several times I can judge it myself. Less hate, more facts – I hope.

User interface:

This was another Issue with SC4, at least when you used additional buildings. The UI became unbearable. Of course this is not the case with the brand new (unfinished) game. I doubt that it is always logical but you get into it easily and it looks very good. Issues I had were:

· No top view when placing building additions (you are forced to iso), which makes it difficult to see were you place something (you might tear down neighboring buildings).

· School bus stop are under education and not transport as other bus stops.

· Data layers can be annoying sometimes as you have to click them away (or esc them)

· Zooming and scrolling needs a little bit of training…

· … so does laying out roads (more of that in transport section)

· No zooming in the region view.

Glassbox

Just a general thought. Why simulate every single sim and every single drop of water when the individual doesn’t matter? I want to build a city not a huge friend zone!

Region:

The region doesn’t look good. It’s a lifeless space with some miles of highway, rail tracks and a ship or a plane occasionally. There are only three colors: green (grass and some rare trees), blue (awful animated water) light brown (rock or sand of all rather vertical surfaces).

· As mentioned often before the space between cities (or work sites) kills a lot of immersion.

· Entering a city though works fine and smooth, as does leaving it.

· You can’t really zoom or scroll in the region but I don’t want to see it anyway.

City:

As said a billion times before the city is rather a town, and not a big one. Would be nice to have at least different measurements than squares only (e.g. long stretched coast town). And let the user place the city within the region individually. I love that you can see beyond your city limits. A feature I always wanted.

Economics/ cash flow:

No worries about that. The money comes in much quicker than you can spend it. If you struggle anyway get a loan or three. They pay back automatically over time or manually all at once if you want. This is no challenge at all, but I expect this to change for the final version. It’s just far too easy. Some goes for happiness.

Time:

There are three speed setting and pause in which you can build. There is night and day but 30 days and nights don’t make a month. But a month is used in some cost examples. So I don’t know how this works. Actually I count time to scale in general and I guess the way SimCity handles time leads to some distortion in the overall gameplay (e.g. traffic: cars per hour on certain stretch of road).

Data visualistion:

The data layers are a huge plus, they look good and they give detailed information. Well, not to detailed, because absolute numbers are missing often. I have no Idea how much jobs a factory provides or how many people live in a certain house. I get good looking statistics but no actual numbers on many things. And I have no timeline or graphs, e.g. how certain indicators develop over time. Maybe these come with more departments of your city hall. For example I can only see how many students are at my school right now and how may were there the day before. I have no idea how may cars use a street per day, which is essential I modern day plannings. I only see traffic jam if I set my alarm clock for the rush hour in the morning or evening (actually there is a cashier sound when it strikes 6 am and people go to work).

Transport:

Roads are even more important than before. They determine the density of the zones you place along them. You can have a traditional grid, or free hand curvy roads, or a mixture of both. This is great! Optional are grid lines which are supposed to help you to find the perfect layout in terms of using space. This needs a little bit of training though. Laying out roads is not so smooth in general. More options on this would be nice. Some layout don’t work (not always for an obvious reason), intersections work for 4 roads max (and look pretty basic), some angles don’t work. Road transitions from one type to another are not done yet. You can up- or downgrade within the same road width. You have no further control over roads, even though they are supposed to be so important:

· No one way

· No turning lanes

· No bus lanes

· No bike lanes (no bikes at all?!)

· No pedestrian zones

· No over or under passes

Cars behave strange as they don’t cross the opposite lane in order to enter a building. They do u-turns at intersections, or road ends in order to enter the building from the correct side. This leads to weird traffic.

Well, this was discussed here often before and maybe that’ll get some love in the future (Rush hour 2013?). As there were no other ways of transport in the beta, I can’t tell anything about them.

Buildings/ zones:

I can’t say much about the variety as I could not build that much within an hour. But it seems as if it is good enough to fill the small spot. The textures are plain and simple, a little bit too clean for me. The additions to the ploppables are a great feature, though its placing isn’t (yet). The placing in general is not as smooth as expected, as you have to be very careful not to tear down any neighboring buildings.

Zoning can be a little sticky but is a primitive job. Just put a stripe of R,C or I next to the road, that’s it. The road type determines the density. That means, no high dens at a small road, and no direct control to keep low dens low at bigger roads. In addition to that:

· Neither control over the depth of the zone

· nor to which road (if placed at intersections) it should be aligned to.

· Lots of space in between buildings which kills any feel of urbanity.

Parks:

This feature is certainly not finished yet. The look and the way you place them is just terrible. You can place one piece of park and then you can add more of the same type the same way you add more components to other ploppables. But the pieces barely fit together and you end up with a bunch squares which fit in nowhere and look awful. The pieces itself too! Poor ground, huge benches and a bbq lodge of epic proportions .

Parks were an easy way to fill up some space in SC4. And they gave your city a nice look. This is not the case here. It looks bad and instead of filling some leftover space you waste more of it with hideous constructions.

My suggestion: paint parks! Paint a ground (like in CXL) by marking an individual space, put some paths in (e.g.like you use for windfarm) and place trees, benches and what not. This way you can fill a lot of the space which you will inevitably have left.

Disasters:

I had a tornado once. Looked nice and teard down a few houses, but not too much damage. If you have a fire brigade it shouldn’t be a problem. Three more disasters should be in the final game. I guess its meteor, aliens and earthquake. I expect the last one to be much more challenging, maybe it has even region wide effect or changes the landscape a bit. But I don’t know that.

Over all:

The biggest issue I personally have with the new SimCity is that you end up with a bunch of buildings rather than something called a city/town. As a European I would expect a higher density and some streets with wall to wall buildings (not just bigger single buildings). A higher degree of urbanity! But that does not happen, not with a square grid layout and especially not with a freer road layout.

I am gald I could get my hands on the beta. But now I know that the waiting for the simulation of my dreams isn’t over yet. But I have hopes, that Maxis (and the community) will improve it. Therefore the online feature is great. And the groundwork is not bad.

[SirChick 184]

Can we build a city in a region with others? If not that kinda defeats the point of a stress test.

[Don Bananos 28]

Can we build a city in a region with others? If not that kinda defeats the point of a stress test.

No. Only SinglePlayer (online required) in the "beta".

I would have liked to played a little with some friends, but not possible...

[Spatzimaus 77]

Maxis needs to add something that shows how much land you need to leave open for development.

They did. That's what the guide lines are for; when you draw a road, it'll show lines for the optimum spacing on that road density (i.e., where parallel roads would have lots on opposite sides of a block almost touch). Now, it looked to me like this screwed up road upgrading, since the 4-lane roads would use larger lots than their 2-lane predecessors, so if you set up a grid of 2-lane roads and then started upgrading you'd end up wasting a lot of space. But that's not all that bad, actually; in SC4 you'd make large blocks and fill the middles with parks, but in this game the parks need road access as well. So if you find you've got an area that can't get developed because a building on the opposite side of the block is just extending too far, then it gives you a nice little spot for placing value-increasing parks and such.

My main complaint was that getting it to SHOW those guide lines was a bit painful; they had a tendency to disappear when you were about to place the road. But they worked most of the time, and it avoided exactly the problem you were worried about.

[kellyboywonder79 15]

Just finished the tutorial and first hour of game play, and my immediate impression is "underwhelmed". When time is up, they direct you to the order page with $60/$80. My response? No way is this game worth $60/$80. I wasn't left wanting more time. I felt like I had figured out the whole game in that one hour. Overall there is something missing here. Is it a sandbox option? Better/More transit options?

Love:

Upgradeable buildings

Dislike:

Overall look - from screenshots, I didn't think it looked too bad. On my computer with high graphics settings, it looked terrible. Cartoonish and childlike, not like a miniature model city I was promised. It looks nothing like tilt-shift photography/video.

Zoning - It's too difficult to tell where buildings will be built and in what orientation. I much prefer seeing the borders of my zones laid out for me, instead of being lost in the green nothingness that is your city site. I want my grid back! aka: "the non-grid hasn't been implemented well".

Multi-player - it wasn't even in the beta and it's the major selling point to the game? This proves to me that it's not necessary. (Conversely, this may prove that it is necessary since I found the solo play to be so boring.)

Navigation - needs improvement. It's not bad, but it's not good either.

Complexity - lacking. I agree with others who have said this game has more in common with Societies than SC4... it also felt a lot like the Cities XL Beta game play without the trading system fiasco. FWIW: after playing that beta, I chose not to buy Cities XL.

After playing this beta, I have decided not to purchase Sim City - at least not until MAJOR expansions are included.

[pyanodon 218]

Good:

- Love the upgradeable buildings!

- Simulation in general.

- Animation on buildings.

Bad:

- City size.

- region view.

- I could kill someone for some under/over passes with that roads. When you fill your small square you see how plane is your city.

- No preview of how big the lot will be when upgrade.

- WHY-PARKS-NEED-TO-BE-CONNECTED-TO-ROADS????

[Cob92 360]

It would be much better if the servers actually worked. Most of the bugs and crashes I encounter are directly caused by the server giving out in the middle of gameplay.

[SirChick 184]

I like how bus stops dont take up land you place them on the roads. The parks should be not road related, and i think the plops for casino hotels don't need to be on the road, just one road entrance is all is needed to access them i think.

[commanderkai 38]

I see a lot of potential, but yeah, the tile sizes are incredibly small. You can fill up that space rather quickly, maybe after two hours in its current state. It just feels so restricting, especially as you can see so much untapped land all around your city. It would be nice to have some of the territory annexed into your city as you expand, but right now it's more like you're playing a very complex SimTown.

I do like the add-ons for the various buildings, though. It's certainly makes sense to not need to build service structures all over the place to give your city coverage. I do think they should show the amount of land that the modules might need when you're first building the structure, instead of hoping that you gave it enough space while you add more zoning. Plus, as others mentioned, the zoning leaves a lot to be desired, as you're not 100% sure if what you zoned is adequate for development.

No issues with the online aspect. It did mention that I was disconnected from the servers, but I wasn't booted, so that's a nice relief.

So, I'll probably hold off on pre-ordering or buying it at release, unless they tell us straight that they will have larger tiles at the start. I really think it'd be a lot of fun, albeit a bit easy. I didn't mind that as much, though.

[Lazybones 4]

So many threads/ threats about the beta...

As many of you I’m a fan of SimCity since the very beginning. Actually playing the very first SimCity on a friends Atari computer as a kid made me want to have my own computer in order to play it over and over again. And so I played SimCity 4 alot too. My personal focus was more on aesthetics and immersion than on the actual simulation. So I had tons of buildings and mods. You want a vivid city and not a web of lifeless streets. But of course the whole needs to make sense to be fun.

But I stopped playing SC4 a while ago. Reasons were:

· The grid and its limitations

· Massive lag when you fill a big map (even with a very good PC)

· Messed up scale

· Unreasonable traffic and simulation issues (commute, water, population, employment, growth, etc.)

THE NEW SIMCITY!

I have to admit the expectations are damn high, so the chances of a disappointment are huge. Well, after I played the beta several times I can judge it myself. Less hate, more facts – I hope.

Over all:

The biggest issue I personally have with the new SimCity is that you end up with a bunch of buildings rather than something called a city/town. As a European I would expect a higher density and some streets with wall to wall buildings (not just bigger single buildings). A higher degree of urbanity! But that does not happen, not with a square grid layout and especially not with a freer road layout.

I am gald I could get my hands on the beta. But now I know that the waiting for the simulation of my dreams isn’t over yet. But I have hopes, that Maxis (and the community) will improve it. Therefore the online feature is great. And the groundwork is not bad.

I completely agree on this fact. It does not feel like a real city anymore. More like a bunch of building.

Guess i should pick up SC4 again after over 10 years of absence....

[The_City_Builder 299]

I think I'm still going to buy it.

I love this simulation part of it, and it looks great. The city tiles are much, much too small though. It's a new engine though, and it still needs optimizing, so I'll give them that one...

[thebeasle 20]

City size kills it for me. They'll probably release a mega-cities expansion pack for $50 in six months that will expand the city size. Right now it's about 2 square kilometers. I found that to be about 10 city blocks by 10 city blocks in the beta. You can't do any real urban planning with a map that small.

Might take another look when/if the price drops and city size is increased.

[StanislausBabalistic 24]

Yeah, that zoning is a real killer. I don't quite get what it's going for; are you just zoning street frontage or something? Much preferred the SC4 system which was both more realistic and much more useful (actual lots, for starters). And tying density to street type is just ridiculous. I really don't understand what they were trying to do with that one. I had incredible amounts of wasted space when zoning for industry, especially. I mean overall, the design concepts on display here were incomprehensible. Has the dev team ever considered how a city is actually built and managed?

I found it much harder to lay down a grid of streets than I'd expected...maybe a firmer snap-to is in order? I laid my grand boulevard coming off the highway and then some perpendicular side streets, only to realize that my 5th Avenue had somehow become more of a Broadway when viewing isometrically. Not as intuitive as I'd hoped.

But mostly, as others have stated, I felt entirely like I was playing SimSuburb. If this is more or less all we get, it's like players are forced to design every city like Albuquerque or Olympia, Washington, or Buffalo (and here I was worried we'd be locked into Phoenix. Ha! Phoenix is much too large geographically to be reproduced in SimCity). Overly broad streets, mid- and low-rise buildings, entirely car-centric, and no sense of place whatsoever. None of the cities of the east coast - let alone those of Europe - are reproducible here.

It was going to be for the lack of transit anyways, but after playing this, I know that I'll stick with SC4.

[Mikie 9]

Well I've played a few hours of the Beta.. and I must say - I have emailed Origin to see if I can get a refund for my pre-order. Will watch the game develope closely and will most likley buy the game in a year or two when the price drops.

For me.. just not worth 59.99. Reminds me too much of Cities XL Reboot ...

Will officially review more once the green light is given.

**dissapointed**

Yeah, that zoning is a real killer. I don't quite get what it's going for; are you just zoning street frontage or something? Much preferred the SC4 system which was both more realistic and much more useful (actual lots, for starters). And tying density to street type is just ridiculous. I really don't understand what they were trying to do with that one. I had incredible amounts of wasted space when zoning for industry, especially. I mean overall, the design concepts on display here were incomprehensible. Has the dev team ever considered how a city is actually built and managed?

I found it much harder to lay down a grid of streets than I'd expected...maybe a firmer snap-to is in order? I laid my grand boulevard coming off the highway and then some perpendicular side streets, only to realize that my 5th Avenue had somehow become more of a Broadway when viewing isometrically. Not as intuitive as I'd hoped.

But mostly, as others have stated, I felt entirely like I was playing SimSuburb. If this is more or less all we get, it's like players are forced to design every city like Albuquerque or Olympia, Washington, or Buffalo (and here I was worried we'd be locked into Phoenix. Ha! Phoenix is much too large geographically to be reproduced in SimCity). Overly broad streets, mid- and low-rise buildings, entirely car-centric, and no sense of place whatsoever. None of the cities of the east coast - let alone those of Europe - are reproducible here.

It was going to be for the lack of transit anyways, but after playing this, I know that I'll stick with SC4.

took all the words out of my mouth!!

[CaptCity 4,868]

As the title says, this topic is for discussing experiences with the beta. Posts that do not concern the beta discussion, but issues all ready discussed in other topics, will be moved or removed.

[coolwiththecool2 827]

Before I start, I just want to say, that I think a lot of you will like the beta. I was also one of the people who were dissing the game, but the way it works you don't really think about all the removed features (except agriculture, that would've been useful). And I also don't want to get into too much detail and ruin the game.

Performance- Pretty Good- 9/10

Performance was very good! My computer is new, but cheap. The processor is horrible since its only 1.3 Ghz, but the RAM is good at 3 GB. The requirements said the game needed a 2.0 Ghz processor, but the game did well, but with a catch. When I was done installing the game (only took about 10 minutes), the game told me my graphics card was newer than expected but not very good (not exact words), so it turned all the graphics setting on low. Go to the Graphics paragraph for the rest.

Gameplay Difficulty- Easy to Normal- 8/10

The gameplay was relatively easy, with some hard spots here and there. The financial system is great, much better than SC4. The data and data maps are very detailed, and can help you out if you are having trouble managing your city. The game is much easier, partially because the performance is better, and the city tiles are small, but aren't/don't feel as small as SC4 medium tiles. The roads are also pretty good, and the options you have can make your city unique from any other city (in the region that is). And it LOOKS like your city can have a population of:

50,000-75,000 if mostly low dense

100,000-125,000 if mostly medium dense

150,000-? if mostly high dense

100,000 if density varies

Gameplay "Fun-ness"- Pretty Good- 10/10

The game is actually very fun,all the challenges you face, and the fact that you don't have those annoying dialog boxes popping up about tiny little problems, some which didn't make sense (I am talking about SimCity 4 btw). And unlike SC4, it isn't as easy for your city to go bankrupt, and the fact that there are other cities in the region mean you don't have to provide your city with every single service, though you should unless you are really desperate for money.

Graphics- Good- 7/10 (Played on low graphics settings)

As far from my experience, the graphics were still pretty good considering the fact all the graphics were on low except for shadows, the only difference was that is looked a little cartoonist, which I don't mind, and at least it hardly lags compared to SC4. If I had a better graphics card the rating would probably be a 9/10. The game does look a little weird when moving around, it looks like lag even though its not. The buildings are very detailed, only wish is that the low density houses would have fences (you guys saw it in earlier pics), since even the smallest of towns still have some kind of fence in the backyard. Overall it does have some of the best graphics I've seen so far in a city-building game.

Very Disappointing Cons

• If you lose internet/origin connection during game, it forces you to quit, no retry option
  
• City Hall isn't unlocked right away
  
• You need parks in order to get medium wealth residents
  
• Cost to build city services and mass transit
  

Some quick, personal experiences based facts

Age Range: 7+

Patience Requirment: Medium (4.5/10)

Minimum Time to start off a city: 5-10 Minutes

Addictiveness Level: High (8/10)

Need for custom content: Medium (5/10)

Need for custom maps: Very High (9/10)

Need for mods: Low (3/10)

Would love your feedback! If you want to know more just ask (some stuff has to stay private though) And please not asking for pictures, you know the answer is no...

[flyer2359 92]

Well... I just had an interesting experience.

The game gave me the 10 minute warning so I decided to disable all of my power, water, etc.

A few minutes later... there was "Breaking News" and a zombie outbreak started 0.o They were actually EATING people and the sims were trying to shoot them down. I recorded it via fraps, I wish I was allowed to upload it... it was very, very interesting haha.

[snwboardn 18]

Well... I just had an interesting experience.

The game gave me the 10 minute warning so I decided to disable all of my power, water, etc.

A few minutes later... there was "Breaking News" and a zombie outbreak started 0.o They were actually EATING people and the sims were trying to shoot them down. I recorded it via fraps, I wish I was allowed to upload it... it was very, very interesting haha.

Ohhh they definitely need to make an exception for that!

[Hoipus 292]

Someone else already posted it on youtube, and Quigley was all like "Cat's out of the bag now" and he posted a link to it on his twitter. I don't think anything bad would happen.

[Charizard 284]

I just finished playing the one hour city right now. Honestly I'm not sure how I feel about this game. I'll try to break down what I think into positives/negatives. First the positives.

Positives

+I'm really liking the glassbox engine. You can really follow where Sims are going to work, shop, school, etc. using the data view. Plus resources like power and water nicely spread out to the rest of the city when you establish them and you can visualize this. The beta didn't allow you to experiment with resources/city specializations but those looked interesting as well. In the tutorial you could follow cops around and see them having a shootout with criminals which was nice. You can also follow trucks transporting goods to shops. It seems like everything shown in game has a purpose and has to originate from somewhere. For example, if you click on a Sim you can see where she's going and where she just came from. Also, power plants actually need resources now like coal to work which you can get yourself if your city has them or buy from a neighbor.

+There is a nice selection of models for the buildings from what I saw. I wasn't able to catch a single instance of a building being repeated in another part of the city which was a big problem for the previous entries in the series.

+You can upgrade buildings to your needs which is nice. For example you can build an extra smokestack on a coal plant to provide more power, or an extra set of classrooms in a school to provide more capacity.

+The game really rewards you for completing missions in-game or tasks set by the Sims. For example, having a certain number of industrial buildings as well as oil in your city allows you to drill for oil and specialize your city. This in turn allows you to sell your oil to neighbors and make a good profit. Once you start producing a lot of barrels of oil, you can build an Oil HQ which brings its own benefits and so on. It's also very easy to become bankrupt in this one by overspending. So you have to spend wisely especially early in the game.

+There is a decent choice of landmarks from what I saw such as the Washington Monument or Empire State Building. However you can only use them if you specialize your city to be cultural.

+Although the online component isn't working in the beta, it seems that the game really emphasizes cooperation between cities. A bunch of cities can work together to build great projects such as an airport. You can buy resources from your neighbors such as coal. Crime and pollution can spread from one city to another. And of course Sims can commute from one city to another.

+The road system is much better in this one. There are so many options for road layouts (square, circular, curved, arcs, etc.) that road layouts are really unlimited.

+Like in Simcity 4, Sims will tell you their complaints/compliments.

Negatives

-There are only 4 disaster options based on the beta. Tornado, aliens, comets, and earthquakes. And I believe you can't save/reload the city once you use disasters because of the constant online component.

-As many others have said the cities are laughably small. They are towns really. You can easily fill up the entire "city" within 1-2 hours of gameplay. This is a major drawback imo.

-Land value is way too easy to improve. All I had to do was place two high wealth parks and mansions started getting built even though my town had no police station or hospital.

-Connecting to the rest of the region is just plain silly. Basically when you start the city out there is already a regional highway that slightly juts into your city. You use this highway to connect to the rest of the region by building a road to it. However, you can't place any highways on your own. Furthermore, because that single stretch of highway is the only way to connect to the region, you basically have to have "dead end" roads at the edges of your city because they can't connect to anything. In Simcity 4 you could simply extend your road into the next city but this is no longer possible.

-There are "dead spaces" between each city. So each city is isolated and surrounded by uninhabited landscape. You won't be able to create seamlessly flowing cities like in SC4.

-No subways but instead they put in street cars lol.

-The graphics, although colorful, are not up to 2013 standards. They honestly look like 2008 graphics. I'm not sure why they did this (maybe cause it's multiplayer) but even with everything set to max (and I have a very powerful system) the game looked at least 4-5 years old.

-The Sims appear very awkward when you zoom in to them. They move like stiff mannequins. There are also various clipping issues associated with them as well since they seem to move through eachother and through doors.

-The new zoning system is horrible. Basically, there are no low, medium or high density zones anymore. Instead, the density of the zone gets determined by the road its next to (i.e. low, medium, or high density road). Also, when you zone something the zone only occupies a small square next to the road even if the building that will be built from it will be much bigger than that tiny square. This makes it very hard and painful to plan and build grid style cities. And as a result you'll probably also have large patches of grass in the middle of city blocks.

-There is very little room for customization/modding from what I saw. Besides the obvious fact that you are online, there are other major obstacles I mentioned before. The lack of terraforming and pre-placed inter-regional highways will make it very hard if not impossible to make maps. Custom buildings might not be possible as well since everyone in the region would have to own them.

Overall the game doesn't really feel like Simcity if you catch my drift. There are some very nice simulation elements but the aesthetic and customizable touch is lacking. Like the guy above me nicely put it "This is a city/town/region simulator - in no way, shape or form is it a city designer in the way previous titles have been." They took out way too many things in order to make it a multiplayer game as well as friendly to newer players. It's really "SimTown" or SimCity on facebook. On its own the game is okay or even good. However it's definitely not worthy enough to be a successor to the gem that is SC4. It's very nice for newcomers to the series but veterans will be disappointed. There is really no room for customization either which is a major drawback. I'm definitely not going to pick it up on release day but will wait for the price to get to the $20-30 mark. I'd give this game a mediocre rating of 6/10 if it were released today. If they make the changes/additions to make it closer to Simcity 4 I believe it can be a very great game but I don't see that happening anytime soon. In the mean time though I will stick with SC4 and the great community it has spawned at this website.

[rybolton 135]

Hey everyone, haven't seen you all in a long time...

The beta is very fun and I really am enjoying it. I've played through the 1 hour time probably 6 times now and each time I learn something new or do something different. I'm always disappointed when my time is up and I get booted to the start screen.

I share several criticisms with many of you, the city size is too small, the online requirement is asinine (what will keep me from buying it), some of the gameplay has been dumbed down a bit, etc.

I really did enjoy the modular buildings, city specialties seem fun, the removal of some of the micro management is nice, I didn't really enjoy adjusting sliders for coverage sizes in SC4.