Simcity reviews are in: the embargo is lifted!

[Xenocity 343]

This morning EA lifted the embargos on the media regarding Simcity.

 

The reviews are slowly trickling in.

 

Polygon gave it a 9.5/10

Venturebeat gave it a 90/100

Eurogamer (Sweden) 100/100

XGN (Dutch) 88

GameReactor (Danish) 80

Gamer.no (Norweign) 80
 

 

A fantastic city simulation that meets all expectations. So perfectly
balanced it makes it easy to pick up and enjoy, but proves to be very
difficult to master. Funny, addictive and with great options for both
co-operative and competitive online play - Sim City is a clear candidate
for Game of the Year.

 

Simcity 2013 has a metascore of 90 (as of today)

Simcity 4 received a Metacritic score of 84.

 

Before someone screams EA bought the reviews, The big Medal of Honor reboot from Fall was reviewed horribly.

 

JeuxVideo.fr 7/10 (not counted in Gamesrankings and Metacritics due to credibility)

[shorty2 94]

From the VentureBeat one: "Limited expansion options and limited flexibility" (actually bold). I think that underscores what many people were feeling from watching the videos and playing the beta. The bit about not being able to power a building on a small island because no bridge could be made to connect also highlights why power lines were infact useful, which is a real shame because the small islands were always nice to build something a bit special out the way from the major city bit.

 

I also agree with the comment made by a reader: It's too limited and has little recourse for a community to grow around it like SimCity 4... Your review was detailed and demonstrated what SC4 fans were afraid of...EA ruining the experience. Devoted fans loved Sandboxing even with regions. They also loved full on modding. EA will discourage this since each mod or add-on could be the source of micro-payments. SC4 fans did this in the past becaused they loved it. I'm worried for the franchise. SC4 may be the last great city simulation."

 

I think this comes down to EA being more concerned with piracy and copyright than allowing the creativity of the public to flourish, which is a corporate thing and not just limited to EA in particular.

[nhgriffith 179]

And yet VentureBeat gave it 90/100, which means despite these pitfalls, the game is extraordinarily enjoyable to play.

[Ma8thew 77]

Polygon also said that they would re-score it if any server-related issues emerge after the launch. Seems to me that the game is succeeding in wooing the gaming audience that wouldn't previously have bought a SimCity game. Might be a little early to judge that though.

[Xenocity 343]

Polygon also said that they would re-score it if any server-related issues emerge after the launch. Seems to me that the game is succeeding in wooing the gaming audience that wouldn't previously have bought a SimCity game. Might be a little early to judge that though.

To be fair many of the people who bought Simcity 3000 skipped Simcity 4.

[nhgriffith 179]

Well, they said they'd rescore it until the server-related issues were worked out...

So right now they have it at a 9.5. If it's got a Diablo 3-esque launch, they'll probably drop it to a 3.0... and then later once that all gets worked out, they'll bump it back up to an 8.5 or 9 probably.

[Zpike 79]

If the release goes as well as the betas there will be some minimal issues early that will smooth out over the course of the day.

 

I expect a strong launch.

[Ma8thew 77]

Polygon also said that they would re-score it if any server-related issues emerge after the launch. Seems to me that the game is succeeding in wooing the gaming audience that wouldn't previously have bought a SimCity game. Might be a little early to judge that though.

To be fair many of the people who bought Simcity 3000 skipped Simcity 4.

Well exactly. This is why EA is making the dramatic and (to this community at least) traumatic changes in the new game. They need to bring back the people who didn't find enough fun in Simcity 4, and attract new people who wouldn't have thought about buying a city builder in the past. Otherwise, the SimCity brand will be killed off for good.

[Tramwhet 53]

looks like EA have forgetten to pay French reviewers because:

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0001/00018406-simcity-test.htm

 

12/20

 

this the most popular French site

[Superbacon 380]

I'll wait until Lazy Game Reviews gets around to it.

[Numpty Dumpty 17]

looks like EA have forgetten to pay French reviewers because:

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0001/00018406-simcity-test.htm

 

12/20

 

this the most popular French site

 

Reads like an article made by a simtropolis forumite expecting SimCity 4.5 imo.

 

 

Great Game, terrible city simulator. End of story. Those that value gameplay will like it, those that value design and realism will not enjoy it as much.

 

Luckily for EA there are more gameplayer lovers than design lovers.

 

Indeed.

 

I watched TotalBiscuit's three hour stream of the "dev beta" and for all the complaining he did (not that much, his standard level of complaining lol) he couldn't deny that he was having a lot of fun playing the game.

 

Its not SimCity 4 plus 1, but that doesn't make it a bad game for what it is either.

 

You either like it, or you don't.

 

If it was trying to be SimCity 4.5 and failed, then there'd be a problem, but it is its own game/style.

[Prankemperor 3]

The reviews more than anything justify my decision to go for this game despite me being against the ALWAYS ONLINE DRMs.

 

For once the always online drm adds functionality. Though I am a bit skeptical about the capacity of the servers to handle the load, so it could go either all kaput or it would be a breeze. But in any case I see can see Maxis/EA responding to the problem and upgrading the servers should it go kaput.

[Xenocity 343]

looks like EA have forgetten to pay French reviewers because:

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0001/00018406-simcity-test.htm

 

12/20

 

this the most popular French site

This is why they hate the game:

 

Towns too small

     A system of roads ultra painful (they hate the road system)

     Unable to select the direction of a building

     Too frequent disasters

     AI sometimes calamitous

     Many inconsistencies

     Lack of explanation for the uninitiated

     Often cities again, this is not great (this I do't understand)

     No metro (Subway)

 

Yeah they don't like the game because it is too American.

[Sunfighter 186]

looks like EA have forgetten to pay French reviewers because:

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0001/00018406-simcity-test.htm

 

12/20

 

this the most popular French site

This is why they hate the game:

 

Towns too small

     A system of roads ultra painful (they hate the road system)

     Unable to select the direction of a building

     Too frequent disasters

     AI sometimes calamitous

     Many inconsistencies

     Lack of explanation for the uninitiated

     Often cities again, this is not great (this I do't understand)

     No metro (Subway)

 

Yeah they don't like the game because it is too American.

 

Where do you come to the conclusion that any of that is American only stuff?

[croxis 150]

Ars's review is disapointed. I'm still waiting on rock paper shotgun but their past coverage has been cautious but optimistic.

[Xenocity 343]

 

looks like EA have forgetten to pay French reviewers because:

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0001/00018406-simcity-test.htm

 

12/20

 

this the most popular French site

This is why they hate the game:

 

Towns too small

     A system of roads ultra painful (they hate the road system)

     Unable to select the direction of a building

     Too frequent disasters

     AI sometimes calamitous

     Many inconsistencies

     Lack of explanation for the uninitiated

     Often cities again, this is not great (this I do't understand)

     No metro (Subway)

 

Yeah they don't like the game because it is too American.

 

Where do you come to the conclusion that any of that is American only stuff?

They typically complain and give lower reviews to American games.

They aren't counted in either Metacritic or Gamerankings do to their bias.

[Tramwhet 53]

 

 

looks like EA have forgetten to pay French reviewers because:

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0001/00018406-simcity-test.htm

 

12/20

 

this the most popular French site

This is why they hate the game:

 

Towns too small

     A system of roads ultra painful (they hate the road system)

     Unable to select the direction of a building

     Too frequent disasters

     AI sometimes calamitous

     Many inconsistencies

     Lack of explanation for the uninitiated

     Often cities again, this is not great (this I do't understand)

     No metro (Subway)

 

Yeah they don't like the game because it is too American.

 

Where do you come to the conclusion that any of that is American only stuff?

They typically complain and give lower reviews to American games.

They aren't counted in either Metacritic or Gamerankings do to their bias.

 

You are totally wrong, all Call Of duties get between 17 and 20 on this site, and its an american game.

Simcity 4 get an 18/20.

+ they gived 2 awards for Simcity 2013 in E3

 

"often cities again, this is not great (this I do't understand)"

 

they said that they have to build again cities all the time because of the little maps.

[shorty2 94]

Ars's review is disapointed. I'm still waiting on rock paper shotgun but their past coverage has been cautious but optimistic.

"I love curvy roads in theory. If I had a SimCity 4-size city I would use curvy roads. There simply isn't enough space to have fancy curvy roads. I find it super frustrating. I have the tools to build the kind of city I would like, but I'm so pushed for space I just can't afford to. I'm so pushed for space already."

 

"...they could let me build a separate suburb that’s immediately adjacent and continue my city by connecting them together with a road. That'd be better than this “regional” crap that separates cities by miles of emptiness, never to be developed."

 

"And because there's no save games, I can't go back in time to try a different route. There's no freedom to experiment. Because you suffer permadeath."

 

===

 

Reading the dialogue on that review is pretty revealing. I think a lot of people on this site are convincing themselves this release will still be OK rather than confront the obviousness that it will be a bit of a flop.

[Sunfighter 186]

Ars's review is disapointed. I'm still waiting on rock paper shotgun but their past coverage has been cautious but optimistic.

 

 

I did notice what they noticed, the game is slow to react to changes, so youll have complaints for a long time after you fixed something...and accidently over commit thinking the problem is continuing when it just hasnt cleared up yet. I noticed that in TBs livestream, he didnt have garbage collection for a long time, he waited till the town started to complain before he placed one. Logical really, but that means the whole town needed trash pick up. His 2 trash trucks were actually enough, but they had a large backlog to deal with first...so the complaints continued long after he placed the garbage dump...so he thought he was having troubles...and he overreacted by placing I think 10 trucks worth edits to the garbage dump....a half hour later or so, he clicks the dump.and you notice that most the city is now clear of garbage....the few spots left...had like 6 garbage trucks all blocking traffic all going for the same area to pick up....

 

So yea..thats one thing i noticed and will have to keep in mind......wait...and dont overreact to problems if they dont clear up right away.

[Spatzimaus 77]

Reading the dialogue on that review is pretty revealing.

 

Yes, it is.  It tells me that the reviewer wanted an updated SimCity 4, and is viewing the new game through that lens.  He's complaining about his inability to make SC4-style cities (large, adjacent tiles), instead of reviewing the game on its own merits.

 

In other words, he's like a good fraction of the people on this forum.  The thing is, most of the game-buying public are NOT like us; most never played SC4, and wouldn't like it much if they did.  So anyone saying that this game will flop based on reviews like this is just deluding themselves; if the game flops, it'll be because people completely UNLIKE this reviewer decide it's not what they want.  (Personally, I expect it to do great, just like the Sims games have.)

[AndisArt 2,068]

Ars's review is disapointed. I'm still waiting on rock paper shotgun but their past coverage has been cautious but optimistic.

 

"I think their Sim-level modelling required them to simplify stuff, but I don't really see what that gains me."

 

This.

 

Reading the dialogue just totally revealed to me how limiting the city tile size is. I wasnt so sure before, but now I know this isnt for me. On the screenshots they posted a city can have a max. of 7 blocks... That is TINY. 

Maxis is saying the limitation comes from making sure the game runs on all kinds of hardware, also older PCs. Would that have been the same scenario if the street-level view wasnt implemented but rather zoom would stop at a certain level? I doubt it. Personally, I dont give a hoop for Sim-level details. I would have much rather had less close detail but more realistic tile size and scaling.

[shorty2 94]

Reading the dialogue on that review is pretty revealing.

 

Yes, it is.  It tells me that the reviewer wanted an updated SimCity 4, and is viewing the new game through that lens.  He's complaining about his inability to make SC4-style cities (large, adjacent tiles), instead of reviewing the game on its own merits.

 

In other words, he's like a good fraction of the people on this forum.  The thing is, most of the game-buying public are NOT like us; most never played SC4, and wouldn't like it much if they did.  So anyone saying that this game will flop based on reviews like this is just deluding themselves; if the game flops, it'll be because people completely UNLIKE this reviewer decide it's not what they want.  (Personally, I expect it to do great, just like the Sims games have.)

 

Did you actually read the conversation, or the line that I posted? They LIKED the curvy roads and some of the other features of the game.. but the point they made, and it is completely valid, is that curvy roads don't amount to a damn when you are limited for city space and therefore must conserve by building the old fashion grids to maximize building space. I don't think it's deluded to say the game will flop based upon what they said.. they raise valid points, like tile size and lack of local save game feature. Those are limitations that will limit the game and make it flop. Once the novelty of the new game wears off you're going to be left with something that doesn't fulfill.

 

And is it wrong to see it through the previous SimCity's "lens"? Why should we accept the rationale that a revamp is necessarily better? I think the profit motivations of EA have lowered the standard of what the game could have been. And lastly, when the casual potato gamers get bored of the new simcity, what then? They've lost those customers and also the die-hard fans that liked the previous format.

[Spatzimaus 77]

So yea..thats one thing i noticed and will have to keep in mind......wait...and dont overreact to problems if they dont clear up right away.

 

I attribute most of TB's issues to his unfamiliarity with the game.  The garbage problem is a perfect illustration; if he'd regularly checked the various data layers as he played, he'd have had a better idea of how much garbage disposal he needed.  Instead, he waited until the Sims complained loudly enough, and overcorrected because he didn't really know how much one truck could handle.  Likewise, most of his mass transit issues stemmed from the fact that the street the depot was on was a 2-lane road that'd get backed up easily, and when he fixed it he still left a tiny stretch of 2-lane road; he didn't really know how much traffic each road type could handle, or how much access the depot needed.  These are the sorts of things you'll do in the first couple days, because you don't really have the hang of the interface yet.

 

The thing is, as annoying as those newbie issues are, most of us are in this for the long term.  SC4 is ten years old and people still play it, and if EA supports it with expansions and DLCs, this game could easily do the same.  So would someone who's been playing the game for even a week make these mistakes?  Probably not.  (Besides, having extra garbage trucks meant that once his own town was cleaned up, his trucks covered the neighboring towns, making him extra money.  So it wasn't a waste.)

[Spatzimaus 77]

And is it wrong to see it through the previous SimCity's "lens"?

 

Yes.  And if you can't see why, then there's really no point in explaining it to you, but I'll try.

 

Sequels are not remakes.  A sequel can share the same basic style or setting, and yet still be a very different experience.  A remake is the same style and experience, just updated to modern sensibilities and/or with a bigger budget.  Movies are a good example of this; the Empire Strikes Back is a very different experience than the original Star Wars, despite being in the same setting and with the same characters, and RotJ was different again.  Terminator was basically a sci-fi horror movie, while Terminator 2 was an action movie.  (Same for Alien/Aliens.)  This is VERY different from doing a remake of the original movie in a series; what would Empire Strikes Back have been if it had tried to keep the exact style/tone of the first movie instead of going darker?

 

The same goes for video games.  Master of Orion 2 is a very different game from Master of Orion.  Sure, a big part of that was the budget involved, but the end result is still two completely different styles of gameplay despite being in the same setting and genre.  A lot of people have said the same about the Dead Space games, as well, and it hasn't stopped those from being successful.

Now, yes, there are many game series where each game is more of a remake than a sequel.  The Madden franchise is a perfect example of this, where each year just refines the mechanisms of the previous year.  The same goes for the Civilization games, and I could also say it about the Mass Effect trilogy.  But my point was that you shouldn't ASSUME this sort of progression; if a company wants to make a sequel play a bit differently than its predecessor, there are plenty of previous examples of that.  Some times it's successful, sometimes it's a disaster.

 

And again, a professional reviewer should be reviewing THIS game, not reviewing the previous one.  His comments should be based on what the new game offers, not what he hoped it'd offer based on the previous game.  If this SimCity's play experience is weak compared to other contemporary games, then that's fine to say, but that's not what he's done; he's said that it's weak because it's not like SimCity 4.  (Not explicitly, of course.)

[shorty2 94]

But would you even raise that point if the game was obviously going to be a massive success? I doubt it. I get what you're saying and I do agree with you though. However previous releases have set a standard that perhaps the current iteration does not live up to, and I think what they said is pretty valid.. the curvy roads bit for example; that is something I would find irritating quite quickly and I suspect many others will too. Once the novelty of individual sim movements wears off people will want to get back to what the game is actually about and that is designing a city.. but with limited tile space, no teraforming, saving, limited transportation options.. that is going to be very difficult to achieve. And that is what made the previous games so addictive.

[Vorret 49]

Ars's review is disapointed. I'm still waiting on rock paper shotgun but their past coverage has been cautious but optimistic.

 

Lots of bugs, hopefully they'll be fixed by release (or half of them at least!).

I'm gonna wait until the "beta" is done, few patches/DLC are out before buying lol

[Crazy_Ivan80 35]

And is it wrong to see it through the previous SimCity's "lens"?

 

Yes.  And if you can't see why, then there's really no point in explaining it to you, but I'll try.

 

Sequels are not remakes. 

 

yet remakes are always compared with the originals. The principle goes for movies and series, there's no reason why this principle shouldn't be applied to games too. Unless, indeed, there's the fear that it won't stand up to what went before.About the only place where the comparison isn't readily made is in music, and even then.

In other words: even if they're reviewing 'this' game it is right and proper to compare it to the older simcities.

 

In as far as reviewers are actually worth anything anymore in this age of 9+ this and 9+ that, where obvious turds all too often get that 9+ because it's publicshed by a big publisher. Most reviews are a farce anyway.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

And yet VentureBeat gave it 90/100, which means despite these pitfalls, the game is extraordinarily enjoyable to play.

 

It is; you simply get lost in your creation staring at it from whole new angles.

 

Let's just say this; if SC4 had SC 2013's curved roads, zoning layout and camera angles I WOULD ALWAYS PLAY SC4! Plus SC 2013 is still really fun to play despite the size limitations.

[DocWat232 5]

Looks like a few outlets like Destructoid are holding their reviews until they can spend some time on the public servers.

 

It's an interesting consideration in this newish always-connected paradigm. You can't give a complete review of an always-connected product with pre-release code. It's not representative of the final product.

[efgrib 45]

Great Game, terrible city simulator. End of story. Those that value gameplay will like it, those that value design and realism will not enjoy it as much.

 

Luckily for EA there are more gameplayer lovers than design lovers.

 

 

 

this is true. it's the opposite of citiesxl... there i have a great citybuilder but a terrible game. it seems the hardware is not ready for both in one title yet...