Gamespot Review Just Posted......5/10!

[MINIggy03 227]

Luckily none of these reviews have any issues with the actual game in working order and are protesting EA screwing up the servers in monumental ways.  Unfortunately this means that people are going to assume the game is absolutely terrible when they do get the servers up and running smoothly but it will all be too late.

[cirugo 1,889]

Luckily none of these reviews have any issues with the actual game in working order and are protesting EA screwing up the servers in monumental ways.  Unfortunately this means that people are going to assume the game is absolutely terrible when they do get the servers up and running smoothly but it will all be too late.

design decision was made to link server access to the game...even for people who didn't care about multiplayer.  thus review cannot ignore that factor.  The review is kinder than it should be in my opinion.  Not enough mention about the removing player control of region design, regional transportation, contiguous city maps...etc.

[StoNe220022 159]

Wow!!!  Gamespot and also the IGN comment from Dan is priceless!  I always ignore these two sites and see them as the biggest sell-outs; but these two latest updates have restored a small amount of faith in official reviews which I have not felt in over a decade (Old VE3D reviews)

 

PC gaming needs to be reshaped...it needs to be known that it actually is profitable and the reason it hasn't done so well is not due to piracy...but due to the mediocre games coming out.

 

That said, my number one gripe isn't with EA...they're just a company trying to make money (I can relate to that) it's actually the audience...why did you BUY this game knowing how it would turn out?

[YukiEiriKun 29]

I am happy to see EA crash and burn.

I am also very sorry to see SimCity crash and burn.
And I feel sorry for Ocean Quigley and the rest of SimCity team.. I'm sure that they did want to give us a great game, but I am also sure, that someone in EA made them deliver this "product" that we now have. :-/

[MINIggy03 227]

Luckily none of these reviews have any issues with the actual game in working order and are protesting EA screwing up the servers in monumental ways.  Unfortunately this means that people are going to assume the game is absolutely terrible when they do get the servers up and running smoothly but it will all be too late.

design decision was made to link server access to the game...even for people who didn't care about multiplayer.  thus review cannot ignore that factor.  The review is kinder than it should be in my opinion.  Not enough mention about the removing player control of region design, regional transportation, contiguous city maps...etc.

Yeah so that means once they get the servers running smoothly(which they will), the reviews switch back to being a very highly rated game and all this complaining and hollering is for nothing.

 

Just because you're not getting what you want in a game doesn't make it bad, it just makes it a game you're not interested in.

[Hoipus 292]

Wow!!!  Gamespot and also the IGN comment from Dan is priceless!  I always ignore these two sites and see them as the biggest sell-outs; but these two latest updates have restored a small amount of faith in official reviews which I have not felt in over a decade (Old VE3D reviews)

 

PC gaming needs to be reshaped...it needs to be known that it actually is profitable and the reason it hasn't done so well is not due to piracy...but due to the mediocre games coming out.

 

That said, my number one gripe isn't with EA...they're just a company trying to make money (I can relate to that) it's actually the audience...why did you BUY this game knowing how it would turn out?

Not all of the audience did know how it would turn out, because they weren't exactly aware of the online requirements. A fair few probably just saw Adam Devine in his underwear on TV and thought "Hey, it's been a while since I've played simcity," or "City building sounds kinda fun, I'll try that."

[Evil_One 119]

 

Luckily none of these reviews have any issues with the actual game in working order and are protesting EA screwing up the servers in monumental ways.  Unfortunately this means that people are going to assume the game is absolutely terrible when they do get the servers up and running smoothly but it will all be too late.

design decision was made to link server access to the game...even for people who didn't care about multiplayer.  thus review cannot ignore that factor.  The review is kinder than it should be in my opinion.  Not enough mention about the removing player control of region design, regional transportation, contiguous city maps...etc.

Yeah so that means once they get the servers running smoothly(which they will), the game goes back to being a very highly rated game and all this complaining and hollering is for nothing.

 

Somehow I don't think it will go back to being 'highly rated', there are serious problems with the game beyond the server issues and the issues I speak of are a result of their Glassbox engine and so cannot be patched out.

 

Like the Sims 3 before it, if the base game is broken, then the game is broken, period.

[cirugo 1,889]

 

Luckily none of these reviews have any issues with the actual game in working order and are protesting EA screwing up the servers in monumental ways.  Unfortunately this means that people are going to assume the game is absolutely terrible when they do get the servers up and running smoothly but it will all be too late.

design decision was made to link server access to the game...even for people who didn't care about multiplayer.  thus review cannot ignore that factor.  The review is kinder than it should be in my opinion.  Not enough mention about the removing player control of region design, regional transportation, contiguous city maps...etc.

Yeah so that means once they get the servers running smoothly(which they will), the reviews switch back to being a very highly rated game and all this complaining and hollering is for nothing.

 

Just because you're not getting what you want in a game doesn't make it bad, it just makes it a game you're not interested in.

Once the server problems are "sorted out" (which they never will be because requiring people who aren't interested in multiplayer to connect to a server and yet selling your "you can have your own region!" nonsense is a fundamental game flaw)  there will be all kinds of design flaws we can move on to talking about.  next up: tiny maps

[YukiEiriKun 29]

Amazon stops selling the DL copies
Just in case you did not know this allready.

[timmie 988]

Is it wrong this review makes me happy?

Ah, Schadenfreude

[cirugo 1,889]

Is it wrong this review makes me happy?

Ah, Schadenfreude

wrong or not you're not alone.

[jasonr71 4]

I've had the final release version of the collectors edition for one day now, and it's not as good as I expected it to be since the last version was released almost 10 years ago!

 

One thing the guys at Maxis mentioned over and over again in interviews; as if they're were so excited about adding this visual effect to the game,  was to make the buildings look like real modelled buildings, like the type you would find on a model train set.  The effect they've added is a Tilt-Shift DSLR Camera focus effect (Basically a shallow depth of field), so when you zoom right in on your city, it's blurs out all the objects around and behind the subject whilst kepping the subject in focus.  This is just a lame reason and a load of crap as to why they added this feature, because the main reason why they've added this ugly effect is so that it wil basically help with the frame rates like a blur effect does in racing games, in which it reduces the resolution and pixel per sq inch, that would otherwise have a huge impact on the performance within the game on mid range PC's, as well as protecting the servers from crashing!

 

Now with the Maxis team applying this Tilt-Shift Camera effect, this is one way of keeping the frame rates up for most PC users as well as making sure the servers can handle the large chunks of data being transmitted back and fourth. In other words for those who aren't that technical, if they did not add this effect, once you have created a massive city and you're able to see the city in great detail from one end of the map to the other, as well as when you zoom in close to a building, and the subject and the surrounding objects were not blurry, on a majority of PC with average graphics cards, SimCity would run terribly slow, and would probably crash the servers if there was a lot of users viewing a lot of the large cities on the servers that were only mid range PC's.

 

So Maxis, just be honest with the SimCity fans who are your customers and don't come up with some lame reason why some crappy effect has been added to the game, when the effect makes the game look like crap!  I'm personally a landscape photographer and I do not see the purpose of using this effect when you're playing SimCity or Cities XL because one of the great aspects of the game, is how you can create such beautiful landscaped cities and even within the game you can take photo of your cities. I know I would prefer to take a great landscape snapshot of my city than a blurry portrait photo of small section of my city.

 

Portrait photographers always use a shallow depth of field so everything around the subhect (A face for example) is blurred out so the subject is the centre of attention and the only thing in focus within the photograph.

 

I think I will take it back to EB Games and get a refund, and stick to playing Cities XL Platinum!

[r00n83 12]

that this will kill the simcity franchise maybe too will make you happy too?

That will save us from more disappointments. Hopefully some other developers will notice the demand of a  modern city simulation game and make one.

[YukiEiriKun 29]

Chris Kluwe, some NFL player in America (Im British, no idea who he is), made this city to show what he thinks of EA. I lol'd

 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BEyabNcCYAAInZw.jpg:large

 

But why he did not use the fancy curvy roads?

[snwboardn 18]

So glad I waited... There for 2 months I was counting down the days to buy simcity but I decided to wait and let the bugs get ironed out. I am really glad I did... I think Maxis will redeem themselves and eventually patch the glassbox engine. As far as EA goes I hope they crash and burn but we all know they don't care they are already counting their money. I bet they are in the board room this morning saying, "The problem isn't always online the problem is we need to make them pay a monthly fee too!" 

 

EA is so far gone... Sorry to all that bought this anyhow willing to overlook some of the problems that might arise, I too was very tempted. 

[GenXisT 127]

It wasn't that much of a scathing review.  And I personally don't think it should have been.

Seems pretty much the gripes are the online aspect.  we all agree on that one.  It's a single-player game.

They shouldn't try to make it out to be something that it's not.

 

Most of the issues mentioned in this review will be patched sooner or later.  But if they don't fix the fundamental flaw, the online/MMO part, then it's not going to be right.

Take that out and I bet 9/10 Sim City fans will roll right along, even with the small maps and lack of some of the features that were present in SC4.

 

It is good to have a reputable gaming site tear it up a bit though.  Again, "listen to your fan base"... 

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

Luckily none of these reviews have any issues with the actual game in working order and are protesting EA screwing up the servers in monumental ways.  Unfortunately this means that people are going to assume the game is absolutely terrible when they do get the servers up and running smoothly but it will all be too late.

Maybe read the reviews, Small city tiles, no control over regions, bugs, features missing are other reasons they scroed the game low. The small tile size is really a major issue by itself, and the lack of control over regions.

[flyer2359 92]

I love this game, but EA deserves any flack it gets for these horrid servers that no one can connect to.  How did they misjudge the bandwidth usage so horribly?

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

I love this game, but EA deserves any flack it gets for these horrid servers that no one can connect to.  How did they misjudge the bandwidth usage so horribly?

The problem is, the game itself has a lot of potential, but all this mess may really damage the simcity franchise.

[Herdervriend 46]

Finally, a miracle has happened. Now everyone, let's get the review score even lower.

[GirlsDeadMonster 17]

Ouch. EA, you know that hurts. So many issues have stemmed just from the always online DRM feature. Hopefully, they will get a clue and realize perhaps the only way to save this is to make it an option not a requirement.

[Motina 77]

This game looked so promising, and fun. But when they mentioned cloud saves, I was out.

 

"What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join."

 

-Kip Katsarelis

 

LOL, duh!!!

[Baleur 1]

That review is so full of errors that i don't know where to start.

His city layout in the screenshot cracked me up, he built the city with mainly avenues, and left enough room between the roads for 1 trailer each, and uses that as an example to complain about cramped space? Sometimes these so called "journalists" dont even know how to properly play the games they review..

The stuff about DRM is spot on though, obviously.

 

The problem is, it's a great Maxis game wrapped in an EA wrapper that erodes the core game due to EA's flaws.

But the score was unfair. It is definetly imo the best Sim City yet, no question about it. It's more complex than SC4 in the pure gameplay and simulation mechanics.

I understand such a score due to how broken the SERVERS are, how even gameplay featuers that rely on the servers, in turn become broken as well.

 

But it's not the game itself that deserves a 5/10, it's the EA SERVERS that deserve a 1/10 for breaking an otherwise great game.

Then again, i stopped listening to Gamespot reviews when they gave Spore a 8/10.

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

That review is so full of errors that i don't know where to start.

His city layout in the screenshot cracked me up, he built the city with mainly avenues, and left enough room between the roads for 1 trailer each, and uses that as an example to complain about cramped space? Sometimes these so called "journalists" dont even know how to properly play the games they review..

The stuff about DRM is spot on though, obviously.

 

The problem is, it's a great Maxis game wrapped in an EA wrapper that erodes the core game due to EA's flaws.

But the score was unfair. It is definetly imo the best Sim City yet, no question about it. It's more complex than SC4 in the pure gameplay and simulation mechanics.

I understand such a score due to how broken the SERVERS are, how even gameplay featuers that rely on the servers, in turn become broken as well.

 

But it's not the game itself that deserves a 5/10, it's the EA SERVERS that deserve a 1/10 for breaking an otherwise great game.

Then again, i stopped listening to Gamespot reviews when they gave Spore a 8/10.

WAAN WAAN< he gave my game a bad score (Which it deserves) so ill say he cannot play the game. No matter how you play this game only allows small towns, has no control over regions or joining cities, and is wasted time and resources in simming what every sim is doing, zoning and roads are poorly done as well the game despite online issues has massive flaws in design.

 

Spore only deseved an 8, even that may be too high.

  Edited March 9, 2013 by CaptCity  

[Urban Cartographer 601]

SimCity is crashing and burning!

 

Finally GameSpot and IGN are being honest about their game reviews.  They can now see beyond the bribes that EA usually give to them.  EA can no longer ignore the great criticism coming out of SimCity fans and newcomers.

 

Remember, I am a loyal SimCity fan and I knew that the game is headed the wrong direction with its forced online DRM.

[Mr. Flibble 134]

That review is so full of errors that i don't know where to start.

His city layout in the screenshot cracked me up, he built the city with mainly avenues, and left enough room between the roads for 1 trailer each, and uses that as an example to complain about cramped space? Sometimes these so called "journalists" dont even know how to properly play the games they review..

The stuff about DRM is spot on though, obviously.

 

The problem is, it's a great Maxis game wrapped in an EA wrapper that erodes the core game due to EA's flaws.

But the score was unfair. It is definetly imo the best Sim City yet, no question about it. It's more complex than SC4 in the pure gameplay and simulation mechanics.

I understand such a score due to how broken the SERVERS are, how even gameplay featuers that rely on the servers, in turn become broken as well.

 

But it's not the game itself that deserves a 5/10, it's the EA SERVERS that deserve a 1/10 for breaking an otherwise great game.

Then again, i stopped listening to Gamespot reviews when they gave Spore a 8/10.

 

Except that the forced online server experience is absolutely and irrevocably integrated into the game. You can't pick and choose what parts get the high marks and only factor them into a final score. If you want a joke review, the one at Polygon that's been revised downwards twice from their initial ridiculous glurge-fest played using pre-release code on totally quiet servers is the one for you. As for it being more complex in pure gameplay and simulation mechanics, well maybe in some areas in some ways. Traffic, though, is still apparently so primitive that traffic always takes the shortest route to a location even when it's not the optimal route, and everyone in the city must come and go from one arbitrary location. Did anyone really need to have the thoughts of every single solitary sim in the city modeled? The "cities" are not cities, in this game they are little petri dishes arranged on a lab table, they do not form an organic whole, a la SC4's regions.

 

In short, the 'Sim' part of the game's title is somewhat misplaced. 'City Tycoon' would be a better name.