yuuretsu

A review is a persistent entity that people use as a credible source of information about the game. A review based on just an eminently temporary condition for a game is a complete disservice to the many readers that won't get there on day one, but will read it later when browsing for information on a game they are considering. A journalist's or a critic's first duty is not to be misinformative, and those reviews, as they stand, are little else than misinformation, as they depict a situation that doesn't exist anymore and has existed for a very limited amount of time. It's even more laughable for instance that Eurogamer's review has been published today when most of what it describes is no more valid (and some of what it describes has never been valid mind you). When a situation is rather obviously extremely temporary (and in this case it was and it is), between posting a review as early as possible to be "first!", but having a misinformative piece on your site as soon as that situation passes (which means for the vast majority of that game's lifetime and presence on the shelves), and witholding the review for a week, maybe with a fair notice to your readers, it's pretty obvious which course of action shows the more professionalism. Too bad professionalism isn't exactly widespread in this area of the press. Which is no journalist worth his salt would never post a review of a MMORPG on day one or even near, and SimCity is definitely akin to a MMORPG in structure and server dependency. The rage and anger behind simcity is, for the most part, the fruit of people refusing the idea of change, unprofessional press pandering to the rage itself and fanning it to get more hits on their site, and of a generation of entitlement in which waiting for a week is seen as a personal slight that must be punished with endless bitching and moaning even long past that wait has ended.

Polygon actually lowered the score before Gamespot published their review AFAIK, but that doesn't matter. Both review scores are pretty ridiculous, especially because they're both based on a very temporary condition. They both aren't relevant to the state of the game now, and will be even less in a week.

EA can make plenty great games, has made plenty in the past, and will most probably continue to make plenty. Simcity *is* a great and definitely quite addictive game, and is getting better by the day. Did they? I'm personally having a blast with the game, after patiently waiting the first week out (because you know, the word "patience" is still part of my vocabulary), and it seems that hundreds of thousands of others are from what i'm seeing in game. So maybe the "clear failure" is more subjective than you think.

She's simply saying that they have their own development vision and philosophy, and that they are entitled to it, while you're not entitled to dictate it. Sorry if this burst a bubble, but as much as some armchair developers misguidedly think they'd do much better than actual developers, game development is not a democracy, nor it should be.

My city was indeed a lot less congested today, but I'm not sure that's the cause. I raised the number of rich households, which decreased population, so that might be it.

Pretty ignorant review to be honest. He complains that the mechanics are broken (some of which are, mind you, or at least not perfectly functioning) but he demonstrates not to know how things work, making his judgement pretty much irrelevant. Easy example to spot is when he complains about population dropping suddenly, that would be an extremely easy riddle to solve for anyone that knows the most basic working on the game. Land value increases, poor condos get replaced by rich ones that allow for less residents, so the population drops. Whatever one thinks about the game, he should at least know what he's talking about. This dude obviously does not.