Lateralus462

"Highways and ramps Highways are the first connection point to the outside world in a new city. But they also serve as a quick way to connect neighborhoods and population centers together over long distances. We designed the highways so that they are built separately, one direction at a time. This gives the players possibilities to design complex highway solutions where one group of lanes is not held back by the other and the roads can follow the terrain formations more intuitively. Separate lanes also give great choices when building ramps and highway interchanges." this kind of thought into the design gives me hope that they're going to make something special, one can hope

Lateralus462's Review I'll start with the Positives - Modular service buildings/structures: Absolutely loved this. The modular power, fire, police and other services is such a great functional gameplay add on, its something I've always wanted and wished for. I spent a good part of the beta time just tinkering with the look at feel of the different powerplant upgrades- just because they looked cool. (caveat: the major Firestation looks gaudy as hell, but was locked in beta) - Day/Night cycle: The day night cycle gave the game a nice flow to it, both because of the glassbox engine and the changes in agent movement based on the time of day, but also a sense of the passage of time, that the game is moving. The late night scene of very few cars on the road and the clearly visible emergency vehicles going about their business gives the game a nice time to sit back and kind of look around. Middle of the road: - Road Tools: The road building tools themselves seem pretty well worked out. Some odd interactions of curved or arc'd roads with the square road tool and such, but drawing roads, upgrading and the generated "guidelines" were a nice touch once you figured out how to activate and use them. - Graphics: Somehow this both impressed and fell short, and I suspect its both partly my video cards fault (a not quite outdated Asus EAH4870) and the game itself. The night scenes were nice, the industrial building glow and the interior detail was nice. The tilt shift was a decent novelty, Negatives - Service vehicles/agents: The most dim witted and aggravating path finding I've ever seen. You could have 20 garbage trucks for a small town and still have them clump on eachother and circle the same block over and over and over. School buses, garbage trucks and shuttle busses are terribly inefficient. Police cars meander oddly, but as a postivie, seem to respond to criminals and crimes quickly and effectively, but how can you not set their area of operation or set up an actual bus route (one thing Cities XL got right!). - Road textures/intersection tiles: These were absolutely heinous. If you did any road configuration that was a little out of the ordinary, you wound up with some terrible looking and distorted tile that in no way correctly aligned with the road configuration. The "random" intersection tiles for straight roads at even small obtuse angles creating an intersection was annoying and probably should be considered a bug, of which there are many. - Bugs: Oh god, the bugs. The service building signs altering the roads and textures, the garbage dump or school extending to the adjacent road with with a jagged piece of footprint. The glassbox power and water agents not properly serving tiles that are on the other side of the already very small map. A Coal Power Plant with 10's of MW of reserve not being able to power a small town is just silly. I watched delivery trucks take goods from factories to power plants rather than commercial businesses. The perpetual street crossing sims creating giant traffic snarls and the strange 4 way stop gridlock where cars just refuse to move where the corrective action is to destroy the road they're on. Emergency vehicles stopping at traffic lights and stop signs. - City Size/Region: Just poorly thought out with a terrible look and feel. These awkward square plots overlayed onto the region terrain with one highway connection. No natural forming borders, no true neighbors, no even remotely realistic attempt at intercity infrastructure. "Great Works" built in a vacuum separated from the towns in the same vain as the towns themselves. Pet Peeves: - All the industrial factories "puffing" at the same time - Firetrucks turning their lights off while "at the scene" with firefighters shooting water from their feet. - The somewhat startling sun/shadow shift all at once at specific hours. - Simlish is as gaudy as it is childish and dumb - Business, industry and service signage and or flags were uninspired and ugly.

The whole "Beta" was a ruse anyway, it was little more than a glorified demo to test their servers, which in fact failed quite readily, and a way to try and push pre-order, which I also feel may have failed as well. I suspect many of the fans of the series realized this isnt what they want for 60-80 dollars and killed their pre-order.

The most infuriating thing is how much promise some of the gameplay ideas and glassbox engine has and how completely faulty the implementation is. The modular structures are an amazing addition, but the service vehicles are so completely dimwitted that it totally ruins the simulation. Garbage trucks going in circles and clumping together. Emergency vehicles stopping at traffic lights, buses neglecting bus stops and constantly circling others. Strange vehicle behavior, poor traffic pathfinding (cars using side streets instead of the more reasonable avenue path), curious/faulty glassbox agent behavior. Watching industrial goods get picked up and delivered to the coal powerplant :wtf The tiny cities leave little to your imagination and result in just trying to cram everything in, so most people will just abandon all the new curvy road features because theres just no room for them and the wasted zone space they create. sims perpetually crossing the street back and forth and causing traffic jams, the horrific road tile textures and the awkward intersection tiles. all of that combined with the numerous other bugs and issues just completely takes you out the simulation. Everything the game is supposed to be about, getting down into your creation and seeing it work just puts the magnifying glass on how unpolished the game is.