morningstar

After watching both trailers and some other You tube videos on both of these new prospective games, I have come to the conclusion that I am skeptical at best on both titles... XXL.. After watching this title release title after title never really improving itself, I am skeptical that XXL will be nothing more then another X in the title. I do see the new engine and some Steam Workshop access, and all that may come with that is promising, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth when this company released basically the same game with little improvement. Skyline... Well, I can see that they do want to pick up the pieces for Simcity 5, and that is all fine and dandy, but I don't need to see a game that looks and feels like Simcity 5 no matter that it opened all the options we wish we had on the release. I would prefer to see a new game so that I can stuff the thought of Simcity 5 deep in the past and move on. I don't really see the complication to building these games and having them give what the Simmers want. I have been playing the Simcity franchise since the original game played on my 8086, with all the advances in computing you would think that we would have an awesome sandbox city building game by now that allowed us as a builder to build the way we want to build. I am happy to see that there are two games slated for release this year that will build competition between the two and hopefully the response will be a competent release between the two of them. And possible, maybe Simcity 5 would jump back into the ring to defend their name and turn the tarnished game franchise into something playable.

I like this post, so I am going to answer over it....

Yes! I could not find it haha! thanks! It's most likely disabled for Beta. No option to turn it on in the options menu.

I got into the Beta last night, I agree much with the OP. My personal take on the new sim is that yeah it felt like a dumb version with new Graphics. I am open to new changes, as SC4 took some time to change over for me. I really enjoyed SC3000. Of course I know that this is beta and there are many features left out on purpose. I played the scenario many times, and I did find it to be of some level of entertainment, but not that feeling I get from SC4. One of the complaints I had was although the graphical enhancements are great, when I zoom to a specific building or business I found it blurred. I had to actually move back away to get the building to focus. I think that if you have a building selected it should focus on the building. I found the road building to be, well... I miss the grid.. I play SC4 with grids on. I like to plan my city well before I even start. I know they put in some road building guide, but this was not sufficient. Maybe I need practice, but I was making uneven city blocks, and it was hard to view them to get them perfect. Also, after I would zone an area residential, I would select roads, and the green residential zones would disappear from sight. Maybe that can be selected to remain on, but I could not find it. I actually would wait for building to arrive then I could build the next roads to expand my area. I complained to the developers that I disliked the city size and the gap that lies between other city's. I myself found no major bugs or difficulty learning to play the game. I most likely will play the release, but I am sure at this point that I am going to be missing something of any complexity I may had received from other prior releases. At this point I cannot see that they can change any of my most disturbing negative views, as they are structural in the game. I think the game is very pleasing to the eye, I really enjoy some of the graphics this game offers. but then again I play older RPG games since newer ones always seem to be missing substance. What was funny, and I hate to admit this, but I was playing and after one of the sessions, I wanted to load up city xl because I was in the desire to play some city building. I no longer have SC4 on my PC after I upgraded to Win7. Maybe I am going to have to get it to work after all. After SC4 I know they released some other versions, Society's.. I never played those. I played SC4 because I enjoyed city building, not so much interacting with the sims unless they have a major complaint. I see that this is a continuation of that trend... I hoped they could make a complex game that could be set to "easy" if you so desired. We will see on release, and really I cannot fully judge this game on the Beta. I do have some disappointment but I am sure that I will purchase the game... It just may be out of the bargain bin. My plan to Pre-purchase is now suppressed. /cheers