El Scotto

I don't think we should have to cater to the game's AI quirks and say that it's unjustified to complain about pathfinding. Last time I checked, some of the roads and 5/6 way intersections in north side Chicago are pretty confusing, but I don't see firetrucks lining up at the fork of Clark and Ashland while the next block over burns to the ground.

Thanks for the early review. I won't be able to run the game regardless, but it's nice to know the details. Community reviews will certainly be more reliable than the critics. I'm going to guess that the critical response will be similar to Spore, which still doesn't make sense to me.

I was hoping they would take the Spore approach and keep graphical effects at a minimum, but use HD textures and enough polys to make it look good. I suppose it's for the best that they don't, because we all know how stupid Spore looks, but it would have been nice to be able to play it on my 5 year-old laptop with an Intel 965 Express chipset. As a grad student, I have neither the money nor a constant home right now, so a desktop is not an option. I realize that isn't Maxis' problem, though, and Spore is the only mainstream game post-2004 I can play anyway.