Sim City

[hoverdonkey]

I can't be the only one coming over all unnecessary about the new Sim City, surely? Released on March 8, it looks flipping gorgeous and has a whole new engine under the gloss for making the city run. I know it's basically a civil service sim, but I'm really looking forward to it. There looks to be the opportunity to really create distinct cities with their own identities.

Sorry for big pics (bottom one is of a super villain I think)

[spanky]

I had a go on the Beta yesterday. Despite my graphics card being around the level of a naughty child drawing a horse on the wall it was surprisingly smooth, albeit with absolutely no textures at all. I've got a new card on the way so I'll be picking this up when it's out for definite.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Ooo.

Quite possibly.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I want to play this but I really don't want to lose six months of my life

[smurfted]

It does look great, i remember playing sim city when i was a boy and it didn't look like this..

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Sorry for big pics (bottom one is of a super villain I think)

Looks like Steve Jobs.

Sim City 2000 on the SNES is one of the very few non action games I've ever enjoyed (although I was 12, so I probably didn't have the most nuanced appreciation of it) so I may have to look into this when I'm less skint.

[Eis Nein]

The Idle Thumbs perform epic faff and actually play for a bit one hour into this:

http://www.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/b/368092420

That is one lovesome UI.

[Puffin Chunks]

I still fire up Sim City 4 from time to time (with the annoying 'The Sims' bits turned off, obviously). I will definitely be getting this.... once I have a computer that will run it. Glad they're bringing it back because I thought they were calling it a day after 4.

4 also has one of my favourite tracks of in game music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6l1CsqZtnk

[kittens]

The Idle Thumbs perform epic faff and actually play for a bit one hour into this:

http://www.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/b/368092420

That is one lovesome UI.

Oooooooooooh baby. I haven't played Sim City since I was a little boy, but I can't wait for this one after watching that

[hoverdonkey]

Yeah, the music still springs into my mind occasionally. They did a phenomenal job of creating a soundtrack that didn't irritate despite its heavy rotation. It's supposed to be ace again

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

I'm gonna be all over this, but there are some issues. Primarily the tiny city size and how in fuck they hope trains are going to work on those size maps I don't know.

But it looks amazing, and when you read into the detail of the engine and how everyone makes their decisions, it's spank-tastic.

[Ignatius_S]

I'm gonna be all over this, but there are some issues. Primarily the tiny city size and how in fuck they hope trains are going to work on those size maps I don't know....

Yeah, city size has been mentioned a lot - the official line is that it' s a necessary trade-off. One result looks like cities will have to specialise - which plays into the concept of cities interacting with each other and the game conceived as a multiplayer.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Best source of info, the top man on the project;

https://twitter.com/oceanquigley

[hoverdonkey]

Yeah, the cities look smaller, but if you link up several cities, I hope it isn't a major problem

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Hmmm. This is another game that really hit the shits when it stopped being isometric.

[Viero_Berlotti]

This has been out for a couple of days now Stateside. Not played it myself, but it looks like it's taking a pretty savage kicking by fans over on Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/simcity/user-reviews?dist=negative

[mikeyg27]

It's taking a beating because of the combination of always-on DRM and terrible connectivity meaning people have to queue for half an hour to play what should be a single player game. Most reviews seem to say "this game is great... if you can connect to it, and good luck with that".

[Viero_Berlotti]

The DRM thing sounds crappy though, so even when the server problems have been ironed out EA will still be holding people by the balls.

[mikeyg27]

It appears that it's received so many 1-star reviews on Amazon that the digital download version has been suspended. But always-on DRM for single player games is totally worth it, you guys.

[chand]

It appears that it's received so many 1-star reviews on Amazon that the digital download version has been suspended. But always-on DRM for single player games is totally worth it, you guys.

I don't understand this level of DRM. Games with excessive DRM always get tons of 1-star reviews, it's a surefire way to make a shitload of people hate your product regardless of its quality. And of course, it only screws over paying users; the pirates will be getting round it no doubt.

One of the many reasons I fucked off PC gaming forever.

[Hank Venture]

I'm going to download this illegally.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Sounds like another "what might have been", doesn't it.

Much like Hitman from last year, the developers got so horny about what hardware was capable of doing these days, that they forgot what made their games great.

There doesn't appear to be any proper (length) train networks, no planes in the screenshots? any ships/boats? and the cities look tiny.

With computing power as it is, they could've gone for an updated Simcity for the current generation of hardware, with all the great stuff from SC4, including all the transport, but instead they've gone so hard on next gen looks and core intelligence engine (which admittedly sounds incredible), they can only stretch it to tiny city sizes.

I guess that might mean it has a long shelf life, and that as hardware increases further, the game might expand into huge cities, but I doubt it.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT

Taken in isolation, it looks like a pretty awesome game, if not a great Simcity game, and so for that reason Duncan, I'm in!

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

buys, downloads, struggles for 30 minutes to find a working server, sits through 20 minute tutorial, loses connection to server, restarts and struggles for 30 minutes to find a working server, gets prompted to sit through seemingly un-skippable tutorial

thinks: "you were warned"

[Replies From View]

I thought that said DKM at first.

I like how the big guy sits back down.  "Good-o[nb]Yes he is the type to say "good-o"; don't disagree.[/nb]; I wasn't hit therefore nothing happened."

[Jim_MacLaine]

I haven't played Sim City since the Amiga days but this does look very pretty. Still all that DRM has put me off.

Loads up hot copy of Sim City 4.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Purely coincidentally I'm sure, SomethingAwful just started a Simcity 4 thread which will probably be a goldmine of great addons and mods;

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3537338

[Hank Venture]

SomethingAwful just started a Simcity 4 thread which will probably be a goldmine of great addons and mods

Doubt it. Mods and addons are shut out of the game.

Fundamentally, SimCity has always been a 'software toy'. That means that there's no real end state, no way to win. It's just a thing that you play and experiment with. You build, and tinker, and mess around. It's a toy, not a game; it's a sandbox, not baseball.

So, in this iteration of the game, you don't even get to buy your toy. Rather, you rent a toy from EA, who lets you play with it only in very limited, circumscribed ways, only on their servers. So you have to have a live Internet connection at all times, and their servers have to be up, and have to have space for you. And the rules for play are draconian. If you want to, say, build a city, save it, blow it up with something terrible, and then restore from save, you can't do that anymore. That's an unauthorized usage of their toy. And if you figure out ways of using their toy that they don't like, they'll ban you forever.

All third-party modding is shut out. One of the best parts of SimCity 4 and The Sims is that users can create and share content among themselves for free. You will no longer be able to do this. You will be required to run only Official Authorized Content.

Further, you're not getting the whole game for your $60 or $80, depending on what version you're buying. EA's plan is to sell you Simcity 5 over and over and over. They've directly admitted that they already have it running with larger cities, but they're not releasing that now. They claim it's because it "won't run on Dad's PC", but the real reason is so they can sell it to you again later. Want subways? That's gonna be $20. Want railroads? Another $20. Bigger cities? Oh, that's in the $30 expansion.

Right now, if you look at The Sims 3, the game costs $30. But if also you buy all the DLC for it, it's *four hundred and seventy dollars*. This is what they are doing with SimCity 5; locking you into their server infrastructure, and then exploiting the heck out of your wallet.

This is a lousy deal, and you would be stupid to take it. Always-on DRM, and a deliberately crippled game, so that they can slowly uncripple it, charging you for every restored feature from prior versions.

Simcity 4 still works pretty well. It's not quite as nice as most current games, and can require you to 'pin' the process to just one processor on a multi-core system (ie, most current machines), but if you want a city builder where you won't have to pay extra to breathe both in AND out, that would be a better option.

But buying this game? In my opinion, you would be wiser to take three twenties out of your wallet, and light them on fire.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3HI7AMO8MJ9PF/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3HI7AMO8MJ9PF

Pass, I think.

[The Βoston Crab]

Simon Shite more like, what a load of chod. Fuck off with your shit you Simulated old snatch. Fuck off

[Neil]

Christ.  Not a surprise though, given the way the games industry has been going for years now.  You rarely even get instruction manuals these days, and instead have to look at a PDF included on the disc.  Then you get rinsed for day-1 DLC, and have to pay for stuff that should have been included in the first place.  DLC is no longer about extending the life of a game just because it's popular, and there's more to do with it, it's simply part and parcel of their revenue stream.  So in the old days, you would have easter eggs and the like that would let you customise characters, now you have to pay for the privilege in yer Street Fighters and Xcoms. 

Gamers largely happily go along with this creeping greed, too, until big bad EA make it all so egregiously obvious and inconvenient. I'm sure they'll still make a ton of money from 'ah fuck it, might as well' consumers, though.