Game News Sim City gets released. Recieves mixed reactions

[grotsnik]

"Let's take everything people enjoyed doing in our video game series... remove it or change it, oh and also make the cities a FRACTION of the size they used to be! Hmmm, what else can we do to REALLY drive this into the ground? Oh I know, how about always on DRM aaaaaand we'll make sure the servers are a bunch of junk so that people won't be able to play the game anyway. Don't forget to send out those checks to the reviewers though..."

Oh shi-

 

[Whisky]

I know that's a fake screenshot, but I like how the meteor crashing screenshot is so common around articles for this game.

 

[J_C]

"Let's take everything people enjoyed doing in our video game series... remove it or change it, oh and also make the cities a FRACTION of the size they used to be! Hmmm, what else can we do to REALLY drive this into the ground? Oh I know, how about always on DRM aaaaaand we'll make sure the servers are a bunch of junk so that people won't be able to play the game anyway. Don't forget to send out those checks to the reviewers though..."

Oh shi-

For a few seconds I thought that it is real. It stopped my breath. :D

 

[Anthony Davis]

lol, so I used to be a game developer I'm no longer able to have an opinion?

 

[Anthony Davis]

"Let's take everything people enjoyed doing in our video game series... remove it or change it, oh and also make the cities a FRACTION of the size they used to be! Hmmm, what else can we do to REALLY drive this into the ground? Oh I know, how about always on DRM aaaaaand we'll make sure the servers are a bunch of junk so that people won't be able to play the game anyway. Don't forget to send out those checks to the reviewers though..."

Oh shi-

For a few seconds I thought that it is real. It stopped my breath. :D

Hahahaha, you guys got me for a second - not that I was worried... I've never even worked for EA and I'm certainly not the first person to infer that game reviewers are compensated.

 

[Larendav]

I'd like to see a TC review on it.

 

[Whisky]

I'd like to see a TC review on it.

I'd actually be interested in doing the review.

Problem is, I really, really don't want to pay for the game. I don't even want to download Origin.

But maybe EA will pass us a DRM free review copy...

 

[Larendav]

"Let's take everything people enjoyed doing in our video game series... remove it or change it, oh and also make the cities a FRACTION of the size they used to be! Hmmm, what else can we do to REALLY drive this into the ground? Oh I know, how about always on DRM aaaaaand we'll make sure the servers are a bunch of junk so that people won't be able to play the game anyway. Don't forget to send out those checks to the reviewers though..."

Oh shi-

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off by TimeGate (or Gearbox & Sega if you want to count them too) for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here. I'm not Gearbox or Sega, and I certainly don't excuse EGM or anyone who gets paid/compensated by a company for reviewing that company's product, even if it is something I worked on - even if only briefly.

 

[Larendav]

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here. I'm not Gearbox or Sega, and I certainly don't excuse EGM or anyone who gets paid/compensated by a company for reviewing that company's product, even if it is something I worked on - even if only briefly.

TimeGate made the single player portion of Aliens: Colonial Marines. So to have a former employee of TimeGate, the same company that payed EGM, call out paid SimCity reviews is kind of ironic to me.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here. I'm not Gearbox or Sega, and I certainly don't excuse EGM or anyone who gets paid/compensated by a company for reviewing that company's product, even if it is something I worked on - even if only briefly.

TimeGate made the single player portion of Aliens: Colonial Marines. So to have a former employee of TimeGate, the same company that payed EGM, call out paid SimCity reviews is kind of ironic to me.

I'm glad you can tell me what TimeGate paid for better than I can.

 

[grotsnik]

lol, so I used to be a game developer I'm no longer able to have an opinion?

Oh, LOL. I'm so sorry, Anthony. I guess I thought the the fake headlines and crappy half-arsed formatting would make it obvious.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here. I'm not Gearbox or Sega, and I certainly don't excuse EGM or anyone who gets paid/compensated by a company for reviewing that company's product, even if it is something I worked on - even if only briefly.

TimeGate made the single player portion of Aliens: Colonial Marines. So to have a former employee of TimeGate, the same company that payed EGM, call out paid SimCity reviews is kind of ironic to me.

I'm glad you can tell me what TimeGate paid for better than I can.

I'm not trying to imply that payements/compensation for ACM reviews WASN'T done, I'm telling YOU that TimeGate has neither the funds nor the connections to do it - as well as integrity. I would look for another party - maybe one where someone has less integrity. That might be a good place to start. Regardless, this thread is about the train wreck that is breaking my heart, SimCity.

 

[Larendav]

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here. I'm not Gearbox or Sega, and I certainly don't excuse EGM or anyone who gets paid/compensated by a company for reviewing that company's product, even if it is something I worked on - even if only briefly.

TimeGate made the single player portion of Aliens: Colonial Marines. So to have a former employee of TimeGate, the same company that payed EGM, call out paid SimCity reviews is kind of ironic to me.

I'm glad you can tell me what TimeGate paid for better than I can.

Point is...

 

[Anthony Davis]

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here. I'm not Gearbox or Sega, and I certainly don't excuse EGM or anyone who gets paid/compensated by a company for reviewing that company's product, even if it is something I worked on - even if only briefly.

TimeGate made the single player portion of Aliens: Colonial Marines. So to have a former employee of TimeGate, the same company that payed EGM, call out paid SimCity reviews is kind of ironic to me.

I'm glad you can tell me what TimeGate paid for better than I can.

Point is...

 

[Infinitron]

 

[MetalCraze]

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here. I'm not Gearbox or Sega, and I certainly don't excuse EGM or anyone who gets paid/compensated by a company for reviewing that company's product, even if it is something I worked on - even if only briefly.

Isn't the guy writing that review - Sega's employee? Mobygames suggests so.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

listened to the bombcast, the game sounds horrible. Most amusing was jeff gerstmann trying to be diplomatic and not just outright calling it a disaster.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Kind of ironic how EGM was payed off for the Aliens: Colonial Marines review.

I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here. I'm not Gearbox or Sega, and I certainly don't excuse EGM or anyone who gets paid/compensated by a company for reviewing that company's product, even if it is something I worked on - even if only briefly.

Isn't the guy writing that review - Sega's employee? Mobygames suggests so.

http://www.egmnow.com/author/brandon-egm/ the bio posted there says he used to be in game development...

It is curious.

 

[Anthony Davis]

listened to the bombcast, the game sounds horrible. Most amusing was jeff gerstmann trying to be diplomatic and not just outright calling it a disaster.

Yeah, to be fair, there appears to be SOME fun nuggets buried in there, but they I'd call quite a few decisions "terrible" . "Buggy" was also mentioned quite a bit.

I personally think Jeff is just a nice guy and tries to understand and give things a chance.

We'll know more once he posts his review.

 

[Trash]

Well, just to provide a little balance. At least a few people seem to find actual fun in it.

Played it till 3 am last night. Really like it.

I mean, I suck at it, but jeepers. It's fun.

What do you like so much about it, Quigs? All I see and read about the game points to dumbing down and scaling back. Twisty roads really don't seem like much of a positive difference compared to small cities, no airports, no arcologies, pre-order only buildings and so on. Not even mentioning the always on DRM.

The last one I played tons of was the SNES verison. Played other builders between then and now of course, the Anno series, that sort of thing.

I think the thing that ties it together for me is the choices you make while building your city, and the impact it has. I don't mean the water pollution stuff (Though I do think it's kind of neat), I mean dedicating your city towards a certain path.

My experience with the game lasted about 7 hours or so last night, (interrupted only by the girlfriend demanding a round of the Game of Thrones card game, I reccomend it), so I'll just go off that.

Build my town up. Create jobs. Have a bit of fun watching individual houses become more prosperous and try to move to a better house or upgrade their own. Decide early on to go green with wind energy, but my greed for residential zoning and poor early planning mean I end up dozing the wind turbines for extremely powerful coal power plants. Find out my first town has a bit in the way of natural resources, but it seems to late to exploit them, as I've already built the entire expanse of the plot allocated to me. End up tearing down some industrial parks and residential projects to slam a coal mining operation and an ore mining operation in the middle of the damn city. This doesn't do any favors to my already overburdened transportation infrastructure. Meanwhile, because I've been pouring all my money into getting these new plants up and running, My town up and got dumb on me. There aren't enough skilled migrant laborers coming to Quigsville, and my one grade school doesn't have enough seats.

So I start up a second town, where my focus will be residential and education, all green energy this time, and plenty of public transport services to get the workers from Quigslandia over to Quigstown. Problem is, the lessons I learned from building the first town (and it's now healty income) don't quite work for the poor fucks in Quiglandia. I run out of money. So now im going back and forth between the two cities, trying to consolidate public services, and generally having a blast.

On top of which, the jillion graphical overlays that you can slap up are just great. It's neat seeing where the clogs are in your systems.

I like the way the economy works too. Right now I'm running a microprocessor plant. I need plastics and alloys to produce computer chips, except I can't quite figure out how to import those materials, and even if I did, my transportation system has gone to shit and isn't really effective.

SO. I turn to recycling. I get all my citizens to recycle, then cart off the alloys and plastics they've thrown away and turn them into computers and televisions. Yay!

I saw the option to build an airport by the way. Took up too large a space to want to use, but it was there. Arcologies can be built too, but it looks like it's more a regional thing then an in-city option. I'd be more dissapointed if I didn't enjoy the regional map as much as I do. It makes sense the arcology would be it's own entity anyway.

Anyway, if someone wants to write a Tcancer review for this here thingie please do. EA hasn't returned my calls though, so you'll have to fork over for a copy yourself. Still, imagine the fame! The glory!

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

That doritos guy meme is hilarious.

 

[Zewp]

 

[J_C]

Problem, EA? (To be fair, they should have put Sim City 4 into tha pack).

 

[Borelli]

Tropico 3 only 10% price of Tropico 4? Damn they are like the same game. Unless that 3.39 doesn't include expansions.

 

[Zewp]

Borelli, you realise that that is a fake pic, right?