Game reviews simcity

It adds a layer of challenge on top of RCI zoning, adds to the long-term story of a city, and can make you filthy rich if played right. It implies that you choose one specialization, such as an ore mining town, and run with it. It doesn't work that way—you can select any specialization building from any category, so long as you've unlocked it by meeting a few prerequisites.

The buildings enable mining operations, raw materials and consumer goods production, Global Market trade, and the development of a tourism industry. One of my earliest cities, Murder Bucket it's actually got great police coverage , was rich in ore and oil, so I opted for the dirty job of ripping it all out of the earth.

As I pulled ore out of the ground, it needed somewhere to go, so I started building trade depots to sell it on the Global Market. Building and upgrading the headquarters gave me access to new buildings, such as a smelter which produces metal and ore.

I was building a complete supply chain, making sure my trucks could get to and from mines, storage facilities, and processing plants. At first, my ambitions caused my city to hemorrhage money, but it was a proud moment when I solved blockages in the chain and started turning a profit. The specialization system could almost have been its own game, and it adds a wealth of story to every city. Or, I can imagine that when the wells dried up, my sad sack Sims turned to booze and gambling.

Or maybe the city reinvents itself, investing in cultural landmarks and high-tech industry. I construct a personal story for every city I build, and specializations add context and detail, making my city's past as important as its future.

A successful city can't be successful at everything, however, so it must live in symbiosis with the whole region, some of which can house up to 16 cities. If I lack power or water, I can buy it from another city, and if I see that a city in my region can't handle all its garbage, I can volunteer some of my trucks to help. There are also passive benefits.

If I have no schools, my population will head to other cities for education. If I have a surplus of low-wealth jobs, unemployed low-wealth residents in other cities will hop on my municipal buses and add to my labor force. The idea is exciting, but it can be difficult to exploit meaningfully.

It's missing information I need, such as what data influences whether or not Sims will commute to other cities, or what the limit on resource sharing is. I can buy power when I need a little extra, but trying to run a city without its own power plants doesn't work.

I wasn't being cheeky or trying to test the simulation, I just thought it would be neat to have a dirty city dedicated to coal power supporting a larger, medium-income residential city.

I tried: I built a city with a megawatt power surplus to support another, but my powerless city refused to purchase more than Why limit how I exploit regional interactions, especially when it's supposed to be the answer to small city sizes?

Multiplayer also makes things tricky, because if I'm just supplementing power with surplus from a friend's city, I've got to yell at them every time their surplus dips.

And it will dip—they aren't going to be watching it every second as their city grows. Passive benefits sometimes confuse me too. When one of my cities needed more low-wealth workers, I founded a new city nearby and filled it with low-wealth residential. I tried not to include too much industry, instead focusing on region-wide public transportation, but it didn't work.

The suburban city wouldn't grow like I hoped and was losing money, so I started building up the commercial sector. That got shoppers in from my first city, but I still hadn't solved the worker shortage. City interaction works in general—I can see that workers sometimes commute, as do shoppers and students—but it can be hard to create intentional symbiosis, except with the simplest shared benefits.

City hall upgrades, for example, unlock new building types for the entire region, and if I'm out of space to dump garbage, another city can send a specific number of garbage trucks to help. The hardest part of it is learning to not try to solve everything in one city. There just isn't enough room to be everything, so I have to avoid the temptation to try for a high-tech mining town and electronics producer. That is, unless I'm playing in Sandbox Mode, which starts you off with 1,, Simoleans and every building unlocked.

It's a great place to experiment or just amuse myself with absurd cities. Only circular roads? Why not! To play in any region, multiplayer or alone, SimCity requires a constant server connection.

Despite Maxis' design justifications, let's face it—it's always-online DRM. SimCity is not an MMO. Having a constant connection to the developing cities in my region is fun, but no more than than a smidgen of SimCity's total fun relies on multiplayer. And at the time of writing, the always-online requirement is terribly flawed. I've been able to play on the live servers for a total of 50 hours, so it isn't nearly unplayable, but it is very frustrating.

I've been stuck in the launcher for 20 minute wait periods to connect to a server, only to have the timer reset after the connection fails. I've made it past the launcher to the menu, only to be told it still can't connect.

I've been kicked out of my cities, only to come back to find that they can't be loaded "at this time"—often meaning an hour or more. I might have been able to play on a different server—the Oceanic server has been more welcoming—but that's not where my friends and cities are.

Starting new cities is plenty fun, but if I can get anything positive out of the always-online requirement, it should be playing with my friends. That was a challenge. Even when the server let me in, adding friends took hours, and invites to join my private region either failed on the spot, or claimed success but still required multiple attempts.

At the time of this writing, Cheetah Speed—the fastest the simulation can run—has been disabled to help reduce the server load.

That's a very significant gameplay feature, and that it has been yanked for the time being to deal with service issues is an indication of the magnitude of the server problems.

There are also bugs and poorly-streamlined features. Sims will sometimes refuse to build on certain streets until I bulldoze part of them and rebuild them.

I will share with you my experiences in playing Sim City and why others hate it. So let's start off with the hate, w I learned a valuable lesson from this release I'm not going to get i This could have been so good, and it's obvious that there is a great game hidden under the layers of DRM, online-requirement, in-game ads, and Origin.

It's a real shame. I enjoy simulation games, still fire up Railroad t Simcity is a sim where you try to build your own city from the ground up. It mostly consists of three zones. Here you can build off parts of your city to your liking. You can als Less than five months, and six updates later, SimCity is still not the game it promised to be.

Initial launch issues aside, the game itself is fundamentally flawed and will likely never redeem itself, no matter how many SimCity First Released Mar 5, released. You're Good to Go! GameSpot Reviews. Player Reviews. Average Player Score Based on ratings. Please Sign In to rate SimCity. Score Breakdown Based on ratings. Rating: 7. I want to be able to build up a city, save it and wreck it with disasters, but EA says you, I will deside what's fun for you.

PROS: Fresh look for a good classic, resources or speciality services, shared goals within game, on line play. Im not sure what type of this latest title the Critics got a taste of, but I assure you, it wasn't the one that consumers beta tested or paid for. Finally, with all that can go wrong and has with games that have gone this route, I'm not even sure if you can call this a game at this stage This review contains spoilers , click expand to view.

Unable to connect. I really hope EA gets their act together with this horrid experience. I am hoping for a some kind Unable to connect. I am hoping for a some kind of action to alleviate any lost time trying to play a game. Maybe some free dlc? When i first tried to play it, it didnt unlock Skip it, you will thank me.

We as consumers have no one to blame but ourselves for continuing to buy EA products. You get what you pay for and each of us has gotten We as consumers have no one to blame but ourselves for continuing to buy EA products.

You get what you pay for and each of us has gotten exactly what we bought. An online only game that you can't play and will be dead in a few years when EA decides they are no longer making money enough to keep the servers up.

I am taking a stand here and now and vow this will never happen to me again. Who is with me? Play Video. SimCity CG Trailer. SimCity: Never Stop Building. SimCity Debut Trailer. SimCity World Gamescom Trailer. SimCity - Introduction Trailer. SimCity Offline - Gameplay Tutorial.

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