SimCity is a difficult title to review as it is very hard to know when you’ve played enough to review the title properly. The game never really ends so in some ways it’s like an MMO so I’ve played around 30-40 hours now and feel I know the game enough to give it a fair review.

The Elephant in the Room

Let’s not even go any further until we discuss the always online connection and the fact that it simply didn’t work for the first few days.

I only started playing on Saturday morning by which time the majority of the connectivity problems had been rectified by EA already and while I know many people, including Darryn, are still experiencing problems I haven’t had a single issue in all my playtime.

The game requires an online connection as a lot of the computing and workings of the regions are calculated off site using this wonderful cloud technology all of you think is so awesome. I don’t like the cloud, I think it’s insane to outsource computing power out of your hands but I’m losing this battle.

EA fluffed the release in catastrophic fashion and it will take a long time for anyone to forget about this, also if you refuse to play games that require an always on connection then your gaming life is going to take a turn for the worse. We all hate it but it is here to stay.

expo

Starting Up

So let’s get into the meat of the game shall we. When you first boot up you will be asked to join a region. I’m in Europe East 3 and this is important as if you want to join friends you need to be on the same server. So check with your friends before starting up to make sure you are going to play together.

Then you are put through a pretty mind numbing tutorial. It’s important though as it will touch on the depth of the game and without these basic ideas you will struggle once you start your own city.

A quick tip, whenever you change servers the game will want to play the tutorial again. When this happens start the tutorial then quit back to the main menu and you can continue to then start cities.

A New City

So you’ve completed the tutorial, unless you failed.. then you need to turn off the computer and throw it in the pool..

So starting a new city, you need to pick a style of region first. Each region contains multiple spaces for cities along with a number of great works you can collaborate on. I chose a 16 city region with 4 great works as I’d like to create the all dominating Lazygameropilopilos and take over the world.

Once you have your region you are give the choice of making it public or private and whether you are going to sandbox or not. If you make it a sandbox then cheats are enabled and leader boards and achievements are turned off.

I’m not one for cheats so I’ve made mine public.

Once you have a spot you are given 50 000 simoleons and an empty spot of land. First thing you need to do is create a connection to the highway that runs through the region so that your city can receive and send sims and goods around the region.

Once you have that you need to place your basics which are water and power and then zone some areas for the residents, commercial areas and industry. And then you begin.

The Detail… The Devil

I won’t bore you with telling you how SimCity works, you all know how it does already and if you don’t you can read my basic tip guide which will tell you everything you need to know.

The devil in SimCity is very much in the detail, there are tons of different data levels and overlays you can look at that will tell you exactly how happy, rich, sick, educated or pretty much everything else your sims are.

What is truly amazing is that every single Sim in SimCity is independent, you can zoom in and select a single Sim to see who they are, what they want out of life and how they go about their lives. This goes for any vehicle or building as well. The entire city is a living breathing thing and you can micro manage to your hearts content.

people

When you zoom in the graphics to become pretty rudimentary but I can’t really tell as my laptop isn’t a gaming PC. But you can see a screenshot of my early game above. There are sims walking around and if you sit and watch you can follow those cars to their place of work or if they are going shopping.

Also you need to keep an eye on things like fire coverage and the like as fires and crime will spread organically if you are not careful. Take a look at what’s happening to my commercial sector since I don’t have a fire station in my city and I’m not yet connected to a fellow city which can send help.

fire

As you can see the fire is simply spreading from building to building. I tested this for a while and as you would expect without a single fire truck the fire simply never ends.

firefirefire

But How Does It Work?

But SimCity is about a lot more than simply zoning areas and growing a city, especially this new SimCity. This SimCity is about collaboration and specialisation. You will never be able to complete a great work or even level up your city hall to full power without multiple cities in a region.

You can also not specialise in Coal, Oil, gambling and electronics in one city as you simply don’t have the space available.

It was a big decision by SimCity to limit the space and older players will very quickly become irate with the game as there simply isn’t enough space to make huge sprawling cities like we used to. But what first appears to be a negative quickly becomes a positive as you realise you need to very carefully plan and tweak your cities to grow as you would like.

The first problem you are going to find is that you simply can’t zone enough residential, but what you can do is create a new city which is basically a commuter city and your sims will automatically commute from your leafy city to the dirt and grime of your industrial haven.

Once your city grows you can also unlock things such as theatres, stadiums and expo centres which can then host events. You choose what type of event from a list and then start preparing for it. So for example you can host a Rock Concert which could bring in 150 000 simoleons profit but it will cost you 55 000 to host.

If you have the right mass transit setup you can then use these sorts of events to boost your budget while pouring money into education or mining investment. I have a city that is running at a massive loss on it’s standard budget and yet is raking in a fortune just on holding events.

It’s the little things like this that make SimCity so incredibly addictive and well thought out.

Quests

Okay maybe Quests is a bit of a misleading headline here, they are hardly quests but to keep the game flowing and interesting your Sims will randomly ask you to do certain things and you can then choose to do them or not.

Things such as build a recycling plant for the hippy or a firestation have a fireworks show.

Some of them reward you with a ton of money and are really easy and at other times they ask you for the impossible so don’t just say yes to everything that comes along.

Also as a side note, recycling plants are great for getting alloys and plastics for trade which brings in a fair amount of cash. Maybe the hippies are onto something.

Disasters

disaster

A quick word on disasters, they still exist and are still just as annoying (or awesome) as they were before. The tornado doesn’t do that much damage but the freaking monster destroyed a ton of my city and thankfully just missed my two very expensive mines.

I won’t ruin them for you but yes zombies exist.

But Does It Have Problems?

So far I’ve told you all the good things about SimCity but it isn’t without problems. The engine that powers the incredible data can go wrong. I tried to take a screenshot of some of the problems but it looks like when you take a screenshot it removes the thought bubbles.

port

Take a look at the screenshot above, the place I am pointing to kept on asking for a port and was getting more and more upset that I didn’t deliver… it’s right freaking there? I can only guess this was something to do with the servers being overloaded as it is happening less and less but still often enough to be annoying.

The roads are still an issue, you will often find that you can’t connect roads for some obscure reason which destroys your beautifully laid out city now that you have a stupid kink just to make the traffic flow.

There is also no terraforming, I don’t understand why this was left out as having half of my area ruined thanks to a stupid mountain doesn’t make the game more fun it simply takes away the enjoyment. I understand they want us to work with what we have but how about offering terraforming with a penalty. So any oil or ore in the mountain is lost when we terraform. Or make terraforming really expensive.

And the last big issue I have is the lack of a subway or mono rail system. These are standard modes of transport in most large cities in this world, why they decided against it baffles me.

Also if like Darryn you decide to build your power plant in the middle of the zone you are going to have problems. This is honestly Darryn’s Gotham City and this is more a problem with his brain than SimCity

dafuq

TL;DR

Hello 90% of people who scroll straight to the score, at least read this part okay?

SimCity reminds you why you fell in love with the idea in the first place. If you loved SimCity you will absolutely adore this. It’s not perfect but what is in this world?

Last Updated: March 13, 2013

SimCity
If the servers worked all the time and we could play offline then this game would easily score 9.5, but that elephant is huge and a problem
8.3
SimCity was reviewed on PC

46 Comments

  1. TriangularRoom

    March 13, 2013 at 13:09

    Great review! I have yet to get any of my cities out of the red and ready to specialise…
    I am also wondering about the Digital Deluxe Edition and where all my money went for that… so far I have discovered 3 unique buildings :/

    Reply

    • Valshen

      March 13, 2013 at 14:29

      What are you doing, my city is filthy rich (ok not really, but I am making money ;P )

      Reply

  2. Sir Captain Rincethis

    March 13, 2013 at 13:09

    Nice review Gavin, well balanced. I have to beg to differ as far as always online games go. Sure, there are a few (and by that, I breath a sigh of relief) but I cannot see it shaping the industry, not with the hate out there for it. I know plenty of people who would rather stick with old gen if it means having to pay a fortune for internet access, EACH MONTH until the servers are turned off, to play a game you have already fucking paid for.

    Reply

    • Purple_Dragon

      March 13, 2013 at 13:14

      I really hope you are right!! This online stuff is a pile of crap. Either market your games as online only for online multiplayer or single player only, don’t punt single player experience and then demand online connections!

      I seriously think games should be split into multiplayer or single player. Don’t have single player with multiplayer tacked on or multiplayer with a short SP that is a tutorial.

      Reply

      • Sir Captain Rincethis

        March 13, 2013 at 13:19

        Agreed. I have to believe there will be a crash, and that will rest these EA money milking bastards back to the point of GAMING.

        Reply

    • Purple_Dragon

      March 13, 2013 at 13:14

      I really hope you are right!! This online stuff is a pile of crap. Either market your games as online only for online multiplayer or single player only, don’t punt single player experience and then demand online connections!

      I seriously think games should be split into multiplayer or single player. Don’t have single player with multiplayer tacked on or multiplayer with a short SP that is a tutorial.

      Reply

    • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

      March 13, 2013 at 13:17

      Unfortunately the industry has proven they don’t care what we as a consumer hate or like.

      We hated having to authenticate our products online and lock them to our personal accounts, never to be able to sell them again (PC anyway), yet it didn’t stop them from doing that. That’s because they don’t want a second hand market.

      They will use piracy as the same pushing platform to force always on connectivity. It will not happen overnight, but it will slowly gain speed until it is the norm.

      Reply

      • Sir Captain Rincethis

        March 13, 2013 at 13:20

        As I just said to purple, I think we are at a peak at the moment. There will be a crash as people are going to stop putting up with this shit (as in, the COD players will now have grown up). Imagine me selling you a car that SOMETIMES works? Fuck that, I’d return it. But NO, the people in this industry bend over backwards, like that shit outsurance advert, and ask for MORE crap. Time for people to stand up and vote with NOT spending money on forced ideas.

        Reply

        • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

          March 13, 2013 at 13:26

          The big thing is people won’t stop buying games. No matter what.

          I myself am guilty. I knew Diablo III was always on. I knew there would be server issues. Yet I still bought it thinking “Maybe the game itself will be good”

          I was wrong of course.

          As long as they are making games people want, the games will sell. Regardless.
          You forget the power of little timmy and daddy’s credit card.

          Also, since when do COD players grow up?

          Reply

          • Sir Captain Rincethis

            March 13, 2013 at 13:28

            Hehe, 1 Slaps you with wet fish. 2. I think people will grow up, when anything becomes too saturated people either lose interest, or LEARN. Perhaps my hope is stupid, but I can keep on!

  3. Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

    March 13, 2013 at 13:09

    Great review man.

    Looks like I will have no choice but to buy it. Now to find out if I have any Randellas left to buy anything….

    Reply

  4. Purple_Dragon

    March 13, 2013 at 13:10

    I don’t know hey, it’s an interesting one. I’m just disappointed they’ve basically moved away from what made SimCity SimCity by limiting the space. I was going to buy the game as I loved the originals but decided against it after hearing about the online thing and the space limited.

    But it’s an interesting question, should issues like the online problems in the beginning impact on reviews and review scores or not? Some other reviewers have given it a bad rating because of the problems encountered but other reviewers have given it a good rating because the “game is good when it works”.

    I don’t know hey, I don’t like the direction games are taking with this online thing. I also don’t like these single player games being changed to suit online. I just can see a day in the future where I will stop playing games.

    Reply

    • Sir Captain Rincethis

      March 13, 2013 at 13:12

      No brother, you will still play, it will be with an over-raged OVG and old gen, but play nonetheless we SHALL!

      Reply

      • Purple_Dragon

        March 13, 2013 at 13:14

        Haha yes, I’ll probably still have a massive backlog by then to work through!

        Reply

    • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

      March 13, 2013 at 13:23

      I believe server issues should. Game reviews are about whether a game is fun or not and whether it is what one expected etc.

      So if you can’t play due to server issues, then it should form part of the review and effect it negatively as a product.

      Here is a horribly overused and bad example:

      If Ferrari make an amazing car with all the bells and whistles that looks good and drives great but is only able to go past 120km/h sometimes when everything is running as it should, should one say it’s a great car or a bad car because it doesn’t perform?

      So yeah, that’s why it should play a part in the reviews because people need to know about it.

      Reply

      • Sir Captain Rincethis

        March 13, 2013 at 13:26

        What you said. My point exactly. Although this is a great article, and it does sound like a great game I personally believe if I have a 50/50 chance of a game working when I turn it on, then it’s shit. How on EARTH did we let the industry get us to the situation where we say ‘Yes, my R600 WORKS! Praise be to the forced internet connection!” And I do believe talking about it works, if we stop it will just carry on. I voted by not paying for this game. And I will do so by not paying for any game that FORCES me to be online. If it is there as an added awesomness, so be it, but not as a MUST. This isn’t Nazzi fucking Earth, we are supposed to have choice, or at least a good illusion of it.

        Reply

        • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

          March 13, 2013 at 13:32

          And that’s why Gavin made the comment of “if you refuse to play games that require an always on connection then your gaming life is going to take a turn for the worse. We all hate it but it is here to stay.”

          If you are one who refuses to buy a game due to it being perma online then you are unfortunately in the minority. In an industry driven my money, the minority isn’t the issue. The majority is. The majority will always buy games. Sad truth.

          I am also part of the minority who would take a stand and not buy a game simply because it is forced online. BUT I would just be shooting myself in the foot as it wouldn’t make a dent to the publishers.

          It’s like making tea with poison, drinking it yourself and hoping the other person dies. It’s just not going to work unfortunately.

          Reply

          • Sir Captain Rincethis

            March 13, 2013 at 13:37

            You see I disagree. I am ALLOWED to moan like a bitch because I don’t subscribe to this shit. I saw what Gavin wrote, and I think it’s wrong. Games like A:CM are rarely made, because they are SHIT and the community backs that up by not buying them. If that was done on a largescale with games like this, then we wouldn’t be writing right now. I won’t be shooting myself in the foot because there are plenty of games out there that will not follow this bullshit fad. And as Purple said, if it gets to the point of being forced to do something I don’t want to THE IT ISN’T FUN. And I will do something extreme, like find an outdoor hobby or watch Jersey Shore…

          • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

            March 13, 2013 at 13:50

            Lol dude chillax. You misunderstand me. By no means must we be quiet and just accept it. Moan, make waves, let them know how you feel.Never stop standing up for what you believe is right.

            Not buying the game won’t make squat difference thoughm because not everyone is capable of giving up a game they are invested in just to make a point. So that’s not the solution. The solution is the public’s VIEW and the how they feel about it. If they feel strongly about something and make the life of the publishers difficult by decreasing brand popularity because of being unhappy then something will change. When the brand image is destroyed by the hate of it in the market it is far more effective because these companies rely on their image to sell.

            The only reason these games sell is because the majority of gamers are a more “casual” society who don’t care what the game requirements are. Rather just that they HAVE a game to play. They have never and will never care about what choices the publishers are making because in their eyes it doesn’t matter. So what if they have to wait a day or 2 to play?

            You and I man, are the minority. The people here on this site, the reviewers on the site and all others are no longer the considered the core game user. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but it’s true. The old, core gamer is now in the minority. It’s the price that is paid for having gaming seen as a popular and proper past time/hobby. The new core gamers are the general public. It’s true. It’s why games are dumbed down, created with social interaction in mind etc.

            What I am trying to say is, never stop complaining and writing about how bad it is. Educate those that don’t understand what is actually going on. The only way that happens is to generate public feelings. Once the new generation of gamers start to understand what is actually happening then people will be able to start mass boycotting products by not buying because the majority will then be on board and understand what is actually happening.

            But simply saying “I’m not buying it” is simply going to have the effect of “Meh, oh well, at least we have the rest of the world still buying our product. Who cares”

            Understand what I am trying to get at here?

          • Sir Captain Rincethis

            March 13, 2013 at 13:57

            Yeah, I know what you mean. Just upsets me that something I have loved for over 25 years is turning into poo. I don’t mind mainstream if it’s good. I do mind if it’s over-saturated ‘me makum you do what I want’ rubbish. I need to distract myself ‘puts on Sims, server down, FML’ lol

          • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

            March 13, 2013 at 14:03

            We all hate it. Unfortunately the times are changing and it isn’t taking the older gen with it 🙁 And that sucks

          • Eric Viljoen

            March 13, 2013 at 13:53

            Agreed. I dont get why it isn’t included in some reviews. It’s not like it’s not a known issue. Even the reviewer admitted that his colleague is experiencing issues with it. Whenever you rate anything else except movies and games, you rate on consistency as well. A good team or company is rated based on it. A team wont be a good team and a company wont generate income if they dont perform consistently. It’s one of the most basic KPIs

          • Sir Captain Rincethis

            March 13, 2013 at 14:05

            Totally agree with you. You only have to look at blunders like C:AM to see that when pressure IS applied, it can work. Does something have to be SO bad that people will say something? And I also agree with your sentiment regarding KPI’s. Each year I am reviewed on my KPAs and KPIs, you think if inconsistency was a key feature I’d have a job?!

    • Gavin Mannion

      March 13, 2013 at 13:36

      If I had suffered server issues it would have negatively affected the review… in the end it affected it slightly due to the overwhelming amount of people who were affected

      Reply

  5. Matthew John

    March 13, 2013 at 13:13

    Im really enjoying it, I just wish you could build MEGA cities instead of a multiple of smaller ones

    Reply

  6. Admiral Chief Erwin

    March 13, 2013 at 13:19

    TL;DR comment lulz, well done!

    Reply

  7. Lardus

    March 13, 2013 at 13:56

    “lack of a subway or mono rail system” – seriously? Wonder if Sim City 4 had this, because I have an urge to play Sim City, but having iWorst as an ISP (or rather CrapSP) means I won’t even bother with the always on version 🙁 #sadface

    Reply

    • Jim Lenoir

      March 14, 2013 at 03:43

      I have a feeling the subway or mono rail system is coming with a future expac or future DLC. This whole game is optimised for DLC delivery, and that’s another reason to give EA the middle finger.

      Reply

  8. Barry Sim Fan

    March 13, 2013 at 14:25

    Well, it seems to me that this reviewer didn’t actually play this game long enough to discover that the game is so broken that after a while it becomes practically unplayable, and this has nothing to do with servers or DRM. If you don’t believe me check out this topic at official EA Answers HQ : “Traffic “AI”… This is why services and traffic are broken!”
    http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneous-Issues/Traffic-quot-AI-quot-This-is-why-services-and-traffic-are-broken/m-p/737060?ClickID=azszwsook9n0snla5ts9vayrnwlprnllzsrn#U737060%5B

    Reply

    • Gavin Mannion

      March 14, 2013 at 05:44

      First up I did specify exactly how long I have been playing for and you are right I could be missing a fatal flaw but the review has to go out sometime.

      Secondly that’s not an official EA answer it’s simply a forum post about what someone feels. I’ve heard from another reader that he has the same problem so I’m not saying it doesn’t exist I’m simply saying I haven’t run into that problem.

      Have you tried upgrading your blocked streets to avenues? Yes you need to destroy the buildings around it but if that works then it’s not a bug and more to do with planning correctly?

      Reply

      • Barry Sim Fan

        March 14, 2013 at 11:14

        Where did I say it’s an official EA answer? I’ve tried everything, but as soon as I get to around 80k population, things start to fall apart. I’m just disappointed after all that pomp about how “GlassBox engine is allowing for more detailed simulation than previous games”, when in reality it actually doesn’t. Right now this game is broken on so many levels, I’m surprised they’ve released it like this. I hope they’ll patch it soon.

        P.S.
        I really like your reviews, except this one. Keep up the good work.

        Reply

  9. Maskmoth

    March 13, 2013 at 14:31

    I believe they will create a map that will allow bigger city creation in the form of DLC – They need some way to make money to upgrade and maintain the servers, because how can they do that without an income.

    Reply

  10. Logo

    March 13, 2013 at 23:45

    Buying the EA FUD hook line and sinker hey ? I am sure it is a good game but I stopped reading the review the minute I got to the line that says “A lot of the calculations are done off site” That is exactly what EA wants you to think. In reality it doesn’t do much it does the obvious of importing player data and maps, but other than that all it really does is check that players don’t hack or cheat and simply handles the social aspect of the game. This was confirmed by a project lead programmer on Sim City today and has been confirmed. The statement from the programmer ““The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless.” And Kotaku ran their own tests and verified that the game can in it’s current state run without a network connection and it took 20 minutes before it even realized that it wasn’t connected to the EA servers anymore.

    So please do your research before just repeating what EA reps say, of course they are going to make outlandish claims like that.

    Reply

    • Jim Lenoir

      March 14, 2013 at 03:42

      I have to agree with you, I’m not a programmer, nor do I know anything about databases but this just sounds fishy to me. I always considered my internet line to be a bottleneck of sorts, so how exactly does that not effect how data is received to my game if it has to be carried through this bottle neck from a distant mega server (in a distant land, apparently doing amazing and crazy computations on a whole city of 100 000 individual sims)?

      I think EA should just come clean and state that the only reason they went the always-online route is the same reason they tried to decrease the number of times you can install a game (Remember the Spore controversy), lame brain attempt at curbing game ownership, under the guise of “PPppIIiiIIIRRrrrAACcccCCyyyyYYyy!”

      Reply

    • Gavin Mannion

      March 14, 2013 at 05:49

      I’ve done my research. One programmer saying it isn’t happening does mean it is not happening.

      The inner workings of your city are handled locally but the inter-connectivity of cities in regions are handled by the servers… This is why it can run offline for a certain period of time before running into problems. That’s my take on it and nothing I’ve seen from any source points to a different conclusion.

      I don’t like the always on model at all but that was EA’s choice and that is there right. They lost points for not getting it 100% right and beyond that it would be unprofessional of me to score them lower simply because I’m not a fan of the idea.

      That’s like me giving PS3 reviews lower scores because their XMB sucks. Not really fair

      Reply

      • Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

        March 14, 2013 at 07:19

        The XMB analogy doesn’t really work, since you don’t really have a game that’s built into the XMB to the extent that SimCity is tied with their glassbox/Origin system. Now if a PS3 game existed that was like that, and PSN was constantly giving you problems, then regardless, the game would be penalised in the review. The reasoning: The game depends on those external features to function at its bare minimum…. which is the case with the SimCity.

        Same with an xbox title, if you have title that’s essentially built into Metro, to such an extent that it can’t function without it, and if said game is essentially unplayable, then yeah.. I’d eat it for breakfast.. (with some bacon and eggs) 😀

        Reply

  11. Jim Lenoir

    March 14, 2013 at 03:33

    I’m going to sound like a broken record, but much like with Diablo 3, the always-online DRM is a deal-breaker for me, and much like with Blizzard’s title, I’ll be giving this one the Banana Slip! (insert smiley emoticon).

    It does sound like SimCity is a very engaging title, with just enough of a nod to its nostalgic roots to keep the old folk happy, and just enough to keep new players interested. However, I can’t get over the DRM obstacle, or the fact that they’ve squeezed this poor title into a multiplayer speedo (when it clearly could never pull it off…a bit like Erwin really), or the fact that the cities are so microscopic. I managed to check the game out a week ago, and while it certainly looks stunning, it’s just not SimCity.

    But, there’s a silver lining to this dark DRM cloud, I dusted off my credit card after spotting a sale on Steam, and bought Tropico 4 for under R100. Thanks EA, and all this time, I was holding out on not buying Tropico 4, because I was waiting for SimCity. Lulz!

    Reply

    • Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

      March 14, 2013 at 04:15

      Also… I really think we need to pool our resources to get Gav a decent gaming rig (any sponsors our there who wants to help out?). I mean, I have a shitty computer, but that’s because I fly my console flag like a tiny Banana Republic dictator.

      Admiral General Banana Jim 😀

      Reply

  12. Alwyn

    March 14, 2013 at 08:27

    Like you, I am a big Sim City fan. I pre-ordered this game…something I have never done before, knowing full well about the DRM (having swore I would never buy another game with this feature after Diablo III). I built a couple of big cities (100k population +) and the issues are so blatantly visible. These issues only came to light in the past few days since most people could not play the game after launch. Issues include: traffic simulation, phantom sims (not every sim is actually simulated and is just a meaningless entity. Certain “enthusiasts” performed in-game tests. It is easy to replicate their results, I did), buildings not functioning properly (recycling center), out of whack population to workers to shoppers ratios, etc. Also, having saved cities tied to a server that is not transferable is ridiculous. I could not get into my region due to “server very busy” and had to join another region to start all over. This is not supposed to be a casual game where you sit down for half an hour and build a city and then move on. Hopefully these issues can be fixed, since I really do like the idea of the game, but I cannot bring myself to continue with this game, knowing full well I am building a city which is eventually going to go down the drain (or not even there the next time I join the server, as this happened a couple of times to me). I am sorry to disagree with you, but in the current state of the game, even ignoring the DRM situation, this game does not deserve that rating.

    Reply

  13. Paul Fouche

    March 14, 2013 at 08:53

    i want to try this

    Reply

  14. Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

    April 2, 2013 at 13:52

    I spent much of this weekend, playing SimCity 4 on my old laptop (while visiting my mom on the south coast). And all I can say is, how the hell did they get it so terribly wrong with SimCity 5…

    It literally baffles my mind….

    Reply

  15. Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

    April 6, 2013 at 20:51

    Will you look at that time really flies. It’s almost the one-month Anniversary of SImCity’s release. So what has changed? Not a damn thing. Game’s still broken.

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH!

    Reply

  16. Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

    April 19, 2013 at 18:27

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