Six years in the making, makes it hard to believe they got it this wrong. I literally feel as though I lost a friend.
Now, 2013 and six years since the release of the last Sim City, I was eagerly awaiting to play this. I per-ordered the mega deluxe limited digital edition. I would have probably shelled out more dough for some ultra fanboy edition with a replica Sim diamond park or some crap but didn't have the option... I was that excited.
I knew before purchasing, that EA was going to be testing their latest draconian DRM tools on the public via the most anticipated game of the year. I thought, well this sucks, but really what can I do? Surely it won't effect gameplay much. Surely it'll be a minor annoyance that we just have to accept living in the age of e-piracy.
I was wrong. Dead wrong! DRM to the point of not just un-playable, but even if you are lucky enough to play the game, you can't properly because of server errors and save issues make it beyond frustrating.
Okay, put that aside for a bit. Let's talk about the GAME shall we? I played the beta, and like most, I assumed that since it was beta they were having us all play it on a medium map. Wrong again. Medium is the new large (for now*). It is hard to not fill the entire playing map within 30-45 mins. It looks, and feels, much more like towns than cities. The reason being, Maxis/EA thought it would be more fun to force us to make many cities, within regions, and use each off of each-other. Problem is, when you play with other people, everyone is playing for themselves and doesn't really care about polluting, or spewing criminals into your town. Makes the game more annoying than fun.
The maps are far too small to be a Sim City and they know this. Apparently they already have the larger cities, and one would guess, they are going to try and sell us them in other expansion packs. That's right. A game people paid $80 for, not only is broken do to crippling DRM, but also does not come complete with regular large cities. Did I mention it's missing a subway system. Yes indeed. A spurring metropolis, with streetcars and airports, can't figure our underground rail. Expansion pack number two?
Let me talk a bit about saving. Remember when you used to make giant cities, only to blow them up and see what happens? Re-load and viola, back to the fun game where you left off. Not any more. There is literally no save button! None! Your game is auto "synced" to the cloud service. Sometimes. You don't know when, how, where, why. Sometimes you have the joy of spending an hour building a city, only to find it gone after you have lunch. That's right. No more blowing stuff up and not worrying that you are literally destroying hours of hard work. You still have the option to, but not sure why you would unless you are so tired of a game that you'd rather see your city in flames than play another minute.
Because of these major "sync" issues, it also completely destroys the idea of building regions and having to share recourses for the greater good. I built several regions where for some reason, I'd send power but the other city wouldn't get it, would have workers ready to work, but the other cities wouldn't know. I really wanted it to work, then I realized EA announced in efforts to try and fail less as a company, they disabled "non core" elements of the game! OMG. So because their DRM sucks so hard, they hard to turn off major, not core, but significant features of a game. Makes sense right?
Theres several other buggy features that I won't go into. Since this is a review I should note the positive aspects of the game.
The game looks and runs wonderfully. I can play it on full settings with no frame loss and it is amazing. Looking at info overlays takes you into another dimension of looking at data which is very apealing and a really nice touch. There are lots of things in the game that shine from high polishing. The traffic and people are highly detailed, while still not bogging down the system. The music and sounds in the game are very detailed. The city specialization is a good idea, really wanted it to work, but for now it is broken.
Ultimately, to sum things up, Sim City had a ton of potential to be game of the year, now it shall forever be known as Maxis' undoing. Amazon reviews alone show this to be a historical game release in terms of failure. I loved you Sim City, you were a game I could always count on. But you hurt me bad baby, and I don't think I'll be coming back.