Sim City 5

[shamrockflyer]

Sim City 5 was released this week, got my hands on the collectors edition earlier today.

 

First initial impressions, great game, great visuals/graphics etc...gameplay...well thats the problem. You cannot connect to a server in order to play the game, thats right. Its online only which is a real disappointment. Got a chance to play the tutorial (only for 50 seconds or so). The DRM doesn't help either. it just goes to show how 'lucky' we were back 9-10 years ago when Sim City 4 was totally offline and playable.

 

I have really looked forward to playing Sim City 5 for a long while now, its just a real shame they had to mess things up...

 

Anyone else taken the plunge and bought this "yet" to be awesome game, and how do you feel about its current situation?

[kangoat]

Was excited about a new SimCity, but not anymore. With all the problems around DRM, I think I'll give it a pass. Amazon was even putting up a warning that the game may not work.

[Talek]

personnally i am waiting for this:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-develop-and-manage-the-city-of-your-d

[shamrockflyer]

I managed to get into a server and create a really nice city/town. Its a really awesome game, it seems they have fixed the server connectivity issue(s). 

 

There are 1,535 1 star reviews on Amazon against 53 5 star reviews. Really goes to show just how bad the errors are/were.

[pilottj]

Thats too bad EA games had to ruin a great game series, Sims City and Sims have come a long way from the original Maxis games. I enjoyed the Sims alot back in the day. It was so open ended, lots of 3rd party user created content...some of it quite dirty and amusing. I saw a friend who had Sims 3, to me it had a few neat features, but overall seemed dumbed down from the usual Maxis wit and creativity of Sims 1 and to an extent Sims 2. From what I could tell, Sims 3 looked to be more difficult to create 3rd party content and less open to and user creativity....wonder if EA and MS shared marketing secrets or somthing. LOL

[EngineRoom]

I preloaded it last night and have been playing it today. It's a really fun and addictive game just like the older Sim City titles. The graphics especially are really nice. It's absolutely entralling watching your city with all the traffic and people going about their business. I think the decision to switch to much smaller cities than the older versions is possibly controversial. At first I quite liked it because it was very easy to manage the smaller cities and keep tabs on everything. Later on I struggled to find space to fit in amenities I needed to keep the city running. I suppose this could be intentional by the designers - to force the player to make difficult decisions and not be able to just have it all.

 

I did have problems logging into the servers this afternoon, I had about a thirty minute wait. Now everything seems fine and I can get straight in. Yes the issues are disappointing but I think they are being blown way out of proportion (as usual) and there's a lot of manufactured rage about it.

 

Like it or not the online requirement is a fact of life for modern PC gamers. This is a triple A release of an extremely famous and successful franchise. Everyone will be rushing out to buy it today or downloading it from Origin. Everyone will then immediately try and play it and the servers will naturally be overloaded. EA know this, but they also know it doesn't make financial sense to invest in the server infrastructure for the massive initial influx of players which will tail off over the first 24-48 hours. The same thing has happened with plenty triple A releases over the last few years. It's now less than 24 hours since release and the server problems appear to be sorted. I'm willing to bet most of the people raging on the various fora and blogs over this haven't even got the game.

[g_precentralis]

3 big turn offs for me:

 

DRM- always online for a singleplayer game. A minor one, but still leaves a bad taste.

 

There will be no community mods - this is the big turn off actually.

 

Price. Cmon, its 60 euros + taxes, just ridiculously overpriced.

 

I think Ill wait for some sale, just like I bought BF3 for reasonable price.

[Cessnaflyer]

EA has been having some epic failures lately. I think it is time for them to flush out some of their people and start with new ideas. In a few days there will most likely be a full playable version that will be pirated anyways.

[g_precentralis]

Lol, it cannot be pirated with that DRM, but that would be complete and utter disaster for EA.

[gizmosellsbunnys]

Bad setup =no buy for me. Play the retro Sim City as do not need to be online to use it. Online activation is one thing the whole thing turn off.

 

DRM- always online for a singleplayer game. A minor one, but still leaves a bad taste.

 

Exactly, stupid move by EA wont buy simcity 5 

[MatthewL]

Man that's so dissapointing. SimCity was always one of my favorites! 

[NoahBryant]

Sim City was actually what got me into computers many years ago. I was upset that my machine (at the time) was not 'powerful' enough to run Sim City 2000 and that started my interest and obsession with computers as I learned how to build a new computer myself to run it. 

 

I love this one. I don't remotely care about DRM as that's the way things are nowadays. Sadly, the industry needs DRM because it prevents piracy. I'd venture to guess that if it were a single player, non-DRM game more copies would be pirated than actually purchased. Blame the hackers, not the companies. 

 

I also wouldn't call this a single player game. Although you're not literally playing WITH someone, you cannot build as successfully a city without using your neighbor cities for various resources. 

 

I could do with slightly larger cities. I spent about 6 hours yesterday building a city to the point that it covered every square inch of my map. I couldn't do anything else but now I'm looking forward to building a more specialized city on my next try. Or build a few cities in one region that help each other out.

 

Obviously the server issues were a problem, but for me, they seem to be resolved so I don't especially care. It's disappointing to hear so many say they won't even give it a try because of DRM, it's actually far better than I expected to be. I was expecting another dumbed-down-for-the-masses game but it actually isn't that at all. 

[Cessnaflyer]

Lol, it cannot be pirated with that DRM, but that would be complete and utter disaster for EA.

Nothing is impossible. They will find a way

 

 

It's disappointing to hear so many say they won't even give it a try because of DRM, it's actually far better than I expected to be.

 

Problem is the majority of the time I would play it would be at home and on an unreliable satellite connection. Other times would be in hotel rooms that sometimes don't have a full connection. 

[Kaboki]

It can be some fun, but I'm really dissapointed in the small sized cities forcing you to make everything in a grid pattern just to get the most out of the limited space(Makes all the cities look the same, boring). The server issues seem to have stabelized somewhat, still have occasional connection issues but not as bad as the release days...

[Matthew Kane]

I was a huge Sim City fan but for this one I might wait for it to hit the bargain bins. One day it will sell for $9.99 and that is when I will buy it.