No Holds Barred Review - SimCity (2013)

            So EA has finally published a new SimCity after a gap of 10 years (the last full version being SimCity 4 way back in the Dark Ages of 2003) and as such I’m sure you are all wondering what this game is like…or you would if I hadn’t published this review of it a month after the original release but fear not though for the situation, at least for me, is a blessing not a curse for SimCity has received a fair few patches and updates since its release and therefor it is now up to us…or at least me…to take a look at this new instalment and all its aspects that Maxis and EA have revised since its official release into the wild. Now how do I start…OH I know, how about this:

 

Source - http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/simcity-mayor.jpg?w=640

           

            Perfect. Now, time for a bit of backstory I suppose. During the development of their new SimCity title, EA decided to make the game solely multiplayer based (more about THIS particular point later) and as such a constant internet connection to EA origin must be maintained (again, more about this later). Now to any gamers out there familiar with how multiplayer in games works, and if you don’t you soon will, you will know that in order to play multiplayer modes in games the game company that published said game must supply adequate server support to deal with the flow of traffic as thousands of games engage in there multiplayer matches. It is here that lies the problem and I hope some of you can now see it but if not don’t worry because I’m about to tell you all anyway for you see when EA launched the new SimCity this server support was simple not there or in the very least the support was not as strong as it should have been. It’s because of this that SimCity experienced 2 weeks of server glitches and drop out due to the overload on the servers caused by so many players trying to log-in Origin. Now this is no doubt the point where you expect me to say that the servers are now working perfectly and the game is finally playable…HAH as if. Why? Well that’s simple dear readers; simply put the servers are still COMPLETELY and UTTERLY useless. Honestly it’s absolutely staggering considering I loaded up the game – going on for 1 month after release - and within the first couple of hours I got disconnected not once but TWICE inside the same hour and then, AND BLOODY THEN! I get THIS message:

         

            Yep that’s right, not even 2 HOURS in to it my game tells me that it’s not processing properly and boots me back to the main menu for the THIRD blasted time and to add final insult to injury it tells me that in order to get back to my city I will need to ether “Rollback” my city to a pervious save or abandon the region my City was built in completely and start fresh on a new one, not that it really matters though because after choosing the rollback option it deleted my entire city and therefore I now have this to say…8ahem*…well done EA. No seriously, congratulations for having the WORST servers I have ever…EVER…had the misfortune of playing on – oh and your server select system is rubbish. Seriously why can’t I exit the server select page unless I select a server, I mean was it really so hard to program a close button into the window…actually…it really wouldn’t surprise me.

            *Sigh* Well now that’s out of the way I guess I should start by telling you all the price of the game. Current standing is £44.99 for the Standard Edition of the game and £64.99 for the Deluxe Edition (£19.99 for the upgrade to deluxe if you already have the standard edition) and to those of you who are wondering what you will get for that additional £20 on the game price, here’s a list:

·         The Heroes and Villains pack (Maxis Man and the Evil Dr Vu).

·         The British City Set

·         The French City Set

·         The German City Set

            However there was a third buying option available on release, the “Limited Edition” version. This however was only available for a limited time (as the name suggests) which included the standard game & the heroes and villains pack. Coincidently this is the version of the game that I bought and on a side note, what bloody hero only goes out on patrol if he’s PAID. Seriously you don’t see Batman only answering the Bat-signal after Commissioner Gordon has sent him $500 to do so or how about Superman saving people from a burning building only after they’ve PAID him $50 each, it’s just stupid…and now that I think about it, sums up EA pretty damn well…and Frank Millers interpretation of the characters…but that doesn’t matter right now. 

            I should also mention, while we’re on the subject of purchasing the game, that unless you buy a hard copy of the game you have to download the ever brilliant Origin client. Yes dear readers, to play SimCity you have to run it through EA’s overpriced, slow and generally annoying pile of arse created in an attempt to compete with Steam in the downloads market which makes me want to scrub my CPU clean with lava every damn time I load the blasted thing up…oh and there “no piracy” ideology that they ship with every copy of a new game...yer…that doesn’t work, I know it’s a big surprise isn’t it. Seriously I’ve encountered instances where people have torrented a game owned by EA, which requires Origin to be running, and it works fine after a surprisingly low amount of effort – unlike Steam which requires you to be a professor of computer science and an expert of  programming languages to do so.

Now pressing on down the list and a quick look at the menu system I take point to point out a couple of problems that I’ve noticed. One, admittedly, larger than the other. First the back button on the region maps in the ‘Join Game’ menu are in a stupid position and are greyed out which took me a while to actually realise that it was there (embarrassing I know, but I did say it was only small) and secondly none of the full regions actually say FULL on them nor are they removed from the join game map. Seriously I question why the hell EA has it set up to show 20 joinable regions at the TOP of the join game menu if NONE of them are actually joinable, would it kill them to move all the full region maps into a special “Spectator” tab. It just beggars logic…or maybe its EA being lazy but surely that can’t be the case…right.

And now the big one, the moment of truth people. That’s right it’s time that we finally take a look at the gameplay and the new additions that they added into the game. And I’m pleased to announce that for the most part the game is actually a lot of fun to play especially now that you receive income hourly in game instead of yearly in game, in turn saving players from spending all there budget in a couple of minutes and then skipping through the rest of the in game year to get the next cash injection into their account. Another addition to this new SimCity is the easy to use interface though I would recommend first time players to go through the tutorial at least once if only to learn about the specialisation system and the new multiplayer system functions (once again I’ll get to that point later) not that it matters if you want to see the tutorial or not considering the game will send you into the tutorial level every time you change to a new server. The new addition of modules to the game which consist of dinky little add-ons that you can attach to already constructed buildings is also a brilliant new idea that the game brings to the table. This in turn means that you are no longer constructing 50 of the same building which I think is a brilliant touch. It also means that you only really need one main hub for your services such as fire, police and healthcare. 

Another nice touch to the game that I like is the new road system that Maxis have implemented into the game. Now the roads you lay down act as the skeletal system of your city so rather than laying down roads, power lines, sewer and water ways separately they are now all taken care of by the roads. In addition to this, everything you now build, from your parks to your buildings, is all connected directly onto the road which in turn simplifies construction of your city by a fair amount. Sadly though not all the changes have been for the better, for instance if you want to build a ring road with a park in the middle your out of luck unless you construct a road through the middle of the ring so you have a point to clip the park onto. Unfortunately another problem raises its head at this idea as I shall now demonstrate:

Can you see the problem here? That’s right; you can’t put buildings on the ends of roads, only on the side of them. And to anybody who’s curious as to why I used a town hall for this example rather than a park…well simply put…the new town of “EA can suck it” needing one. Also there is the unfortunate fact that curved and circular roads, though they look nice, are hardly efficient in contrast to the old grid system leaving you with the choice of ‘efficient and plain’ or ‘creative but inefficient’ which really shouldn’t be the case at all.

While I’m on the subject of city construction and its problems I may as well raise one of the bigger problems that I’m sure everybody who has played this game so far has come across and that is the simple fact that the city limits are just far too small for any of ther cities to have any sense of grandeur about them which in turn means not only do your cities feel incredibly small (even when the grid method is used, I’m sure if you build creatively there will be cases where the city feels even smaller). At current standing the cities, to me anyway, feel more like large towns with skyscrapers in them rather than an actual city. I guess I should mention here that EA have stated that they are going to consider an increase in city limits with Maxis also saying that there won’t be any increases soon due to the strain that it would put on players systems thanks to the GlassBox engine that the game runs on. Simply put, I don’t think we’re going to see any limit increase in the near future.

And just for those of you out there how don’t know what the GlassBox engine, it is the new simulation engine created by Maxis for use in this new edition of SimCity which allows for more realistic looking cities. And though it suffered some teething trouble in the initial launch, the engine seems to be stabilized. Though, as mentioned above, there is the downside to this new game engine. This being the fact that SimCity is quite heavy on the player’s processor (CPU) due to the control of hundreds of Sims to generate environmental changes rather than implementing animations to represent the statistical changes in the city environment like SimCity’s of old. And now that I’ve ether botched my definition of Maxises new game engine or lost you all entirely in my explanation (more than likely both in all cases) let’s continue with the next item on my hit list which in this instance is...the fact that there is no terraforming functions in this edition of the game. This in turn meaning that you are forced to work around the terrain that you choose to construct your city on which in some cases may prove a challenge for the player to overcome, sadly this is another beat down on creativity. For example; If I wanted to construct a lake in the middle of the great city “EA can suck it” to make up for the fact of my town hall having to be placed in a different location then I’m out of luck, it can’t be done and that really sucks – then again I guess it goes with the town name. Oh and while I’m on it, another thing that sucks about the terrain in this game is the sever lack of randomization in the region maps since is most regions all the city locations share strikingly similar specs with only a few of them having different specifications – and even then there still bloody similar to the rest. 

And now it’s time for the new addition of side missions to face my might wrath or will it…hummm, suspenseful isn’t it. Now these basically consist of one of your Sims telling you to “do this” or “I want to do this and as a result you will have to ____” (usually a sim wanting to throw a party or set of fireworks which will cause an increase in trash generation or fire risk (though I can’t help but question why, I mean it’s not like there using incendiary bombs are they….right O.o?) leaving you as the mayor to compensate with the appropriate services, i.e. more garbage trucks or fire engines, and if you are successful you receive a nice cash bonus. In addition to this you get little thought bubbles from your Sims telling you if there happy or not and if everything is working fine or if you need to fix something, you also get messages from your ministers (heads of departments) telling you things that you need to do to make your city that much more efficient such as getting the city better health care or better police coverage and as a result you are always busy as well as always having something that needs to be done…however this makes the game feel like your city is never quite finished, like your never done, like there’s never a chance to just sit back and look at a fully functional city before a monster or act of God slams into it and leaving you to fix it up again. As I look at the situation I can understand why EA/Maxis did it, I can understand it was to keep the game fresh and stop it from becoming boring after a while because you were left with nothing to do but sadly they executed this idea in such the way that it just leaves a feeling or non-accomplishment . As such I’ll concede to you on this point EA, it was a good idea but it still needs some fine tuning yet.

I guess I should also mention the addition of the “Great Works” to SimCity. These are areas that are separate from the city areas which are reserved exclusively for the construction of grate works of engineering - as the name suggests. At present these grate works can be ether a solar farm (akin to HELIOS One from Fallout New Vegas), an international airport, a space centre or an arcology – arcologys being a massive structure housing thousands of Sims who can then come to your city for work, shopping or education. Sadly these great works are pretty much a multiplayer option only meaning that you either have to work with the other surrounding cities locater near and around the great works site or multi-task managing multiple city’s, ether way it’s a lot of work which requires A LOT of cash – that being, if any of you are curious, 1,000,000 for all of the works sans the solar farm which is only 50,000.

Oh and on a side note, why the bloody hell did they leave out any form of 'UNDO' function. Seriously i've lost count on the ammount of times i've put a building in the wrong place of built the wrong building because i wasn't concentrating and then I leaving me no option to bulldoze it and save up enouth money to buy anouther building. Oh and if you get board and want to do something like...oh I don't know...THIS:

Then sorry, your out of luck and you'd best hope that you can scrounge the left over remains of your city for enough cash to fix it all (or take out a lot of bond measures)  otherwise your going to mayor of the new Pompeii.

And finally ladies and gentlemen it is time to take a look at the elephant in the room the same one in fact that I’ve been trying to putting off since pretty much the start of this review - the multiplayer aspect of the game. And may I say before I begin that I really don’t want to touch this one. Maybe it’s because everyone and there mum has already raised this point but considering all the things wrong with this game come back to this single point…I don’t have much choice in the matter now do I. 

So the story begins, much like this review, with EA and in all there infinite wisdom. And with this wisdom they decided that this new SimCity should to be always online as well as a MMO…of sorts…and as such we encounter, in my honest belief, the source of all the problems in SimCity.

Now to be honest with you all (not that I’ve haven’t been already) I do actually find all of this a true crying shame for the simple fact that Maxis has actually made a really good game, so much so that SimCity would have been a very fun game if it was single player or even had a single payer mode. Heck add in a system where you could expand your city boarders by buying out surrounding cities to make a huge metropolis like in SimCity’s of old and this game would be fantastic…but no, EA wanted a multiplayer only game and we end up with a mess of servers that seem to spend their time  falling on their faces rather than actually working and even if the servers worked and where stable (apparently the US servers for SimCity actually are stable…Europe however…not so much as I’m sure you’ve all guessed by my reactions so far in this review) then you run into the problem of the game always being online and lets face the facts here, unless you have a good internet connection you’re going to find playing the game a struggle with constant issues of lag. Thankfully my connection is good enough for my copy to run smoothly when I can connect to the servers but I’m sure for other people the situation may not be so fortunate. 

Now I know I make it sound like the fact that the game is always online is a horrible idea and as such should have left it out entirely…and in many instances your right, or at least about the first one Having the game constantly online is a horribly stupid idea for reasons that I have mentioned above but not all of it is a bad thing since there are aspects of the co-op nature that I do agree with. The aid system, for instance, is a good example of this. Fellow cities in the region can supply you with aid as and when you need it both automatically and manually as well as sim’s from their cities coming into yours to shop, learn, work and sometimes - if the city they have come from is in a bad enough state – even live which is all basically a port over from SimCity 3000 although updated. Additionally you can also buy excess power and water off them (unless some Welshman decides to deny you access to buying there excess power – I’m talking toy YOU Welshy) as well as send them gifts if there city is struggling – once again another aspect from way back in the era of SimCity 3000...or would that be future O.o?...ah doesn’t matter I guess.

Another aspect of the co-op system that I like is the fact that things you do in your city can affect the entire region, add a department of utility’s to your city hall and you unlock water pumping stations and sewage treatment plants for the entire region additionally if you build a university then you can carry out research projects that unlock additional modules for the entire region. Sadly back on release this idea had quite a large flaw in it, you could only add 3 modules onto city hall which unfortunately meant if you were the only city in your region – for instance you got fed up of trying to find a joinable region so just said ‘stuff it’ and made a fresh region - then there where things you couldn’t unlock unless you started another city. Thankfully though that is all fixed now through Maxis adding a patch that now allows you to add far more departments to your city hall, THOUGH that being said even with all these things I like about it, one solitary fact still remains. And that solitary fact is simply this…SIMCITY SHOULD NOT ALWAYS BE ONLINE! Hell if anything it should have all been made into a separate game mode alongside an offline single-player mode. NOT the full game itself with the PLAYER being allowed the decision of whether they want to play SimCity online or not, not forced into it by a company where the money comes first and the poor saps who by their stuff come second. 

*Sigh* Well with all that said and done I guess it’s time for me to state my final verdict on the matter. 

My final verdict for SimCity (2013) is a - 3/10* (Terrible).

In summary: As much as I want to give this game a higher score I just can’t look past the major server issues with it that basically make the game unplayable. Additionally the city boundaries are far too small, the game constantly leaves you with the feeling of accomplishment and though I do enjoy some of the co-op aspects of the game it should have all been left for a separate game mode rather than being force down all our throats like it has been. Should you buy this game? My sad answer is no, in my honest recommendation buy the deluxe edition of SimCity 4 instead. It’s much cheaper and just simply works far better than this mess.

Conditional Score (*): If by some miracle EA/Maxis fix the servers and increase the city limits then I’m willing to bum my final verdict for SimCity (2013) up to a – 6/10 (Decent) but until that happens then my original verdict still stands.

Additional Note: Asking one of my friends to check the region that my original city was on I have since discovered that my city actually survived, apparently “Rollback” translated to SimCity as “Abandon this region” meaning I’m now locked out from my city so once again *slow clapping* well done and here is your prize, have fun.