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This contains spoilers, totally gratuitous bad faith, rambling babbling and screwed humor. You have been warned.
Let's do this.
Maybe you know SimCity. For me, it has been a first : the game which was not a game. We were running mac at home all my childhood, but my dad had a pc laptop for his work, and installed SimCity 2000 ! He even had the player manual (for work ... yup ... totally). I had never read a manual before. I didn't even knew that you could need a manual for a game ... SimCity made me realized that games existed where you could lose not because you reacted too slow, not because you jumped on the wrong pixel or because of bad camera angle ... no, you lose because you're not good enough for the game. You can pause it, plan it, scrutinize it and carefully play it, and still lose. I remember going mad after the game, those stupid people never happy, those stupid concillors never happy, this stupid budget never in the green, those stupid building taking fire, and so on. I never figured out how un-hook me of it, or of this unexpected crave for city building games.
Maybe you know that Maxis is planning a new one for mid march ... the "will never happen to you" happened to me : I received an invitation for the closed beta \o/ Ooooooh yeaaaah ! \o/
Ok, reading the email, clicking the link to get the ... eww. A steam-like shitty plateform ... ok, signing to sell you my soul, yada yada. Clicking to get the ga... downloading the package ... clicking to get the gam... okaaay, unpacking the thingamajig ... THE GAME ! (you just lost it, btw)
So, after you realized that you cannot be mayor of a city if you're not admin of your computer (thank you super windows, savior of our computor and defending my hard drive against bad communist mutants), intro : not bad, but ... definitively looks like what CitiesXL would do. And this is not really a good sign. Not much options in the opening menu, but let's not forget this is a beta (as for now, any stuff missing that I assume will be fixed in the release will be noted by ß?. The unnoted rest would just be another good reason to keep playing SC4). You can play an unbelievably broken tutorial that wouldn't let you do anything but the next command it's asking for, so I quitted it really soon. After that, it seems (thanks, God !) that you cannot do it again, and you just have one button : PLAY.
Starting :
As I said, no many options for the starting game, but also no way to design the area you're playing with and an awful load time (thanks M.Spoony, and I quote : "loooooaaaaadddding !"). Let's assume ß?, I cannot really believe they made a SimCity without the map designer. [EDIT : after more readings ... THEY DID ! For raptor jesus sake, WHYYYYYYY ?! ]
Graphics :
For the sack of ß?, I'll not talk about it and it fixed resolution, neither of the broken zooming with mouse scroll.
Your city :
Your city ... so small ! o_O It's smaller than the smallest area you could choose in SC4 ! Or at least it seems, which is the only thing that counts anyways. Apparently (videos from the studio), you'll be able to have many cities on the map ... but all that small ?
I think it's the print of this new release : a change of scale. So few monies to start with, compared to what cost anything. And you're not counting time by month anymore, but hours and minutes, like in Sims game. I have no idea why, because people are now building really too fast to be serious (instead of too slow in previous release) and you're gaining an incredible amount per hours (instead of not that much per month). I think the only use of this is for having the joy of implementing a night time, where you can see street lights and light through windows of houses. Nice, but useless, seriously. One good thing added is the gain(or loss)/hour counter at the bottom of the screen, which was present or absent depending on which SimCity you played before. Now it's very clear and readable, I like it. And when you're losing money, you'll have an alert "no money in X hours", which is not bad. I think it'll become kinda annoying with time. However, no more news ß?. I want llamas !
And it's not your city, you cannot name it until you play a while and reach some goals. Goals ? Yes, goals. Like ... euh... facebook game ? Yes, like that. We already had options to see what Sims thought of their live, what was missing for a house to evolve etc. This SimCity5 is tending to what Sims game looks like, and you now have balloon above some houses, with color for the type of feeling and a small icon for the reason of the thought. This is replacing news I think (still wanting llamas !). If you click on it, you'll have a nice camera movement, going down to see the Sim simtalking to you about whatever. This happens a lot around the administration offices, where they're also simasking for some building or extensions or whatever again. We'll talk about that. You can either accept, delay or refuse the demand and in the first case, you'll have a new 'objective' or 'mission' to complete displayed on the border of your screen.
Zoning :
I you ever played any SimCity game, you know the meaning of green-blue-yellow. Funny enough, if you only played CitiesXL (and some other unknown indies), you know it too, because SC influence was too strong I presume, and this color code is now a fact : green - people, blue - shops, yellow - industrial. Attached to those color is the very action of zoning : you don't build individual building, you just indicate where Sims are allowed to build what. In the beginning, you had to be very careful about how those areas are connected with road, as no building can survive without an access to a road. Not that difficult, but a little bit heavy to deal with when you're planning large. With SC4, we discovered the auto-road stuff : when the area is too large, small roads are automatically offered to serve every tile. As any autoplanning stuff, it was sometimes a little broken, or funny, but it was a really intelligent step and I think a lot of players praised for the dev team. Now ... keep the colors, but forget zoning. Lol wut ? You still indicate where to build, but this is only attached to existent roads and you don't chose how large it is. Worse, you cannot predict how large it will be. Even worse : it doesn't appear if you're not in the "defining area mode", no more colors on the ground, even if nothing is built. I really have no idea how you're supposed to plan anything, as the best strategy seems to build random, have buildings with a lot of unused space between, destroy and re-do. Apparently, everything is now defined by "sticky point" : mainly the road, but sometimes buildings (we'll talk about that later).
Road :
As you're beginning to understand, road is a key element. It always has been in SC : it's the key of all problems, but also the source of many of them. We never had the choice : road shall be straight and angles shall be 90° (few exceptions made). As the map was a square, squared by square small tiles, it was really simple, if not very imaginative design. Frankly, when I played CitiesXL (2011 or 2012), I was really happy with the free design roads ... for something like 15 minutes, before I disabled curves and stop creating chaos in my city. So ... SimCity's now including this CXL feature ... eww. Can I disable it ? well, not exactly. You can choose if you want straight roads or more stylish lines. However, we totally lost the squared tiles ! You still build squared building, but on a -apparently- continuous ground. Result : no way to predict where to start and and your road without destroying something, or screwing your already hard-to-make plans, and no indications of the angle you're making. Small lines will appears (and disappear really fast) but I cannot get how those are useful.
And they discovered the pitfall CXL totally failed to solved : when your roads can do whatever the player wants, crossroads and junctions are going messy. CXL allowed chaos, SC just decided to forbid you to make crossroads to close from one another, or making complicated stuff (and I quote approximately : "this would require a lot of structural changes !"). Deal with it.
Buildings :
Now people are asking you to build some buildings, and you will gain money or whatnot by doing it ... yes, building a hospital for your city will give you an extra if you wait until people are asking for it. Ok... Sims, please die by number high enough that I can have more money, thanks.
When you decide to build hospital, school, police or fire station, you don't have the radius of action anymore. It is present, as you can see by moving the mouse around to choose the emplacement, houses too far will not benefit from the building, but no more directly visible : you have to guess how far is too far. As they changed the scale of the whole game, I have strictly no idea how to do that without screwing a lot of cities. Worse : you have three different building for hospital, for example. Only one was available in beta, but I can assume the second one has a larger radius, and the third an even larger one, right ? Considering how this was progressing in previous version of SimCity, my estimation is that the third building would totally cover my city ?! I'm going to assume they changed the growing ratio too. Again, I have no idea how you're supposed to plan anything.
Once your building is in place, you can manage it : depending of the kind of building, you can change a lot of things. I told you about sticky points, some are attached to building. For instance, when you've built a school, you can decide to add a class to the building ... by physically adding a small extension to the already built school. To the already built and ... totally surrounded school ... Planning ? No way to know how large a building will be when you're placing it. This is actually a good idea, don't get me wrong. It makes perfect sense to add wind turbines to the wind power plant to extend its capabilities, instead of just building another one. But how hard would it have been to show, when you're placing the building, where extensions should be and how large the building can grow ? So that you choose if you'll consider those ameliorations or just build houses right next to it. And again, it seems you cannot estimate how those ameliorations would influence the radius of action of the building.
One good point is indication of wind direction when you're planning to add some air polluting places (like industrial areas for instance) : you can predict where pollution will go and not place your ecological population next to it. But this is also ludicrous : once you choose the right place, the wind is always going in the same direction ? Still about pollution, you can now visualize how it's dealt with in sewage, from where it's coming from and where it goes. It was really difficult to estimate if pollution and waste dispensers were balanced in previous opus, this solution may be a good one (even if the sound link to it is dubious at best). Water is now distributed like electricity : magic roads are doing the job. However, the need for aquifer ground is back (I remember them calling this "it's so 2K" when they removed it in SimCity 4). Funny enough in this game where the business simulation seems lighter than the previous ones, you now are required to buy
material or resources for some utilities : for instance, a oil-based power production will require to buy oil to work. I imagine it's the same for coal power plant (I don't know, I never used those in any simulation games
) and maybe at some point you can produce your own resources ? We'll see, ß game = 1 hour max (irl, of course).
Difficulty :
Let's cut the crap, this game is on no-challenge mode. Unfortunately, there's no other mode in ß.
I forgot to tell ... zoning is free, now. This is the same spirit that preventing you to put anything in a 'wrong' place (wrong place = no sticky point = cannot build). No more density level, which is logical, as this was useful for progression ... something that is absent now, your Sims are doing everything by themselves thanks to the wonderful new simulation system. They kept the idea of wealth level, but it's simplified and almost transparent for the player (or it's so easy that I didn't even realize that I was filling the criterias).
One very frightening sign : after few minutes playing, my budget is perfectly balanced. Few minutes more and I'm gaining so much money that resetting the map would be less advantaging than simply manually destroy everything on the map and start again with more money. Man ! SimCity was the game you recognize a beginner from a player by the time it takes them to balance their budget !
I took some times before writing this review, because I wanted to avoid unwise hot-reaction. I took time to be sure that I wasn't angry because I had to learn how to play a game I know, and it's not the case : I'm okay with learning again, at every release. But there's nothing difficult here, no mechanic to learn, just the interface, nothing to do that worths the time. There's no beginners on this game, not the previous players, not the new ones : it has become a facebook game, where loosing is so rare it never happens, the goal is to achieve all the 'missions' and make the nicest small city with flowers. It makes me sad as a sad kitteh.
I played a beta, so I'll not consider what I've seen as the final result, which was disappointing. I didn't have access to specialization of the city, nor the Great Work new stuff with other players and multiple cities, nor any real justification for the online mode and so marvelous simulation system everyone is talking about. I'm sorry but I have absolutely no care for the way sound is managed when cars are going away when I'm at level street. I'm sorry but I would rather have a good business management than a detailled behavious for each Sims on the map. Advanced technology is a good thing, but making good things with it is even better.
From Maxis presentations and videos, the result was brighter and sharper, I hope this will be the case. I'm not sure I like the theme of this new opus : it's very light, almost cartoony sometimes. For me, it adds to the unseriousness of the game. Again, don't get me wrong : I totally dig unserious games when it's assumed. I have no idea how much hours I spent on Tropico games, just awesome stuff. But Tropico is officially a delirious concept. SimCity is not, and what I call unseriousness is here a defect, because it's misdesigned serious aspects. They sold me SimCity, not a good flash browser game.
I would definitively not recommend to buy this game, even less to pre-order it. SimCity 4 has been released in january 14th 2003, and is still played. I have no idea how many city-builders died its shadow. CitiesXL license tried to replace it and failed each and every time. There is a reason for that, and I think for this same reason you should continue to play SC4 : it's a good game, with still honest graphics, interesting simulation system and fair amount of difficulty. I'm sorry but I don't think SimCity5 could claim that.
There's another reason you shouldn't buy it : it has been announced (and confirmed) that the game will only be accessible online. In cause : calculations and simulations are made on central servers, your computer is "only" the display. I don't want them to sold this system. I don't want future games with this system. I'm sorry but I'm already at my limits with constrains Steam is imposing (and it's one of least worst options currently available). I want them to step back, like Ubisoft stepped back with Assassin Creed online validation for one of other instances. I buy a game, I want to be able to play this game until I become unable to find hardware or software able to make it work, not until they decided to close down their servers (remember : SC4, 2003. After ten years, how easy it is to close the 'old and unused service' to force consumers's hand ?). I want to be able to play in 10 years from now, to play in trains or planes, or at my mom house where the network is almost inexistent. For some games, we were forced to ask for online and multiplayers modes, I don't want to be forced to ask for offline and solo mode now. I hope I'm not the only one.
Unfortunately, ß, I didn't have access to disasters. Too bad.
Let's do this.
Maybe you know SimCity. For me, it has been a first : the game which was not a game. We were running mac at home all my childhood, but my dad had a pc laptop for his work, and installed SimCity 2000 ! He even had the player manual (for work ... yup ... totally). I had never read a manual before. I didn't even knew that you could need a manual for a game ... SimCity made me realized that games existed where you could lose not because you reacted too slow, not because you jumped on the wrong pixel or because of bad camera angle ... no, you lose because you're not good enough for the game. You can pause it, plan it, scrutinize it and carefully play it, and still lose. I remember going mad after the game, those stupid people never happy, those stupid concillors never happy, this stupid budget never in the green, those stupid building taking fire, and so on. I never figured out how un-hook me of it, or of this unexpected crave for city building games.
Maybe you know that Maxis is planning a new one for mid march ... the "will never happen to you" happened to me : I received an invitation for the closed beta \o/ Ooooooh yeaaaah ! \o/
Ok, reading the email, clicking the link to get the ... eww. A steam-like shitty plateform ... ok, signing to sell you my soul, yada yada. Clicking to get the ga... downloading the package ... clicking to get the gam... okaaay, unpacking the thingamajig ... THE GAME ! (you just lost it, btw)
So, after you realized that you cannot be mayor of a city if you're not admin of your computer (thank you super windows, savior of our computor and defending my hard drive against bad communist mutants), intro : not bad, but ... definitively looks like what CitiesXL would do. And this is not really a good sign. Not much options in the opening menu, but let's not forget this is a beta (as for now, any stuff missing that I assume will be fixed in the release will be noted by ß?. The unnoted rest would just be another good reason to keep playing SC4). You can play an unbelievably broken tutorial that wouldn't let you do anything but the next command it's asking for, so I quitted it really soon. After that, it seems (thanks, God !) that you cannot do it again, and you just have one button : PLAY.
Starting :
As I said, no many options for the starting game, but also no way to design the area you're playing with and an awful load time (thanks M.Spoony, and I quote : "loooooaaaaadddding !"). Let's assume ß?, I cannot really believe they made a SimCity without the map designer. [EDIT : after more readings ... THEY DID ! For raptor jesus sake, WHYYYYYYY ?! ]
Graphics :
For the sack of ß?, I'll not talk about it and it fixed resolution, neither of the broken zooming with mouse scroll.
Your city :
Your city ... so small ! o_O It's smaller than the smallest area you could choose in SC4 ! Or at least it seems, which is the only thing that counts anyways. Apparently (videos from the studio), you'll be able to have many cities on the map ... but all that small ?
I think it's the print of this new release : a change of scale. So few monies to start with, compared to what cost anything. And you're not counting time by month anymore, but hours and minutes, like in Sims game. I have no idea why, because people are now building really too fast to be serious (instead of too slow in previous release) and you're gaining an incredible amount per hours (instead of not that much per month). I think the only use of this is for having the joy of implementing a night time, where you can see street lights and light through windows of houses. Nice, but useless, seriously. One good thing added is the gain(or loss)/hour counter at the bottom of the screen, which was present or absent depending on which SimCity you played before. Now it's very clear and readable, I like it. And when you're losing money, you'll have an alert "no money in X hours", which is not bad. I think it'll become kinda annoying with time. However, no more news ß?. I want llamas !
And it's not your city, you cannot name it until you play a while and reach some goals. Goals ? Yes, goals. Like ... euh... facebook game ? Yes, like that. We already had options to see what Sims thought of their live, what was missing for a house to evolve etc. This SimCity5 is tending to what Sims game looks like, and you now have balloon above some houses, with color for the type of feeling and a small icon for the reason of the thought. This is replacing news I think (still wanting llamas !). If you click on it, you'll have a nice camera movement, going down to see the Sim simtalking to you about whatever. This happens a lot around the administration offices, where they're also simasking for some building or extensions or whatever again. We'll talk about that. You can either accept, delay or refuse the demand and in the first case, you'll have a new 'objective' or 'mission' to complete displayed on the border of your screen.
Zoning :
I you ever played any SimCity game, you know the meaning of green-blue-yellow. Funny enough, if you only played CitiesXL (and some other unknown indies), you know it too, because SC influence was too strong I presume, and this color code is now a fact : green - people, blue - shops, yellow - industrial. Attached to those color is the very action of zoning : you don't build individual building, you just indicate where Sims are allowed to build what. In the beginning, you had to be very careful about how those areas are connected with road, as no building can survive without an access to a road. Not that difficult, but a little bit heavy to deal with when you're planning large. With SC4, we discovered the auto-road stuff : when the area is too large, small roads are automatically offered to serve every tile. As any autoplanning stuff, it was sometimes a little broken, or funny, but it was a really intelligent step and I think a lot of players praised for the dev team. Now ... keep the colors, but forget zoning. Lol wut ? You still indicate where to build, but this is only attached to existent roads and you don't chose how large it is. Worse, you cannot predict how large it will be. Even worse : it doesn't appear if you're not in the "defining area mode", no more colors on the ground, even if nothing is built. I really have no idea how you're supposed to plan anything, as the best strategy seems to build random, have buildings with a lot of unused space between, destroy and re-do. Apparently, everything is now defined by "sticky point" : mainly the road, but sometimes buildings (we'll talk about that later).
Road :
As you're beginning to understand, road is a key element. It always has been in SC : it's the key of all problems, but also the source of many of them. We never had the choice : road shall be straight and angles shall be 90° (few exceptions made). As the map was a square, squared by square small tiles, it was really simple, if not very imaginative design. Frankly, when I played CitiesXL (2011 or 2012), I was really happy with the free design roads ... for something like 15 minutes, before I disabled curves and stop creating chaos in my city. So ... SimCity's now including this CXL feature ... eww. Can I disable it ? well, not exactly. You can choose if you want straight roads or more stylish lines. However, we totally lost the squared tiles ! You still build squared building, but on a -apparently- continuous ground. Result : no way to predict where to start and and your road without destroying something, or screwing your already hard-to-make plans, and no indications of the angle you're making. Small lines will appears (and disappear really fast) but I cannot get how those are useful.
And they discovered the pitfall CXL totally failed to solved : when your roads can do whatever the player wants, crossroads and junctions are going messy. CXL allowed chaos, SC just decided to forbid you to make crossroads to close from one another, or making complicated stuff (and I quote approximately : "this would require a lot of structural changes !"). Deal with it.
Buildings :
Now people are asking you to build some buildings, and you will gain money or whatnot by doing it ... yes, building a hospital for your city will give you an extra if you wait until people are asking for it. Ok... Sims, please die by number high enough that I can have more money, thanks.
When you decide to build hospital, school, police or fire station, you don't have the radius of action anymore. It is present, as you can see by moving the mouse around to choose the emplacement, houses too far will not benefit from the building, but no more directly visible : you have to guess how far is too far. As they changed the scale of the whole game, I have strictly no idea how to do that without screwing a lot of cities. Worse : you have three different building for hospital, for example. Only one was available in beta, but I can assume the second one has a larger radius, and the third an even larger one, right ? Considering how this was progressing in previous version of SimCity, my estimation is that the third building would totally cover my city ?! I'm going to assume they changed the growing ratio too. Again, I have no idea how you're supposed to plan anything.
Once your building is in place, you can manage it : depending of the kind of building, you can change a lot of things. I told you about sticky points, some are attached to building. For instance, when you've built a school, you can decide to add a class to the building ... by physically adding a small extension to the already built school. To the already built and ... totally surrounded school ... Planning ? No way to know how large a building will be when you're placing it. This is actually a good idea, don't get me wrong. It makes perfect sense to add wind turbines to the wind power plant to extend its capabilities, instead of just building another one. But how hard would it have been to show, when you're placing the building, where extensions should be and how large the building can grow ? So that you choose if you'll consider those ameliorations or just build houses right next to it. And again, it seems you cannot estimate how those ameliorations would influence the radius of action of the building.
One good point is indication of wind direction when you're planning to add some air polluting places (like industrial areas for instance) : you can predict where pollution will go and not place your ecological population next to it. But this is also ludicrous : once you choose the right place, the wind is always going in the same direction ? Still about pollution, you can now visualize how it's dealt with in sewage, from where it's coming from and where it goes. It was really difficult to estimate if pollution and waste dispensers were balanced in previous opus, this solution may be a good one (even if the sound link to it is dubious at best). Water is now distributed like electricity : magic roads are doing the job. However, the need for aquifer ground is back (I remember them calling this "it's so 2K" when they removed it in SimCity 4). Funny enough in this game where the business simulation seems lighter than the previous ones, you now are required to buy
material or resources for some utilities : for instance, a oil-based power production will require to buy oil to work. I imagine it's the same for coal power plant (I don't know, I never used those in any simulation games
) and maybe at some point you can produce your own resources ? We'll see, ß game = 1 hour max (irl, of course).Difficulty :
Let's cut the crap, this game is on no-challenge mode. Unfortunately, there's no other mode in ß.
I forgot to tell ... zoning is free, now. This is the same spirit that preventing you to put anything in a 'wrong' place (wrong place = no sticky point = cannot build). No more density level, which is logical, as this was useful for progression ... something that is absent now, your Sims are doing everything by themselves thanks to the wonderful new simulation system. They kept the idea of wealth level, but it's simplified and almost transparent for the player (or it's so easy that I didn't even realize that I was filling the criterias).
One very frightening sign : after few minutes playing, my budget is perfectly balanced. Few minutes more and I'm gaining so much money that resetting the map would be less advantaging than simply manually destroy everything on the map and start again with more money. Man ! SimCity was the game you recognize a beginner from a player by the time it takes them to balance their budget !
I took some times before writing this review, because I wanted to avoid unwise hot-reaction. I took time to be sure that I wasn't angry because I had to learn how to play a game I know, and it's not the case : I'm okay with learning again, at every release. But there's nothing difficult here, no mechanic to learn, just the interface, nothing to do that worths the time. There's no beginners on this game, not the previous players, not the new ones : it has become a facebook game, where loosing is so rare it never happens, the goal is to achieve all the 'missions' and make the nicest small city with flowers. It makes me sad as a sad kitteh.
I played a beta, so I'll not consider what I've seen as the final result, which was disappointing. I didn't have access to specialization of the city, nor the Great Work new stuff with other players and multiple cities, nor any real justification for the online mode and so marvelous simulation system everyone is talking about. I'm sorry but I have absolutely no care for the way sound is managed when cars are going away when I'm at level street. I'm sorry but I would rather have a good business management than a detailled behavious for each Sims on the map. Advanced technology is a good thing, but making good things with it is even better.
From Maxis presentations and videos, the result was brighter and sharper, I hope this will be the case. I'm not sure I like the theme of this new opus : it's very light, almost cartoony sometimes. For me, it adds to the unseriousness of the game. Again, don't get me wrong : I totally dig unserious games when it's assumed. I have no idea how much hours I spent on Tropico games, just awesome stuff. But Tropico is officially a delirious concept. SimCity is not, and what I call unseriousness is here a defect, because it's misdesigned serious aspects. They sold me SimCity, not a good flash browser game.
I would definitively not recommend to buy this game, even less to pre-order it. SimCity 4 has been released in january 14th 2003, and is still played. I have no idea how many city-builders died its shadow. CitiesXL license tried to replace it and failed each and every time. There is a reason for that, and I think for this same reason you should continue to play SC4 : it's a good game, with still honest graphics, interesting simulation system and fair amount of difficulty. I'm sorry but I don't think SimCity5 could claim that.
There's another reason you shouldn't buy it : it has been announced (and confirmed) that the game will only be accessible online. In cause : calculations and simulations are made on central servers, your computer is "only" the display. I don't want them to sold this system. I don't want future games with this system. I'm sorry but I'm already at my limits with constrains Steam is imposing (and it's one of least worst options currently available). I want them to step back, like Ubisoft stepped back with Assassin Creed online validation for one of other instances. I buy a game, I want to be able to play this game until I become unable to find hardware or software able to make it work, not until they decided to close down their servers (remember : SC4, 2003. After ten years, how easy it is to close the 'old and unused service' to force consumers's hand ?). I want to be able to play in 10 years from now, to play in trains or planes, or at my mom house where the network is almost inexistent. For some games, we were forced to ask for online and multiplayers modes, I don't want to be forced to ask for offline and solo mode now. I hope I'm not the only one.
Unfortunately, ß, I didn't have access to disasters. Too bad.
... and now I'm sad as a sad kitteh.
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