Look at these two different looks at Sim City is polygon crazy I just don't understand.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/

http://www.polygon.com/game/simcity-2013/2630

WoW

Different opinions from different reviewers.

Why are you suggesting Polygon is the crazy one? Maybe it's Ars. Maybe the game is great, the Polygon review is spot on, and Ars are crazy for not liking it. Or maybe different people have different opinions on something, and they're all perfectly sane.

In my eyes they're telling the same story if you ignore the final score. They're complaining about the same thing. The only difference is that you can tell Polygon shrugs off every bit and ignores all the problems. After watching the GB quick look, I think I have a really good idea of what kind of game Sim City is.

I haven't played the game and I probably never will despite loving the first one; but giving it a 9.5/10 is retarded even if they liked it, there are glaring problems with this game; choosing to accept those problems is fine but giving a near perfect recommendation is inexcusable.

"We waited ten years for this?" is probably the best summary of my feelings.

Im beginning to feel that every game website should just have there front page explaining what a review is. Basically every front page will have the word OPINION in big letters.

Opinions right?

Polygon has a different opinion from Ars Technica?! What were they thinking?!

Anyone can put together a random idiotic opinion. People coming to a game site are looking for a TRUSTWORTHY EXPERT PROFESSIONAL OPINIONS, if they aren't offering that, why would anyone go there?

Polygon's reviewing tendency has always given me the impression that they're afraid to offend fans. All their reviews are so 'safe' and by-the-books.

A differing opinion doesn't mean that it isn't trustworthy or professional. It's just different. Criticising reviews is fine. But criticise them because of poor writing. If someone rates a game roughly the same as the majority, but fails to articulate why they feel that way - that's a bad review. If someone rates a game completely differently to everyone else, but it is well written and accurately articulates why the reviewer feels that way about the game - that's a good review. I have yet to see one complaint about the Polygon review that doesn't hinge on the rating. The rating is irrelevant when discussing this sort of thing. Different people have different opinions. What is important is accurately getting across the point of why you feel that way about the game.

Why you shouldn't trust our Sim City review...

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/why-you-shouldnt-trust-our-simcity-review

The game is actually really cool, the only problem is the size. They must of known this when making and testing it. I will put money that there will be an expansion coming out that increases the city size, that's just what EA is about now, which really sucks.

There is nothing wrong with two reviews saying the same thing but drawing different conclusions. Personally I think the editor for the Polygon review should have been a bit more rigorous pointing out that the review seems somewhat down yet gave it a high score.

Exactly, I wouldn't read to much into this. Personally, I think polygon reviewer is kind of dumbass (yes I red the review), whatever just read and pay attention to reviews, Choose who you think is doing a good job at it.

simple as that.

I have not read the Polygon review, but if it's true that the reviewer points out all this things that are harming the experience and then gives it a 9.5, well, that ain't right.

I'm amused at how video games reviews are considered an "opinion," and that we should treat them with about as much respect as we would some random guy telling us his opinions of the game while waiting in line for a movie.

Could you imagine car reviews being this kind of treatment? "Sure, the car can barely fit two people if you try, and there's an emergency brake on the passenger side for some reason, but the controlled experience I had driving the car with the manufacturer was fine, and not once did he pull his extra emergency brake. Grade: A --- Would highly recommend."

Yeh I find it interesting what do people actually want from a review?

Offhand I can think of 3 different versions of reviews.

The first I would call a product review where it is very factual looking performance features and such weighs up pros and cons for a summation.

Second would be a purchasing advice review where it tells you A if its total crap and if not what other games, genres or interest the perspective player should have to find value in the game.

Thirdly would just be an opinion review, "hey this games janky loads of issue but fuck it i love it".

What ive seen of this game the only thing that really bugs me is the city limit size I want the biggest city.

It's pretty clear that Polygon and/or Ars has sold out to "The Man" and/or "Personal Interest Groups".

I look to Gaf for how I should feel about any given game, that's why I hate everything.

@Krakn3Dfx Spot fucking on, man. Accuse the pros of being sellouts, and let the Internet tell you what your opinions should be. Life is easier that way.

Polygons design is not to my liking. It's too flashy for it's own good.

Welcome to the world of varied opinions. It is actually a good thing.

I played 5 hours of it last night and yeah, there are a lot of moments where I say "Damn it what the hell? This system isn't working!" But then, at the end of the night, I played for 5 hours and could barely tear myself away to sleep. That's a complex relationship to have with a game, to love it but also hate it. I'd probably put it down on a 4/5 assuming the issues I've been having don't magically go away and were caused solely by server shenanigans.

At one point in the quick look Jeff said he hates that he enjoys it so much. Maybe the Polygon reviewer never had that same self hate problem and just enjoyed it for what it was.

Different reviewers have different expectations. READ the review and ignore the score to see if the review fits your personal expectations. This entire thread is why scores shouldn't be used.

Yeah that's probably true. Vinny often said what I was thinking which was, "Is that it?" So I'm curious of the lasting appeal of the game after you play those same grids. Like is there really enough varying factors to keep you coming back after the newness wears off? That grid you get to build your city is so small and it seems like min/maxing is the only way to go.

I know I'm never going to buy it. I can just see my game fatigue setting off after a session or two of playing.

The difference between a reviewer and a random stranger is the reviewer is being paid for his honest opinion and should be good at articulating that opinion. Actually now that I think about it, there is very little similar about a random strangers opinion and a professional reviewers opinion.

I'm not even going to touch your car review "example" because it seems so poorly thought out.

@jams: Yeah the game seems like a min/max-ers nightmare, but did you see that city Alex built in the quick look? If you could get past the min/max mentality it could be fun to build things like Alex was, which is probably why Alex's tweets have made it sound like he is having fun while Jeff's sound like he is hating life. The city size is definitely a deal breaker for me too though. I will late for the inevitable dlc that makes it bigger and re-evaluate then I guess.

Absolutely true, but go read that Polygon review and tell me if you think that sounds like a 9.5.

The problem with this seems to be that there is so little space that if you just dick round you run out of space and things to do in one city within the hour.

Why care about the fucking score?

The thing is, some people actually are able to look past flaws that other people can't. It doesn't mean one person is right and the other is wrong. I know that I certainly have a much higher tolerance for technical bullshit than other people do. I'll acknowledge that STALKER was buggy as hell, but that didn't stop me from loving that game. That sort of thing just doesn't bother me.

The always-on stuff in this game? Yeah, it's a bit bothersome at launch when it's tough to get into a server, but once you're in there's no other weirdness that I could see, so it's not something that would impact any score I might give the game.

Word.

I've been more concerned about the glitching and other technical problems than anything. Some of the streamlining is good but if there are glitches that ruins plans for such a constrictive space then that isn't fun.

@gruebacca said:

Haha, nicely said.

Seriously, "Polygon and/or Ars has sold out to 'The Man' and/or 'Personal Interest Groups' "? You're including the option that they've both sold out, so that neither of their wildly disparate opinions is valid? That's fucking stupid. And GAF isn't really much better than your average forum, in terms of their opinions, because everyone is a neckbeard who has been into gaming a long time whose default opinion is "They changed an ongoing series? It sucks now."

So sure, GAF may happen to have the right idea about the new SimCity, because some of the new restrictions really are a bummer, but it's asinine to think that GAF is this great source for open-minded opinions on new video games.

The difference between Ars and Polygon appears to be expectations. The Ars people came in looking forward to playing a new SimCity game and were grossly disappointed in what was there. The Polygon guy just played the game on its own and liked it. I'm with Ars, and I think trying to review the game in a vacuum without thinking about its predecessors doesn't make sense, but I can see the other view if they liked the different game they made.

But my biggest problem with the Polygon review was their caveat - the always on Internet is an issue, my network screwed me over and I had server problems that caused me to lose data, but we're going to ignore all that and adjust the score later if people have problems. It's basically Polygon saying they wanted to get a review out pre-release for hits more than they worried about putting out a potentially misleading review. At least Penny Arcade explicitly came out and said "we don't know if this take is accurate until the servers go up" and lots of others have said they're not coming out with an official word until they've played with other people. Evidence so far is online is fucked and multiplayer regions can go real bad when people inevitably abandon or destroy their cities since the game is so interdependent now.

If you give something a glowing review and then have to adjust it post-release, you didn't do your job. I'm guessing that's also the reason we don't have a Giant Bomb review up. That more than anything is making me wary of trusting pre-release Polygon reviews.

I have no problem with people saying Simcity is great or Simcity sucks, I'm sure the actual content of both the Polygon and Ars reviews are great and articulate their points well; I have a major problem with someone giving Simcity a near perfect score; the game has problems, there is no debate on that point; having a professional review state that the game is near the pinnacle of perfection, in league with the best games ever made is stupid and just shows that they don't know or care about how their reviews are used.

Having a binary review system where everything is the best thing ever or total garbage is amateur hour bullshit and based on what I've seen on Polygon seems like the way they do things over there.

@jasonr86: I don't care about the scores at all, that's not the issue. What bothers me is Polygon trying to have it both ways, talking out of both sides of their mouth, as it were. They write a fairly critical review and then slap a near-perfect score on it. The 95 ends up on Metacritic, misleading people who care about that sort of thing (but making EA happy), while their ass is covered because they are able to say "we pointed out all these problems in the review."

Turns out reviews are subjective!

Yeah that's where the score becomes important (like Jeff said before; the review needs to match the score). It makes Polygon look like they're trying to cover their ass by giving it a high score and at the same time pointing out the trouble they had with it (that sounded pretty debilitating).

I agree. Why call something Sim City when you're not trying to be Sim City? You're only going to piss off the people who were expecting some kind of improvement to the overall idea of the Sim City games. Not a step in the other direction. I think a lot of people are right in saying the game should have been called Sim Town or something more small scale.

I guess I don't have a lot of sympathy for consumers who don't read reviews and simply look at scores. I can see business-wise why this is an issue. But I guess I'm not that effected by Polygon's business or ethical practices so I don't care. If the issue is that people are being mislead then they should learn the hard life lesson that scores are bull-shit and that text-aspect of reviews are what's the most important.

I also think there's something to be said for the enjoyment of a game despite its issues and the interpretation of the scores by the reviewer. For example, I gave a user review of Mirror's Edge on this site and gave it a 3/5 despite the fact that that game may be one of my favorite games of this generation. I did that because I felt the game had too many problems to rate higher then an average score (how I define a 3/5 game). But if I were to rate the game purely from a subjective point of view it would have gotten a 5/5 because I adore that game. So if this reviewer feels that the end result of the game far outweighs its flaws then the score makes sense. Take these quotes from the review;

"As for how satisfying the experience is as a whole, take this example: I missed a meeting. And it was my meeting. During the course of one play session, I literally became so absorbed in the experience that I lost all track of time and played through an entire afternoon, oblivious to the fact that a meeting I had scheduled approached and then passed. When I returned to my work station many, many hours later, I greeted my overflowing email inbox and the raft of polite (but concerned) inquiries as to my whereabouts with a serene, self-possessed calm. As if, whatever troubles the world might throw at me would be of little concern next to the travails I had experienced in West Pittssex.

Then, after a brief, but furiously energized bout of desk work, I went back to SimCity and did it all over again."

"SimCity is a near-perfect fusion of the classic simulation game with modern social and online play elements. It is in every way the fully realized evolution of the franchise and a much welcome iteration, perfectly engineered to dispense the maximum amount of fun in the most efficient way possible. It is highly addicting, but there are worse things to be addicted to. Just be sure to set an alarm."

I think what it all comes down to is that the reviewer defines the review scoring system differently then most which is reflected in the final score of this game that he explains as being flawed but nearly perfect despite the flaws. I feel like he justified his rational which is all he needed to do. If that's not good enough then nothing ever will be in terms of reviews.

Yeah after reading this and taking their Dead Space 3 review into account, i'm finding it really hard to take Polygon's reviews seriously.

It looks like they reserve 9.5's for big EA releases.

The weird thing is, to me, that review actually sounded almost overwhelmingly positive. The criticisms were rather brief. I think that's just the same matter of different people putting different amounts of weight on those aspects.@jams: The obvious answer is marketing. Someone, somewhere, decided the game would make more money if they used the established franchise name. Frankly, I got over that sort of thing back when Fallout 3 came out and took the franchise in a completely different direction. People bitched and moaned about it for so long, but nobody blinks at that these days (with the possible exception of the folks at NMA, I suppose).

Hopefully I'm not being scolded for what I thought was obviously a sarcastic response to the review comparison.

And my beard will never reach my neck, I do have some standards.

@bisonhero. Yeah. We were both joking.

Because they're playing the same game and are thus drawing from the same pool of information.

@krakn3dfx said:

My bad. In my defense, I have interacted with far too many individuals who do sincerely hold GAF above all else, and it's bothersome. gruebacca's response seems more obviously sarcastic, though now that I reread your original post, I don't know how I missed it there either.

For the record, Polygon has now dropped Sim City's score down to an 8.

@milkman said:

I'm so happy that they have done this. These issues seem too prominent to simply sweep under a rug. I wouldn't be surprised if this game gets hacked, cracked and modded to relieve it of its online infrastructure.

That's just weird. Also, it's a good thing for Maxis/EA that the review score won't be reflected on Metacritic.

I gotta say, I don't go to Polygon...ever, but I finally decided to read this review, and it feels like someone who entered a "Back of the Box" quote contest. I don't know the guy from Adam, but...wow. That site makes me appreciate this one even more.