SimCity Demands Nine Minutes of Your Time

My favorite part about the Sim franchise is the little things, of course I'm talking about those tiny people that inhabit your creations :D They all have a name, desires, and their own personality. Something about them that really makes the game for me. It's what got me hooked into Roller Coaster Tycoon series as well.

While a part of me is super excited for this, another part of me is saying "I already have what they're selling... it's called Cities XL." I'm hoping that Simcity can bring more to the table than Cities does (ie an engine that doesn't break when cities become large, but that was a problem with Simcity 4 back in the day, too...)

The issues @Uberdubie raised are definitely things that concern me as well, but I'm willing to withhold judgement until the final product is released. Hopefully Simcity retains the things that kept it great in the past (I personally loved terraforming as much, if not more, than actually building cities) while moving forward to catch up (and hopefully surpass) the other city building game(s?) out there.

Looks great. Don't know how much time I could sink into a game like this though. Far too many other things I need to play.

@ArmedBear said:

You seen this Simcity game? It's got curved roads. Curved. Roads.

I used to be a mayor like you, until the Mob capped my knees for not taking bribes.

@hi_im_rob said:

@FuzzYLemoN said:

Water travels along roads?

The fuck is this.

Water pipes under the roads. All cities do this.

Okay, but why make it part of the game then? It's pointless to have a water tab if it's just under all the roads. And the annoying part is that you're going to have to put random unnecessary roads just to get water to certain areas.

@Portis said:

My girlfriend and I just watched this. My reaction: WANT! Her reaction! WANT! Want. She also peed herself.

you've got her locked up in a small room without a door in the back of your house don't you, you sicko!

@FuzzYLemoN said:

@hi_im_rob said:

@FuzzYLemoN said:

Water travels along roads?

The fuck is this.

Water pipes under the roads. All cities do this.

Okay, but why make it part of the game then? It's pointless to have a water tab if it's just under all the roads. And the annoying part is that you're going to have to put random unnecessary roads just to get water to certain areas.

The water tab is for making water plants (Towers, pumps, ext) like the power tap is for Power factories.

And why would you want water to an area that's not connected by road anyway? Are you going to be building some separate city that's not connected to the main one? All your buildings will be connected by road anyway.

I'm waiting for a James Howard Kunstler-branded sustainable city simulation.

I think this game looks great, and that's a shame since I wont be playing it due to EA's artificial restrictions. Is CitiesXL a proper Torchlight to SimCity's Diablo 3?

Looks fantastic. I want it now :D

I kept thinking the Grudge girl was about to get me every time that weird sound played.....

wow, this guy is such a dirtbag,

"lets give em jobs and then a way to buy happiness in some stores"

"lets just dump all the shit and trash over here and hope they don't notice"

"I want these turists spending all their money in my casino"

couple more minutes and he'd start with the sim genocide

I Really liked how easy it looked. But what I loved about past Sim games was their attention to detail. Seeing little things like the Garbageman not picking up garbage bins or people having super standardized stories kinda made me sad. I know such attention to detail is a lot to expect in a modern game with all the other things they put in their games, but it's the main draw for me at least.

That looks very good. Such a shame that it's not coming to mac :(

@Dredlockz said:

wow, this guy is such a dirtbag,

"lets give em jobs and then a way to buy happiness in some stores"

"lets just dump all the shit and trash over here and hope they don't notice"

"I want these turists spending all their money in my casino"

couple more minutes and he'd start with the sim genocide

That's... That's how the modern world works.

@Zaccheus said:

@Dredlockz said:

wow, this guy is such a dirtbag,

"lets give em jobs and then a way to buy happiness in some stores"

"lets just dump all the shit and trash over here and hope they don't notice"

"I want these turists spending all their money in my casino"

couple more minutes and he'd start with the sim genocide

That's... That's how the modern world works.

Could've eased him into that a bit more. Now he's gonna be depressed all day :D

Simcity, without Will Wright. Optimistic, cautiously.

Biting social commentary at 2:53 in the video: "Once they get their paychecks, they'll try to spend their hard-earned money to buy happiness."

looks Great ! 

At first I was mildly shocked by the whole "money buys happiness" and "just dump your shit where no one will notice" thing and then I remembered "oh yeah, EA"

Looks......... GOOD?!?!?

*Optimism kicks in...*

The best part of this game is going to be how every little sim in your town is going to have their own personality and wants. It will be sweet to experiment with this new feature!

@Uberdubie said:

As much as I want this game, there are far too many glaring problems keeping me from purchasing it. Hands-down the biggest thing keeping me from getting this game is forced-online and forced-cloud saves. This means none of your cities will actually be on your own computer, and far more importantly, you cannot even re-load incase you make any mistakes, purposely cause disasters, or even want to test something and revert back to a previous state. Whatever you do is perminent; you're forced to live with the consequences. Kinda defeats the purpose of playing a Simcity game IMO.

And as highly popular as multiplayer is in most games these days, very few Simcity players are clamoring for it, especially since we don't get a choice. I don't think I could ever imagine Simity being anything other than a solo experience. I'd much prefer having a region of multiple towns looking and acting just as I see fit. Being forced to rely on other players also doesn't appeal to me at all. Not to mention you'll very likely be forced to use EA's horrifying "Origin" service whenever you're playing.

As mentioned above, small city size is also a concern of mine. I understand if many computers can't handle a very large city with this engine, but at least give the option. Also, for some reason you can no longer do most forms of terraforming (aka edit the land how ever you see fit). If they can manage to come to their senses and remedy many of these issues, this game will sell FAR better. But sadly I wouldn't count on it, and it's frustrating to see what they're doing with this franchise.

This is depressing.

I will be surprised if he does not expand into brothels and race tracks later on in this city

@Xpgamer7 said:

I Really liked how easy it looked. But what I loved about past Sim games was their attention to detail. Seeing little things like the Garbageman not picking up garbage bins or people having super standardized stories kinda made me sad. I know such attention to detail is a lot to expect in a modern game with all the other things they put in their games, but it's the main draw for me at least.

Look again the garbage man totally grabbed the dumpster.

@chan05: http://ca.ign.com/articles/2012/08/14/simcity-coming-to-mac

man this looks so awesome! such great memories of the other sim city games

This game looks fantastic!

Just think if Will Wright was still at Maxis and they were still in cahoots with Firaxis. X-COM style disasters for your city, anyone?

Can't wait to build Weaselopolis!

Just checked Origin and they're charging 80 dollars for an edition that comes with the day 1 dlc. This is why everybody hates you E.A. I can deal with day one dlc as a preorder bonus, but charging 20 more dollars for a completely digital version of the game that comes with content that should already be in the regular product? It's insulting.

Watching this plus Ryan Davis play SimCity gives me the biggest urge to buy every Sim game.

I have a copy of SimAnt laying around that I would want to play...except for those goddamn spiders.

This is going to be my first Sim City game. It's so exciting.

My heart sank when I read Feburary for this one.... Can't wait

Looks good. Why does management appeal to me?

I need this in my life. Right now.

I'll be honest I haven't play SimCity since SimCity 2000 on my blazing fast 486DX machine. This looks like so much fun and I like they they have done away with the bane of past games - placing water piles and electrical wires. This just looks streamlined so you can worry more about your city and less about the un-fun stuff.

I NEED this!

Love the day night cycle, I'm going to make a Las Vegas for sims

Wow, it only took a few comments before someone issued a worry about it being dumbed down. Heh. :)

It's impossible to know one way or the other yet, but I'm not sure smaller city sizes would equate to "dumbed down." And I'm more interested in complexity than size when it comes to cities--I never found large cities all that fun in SimCity. But that's a gameplay preference I know not everyone shares. I am impressed by the added complexity of the resource system. I'm not sure anyone can say it's dumbed down after seeing that, even if we're no longer required to place water networks anymore.

I also like the more realistic and interesting zoning choices, the addition of upgradable buildings, etc. There's quite a bit there that's new and interesting. If they're going with small map sizes, they can adjust by giving us more control and finer detail at that level. I'm not sure if that's what they're doing--they may have just been showing us a smaller map (there were different sized maps in earlier games as well). And I imagine a large map with that much data might be difficult on system requirements.

So I'm torn over it, but overall I like the look and I could be convinced by the direction as well.

@ArmedBear said:

You seen this Simcity game? It's got curved roads. Curved. Roads.

!

It's amazing what a UI can do for a game. When I looked at old SimCity games, my thoughts were basically "arcane" and "impenetrable." This looks like something I can play.

Wait, so this isn't a social media game? I'm on board.

Now this is how you market a game EA. 10 minutes of gameplay sans dubstep.

It came upon me earlier why the gameplay footage i've seen so far has been so off putting; everything seems over-simplified. The idea of 'put the train station next to the casino and all the sims will gamble themselves into oblivion' is really... boring. I don't know - it just seems like you have so little to do. Water routes itself, so does electricity... there isn't any meat 'n' bones stuff, or minor infrastructure challenges to overcome - a lot of the intricacies appear to be handled for you. There's hardly anything to attract tourists to the town the developer built, yet the train has a MILLION people on it right off the bat. Eh, seems essentially like the same Sim City. Perhaps that's what people want, but i was hoping for more. It comes across like this is the easy, basic, primary colours mode where the AI does the hard work for you. I'm hoping there's more.

@skelington_: This could be wishful thinking but I think it might take more then just having a train next to it to get so many people. A few times he skipped over some of the mechanics. It could have been more complicated then that but not elaborated on.

I do wonder how it handles tourism, exactly.

I can't wait for this game to come out!

@MonkeyKing1969 said:

I'll be honest I haven't play SimCity since SimCity 2000 on my blazing fast 486DX machine. This looks like so much fun and I like they they have done away with the bane of past games - placing water piles and electrical wires. This just looks streamlined so you can worry more about your city and less about the un-fun stuff.

Man I love water pipes...I wonder where I can get a copy of sc2k.

This will be great! Cant wait.

OMG, I need this game. NEED!

But ... I want to watch MORE.