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Maxis, EA / YouTubeOn Tuesday, EA and Maxis launched one of the most-anticipated games of the year, its latest installment of SimCity.It's been more than a decade since the release of SimCity 4. The newest version allows you to play online which, so far, has resulted in a bit of chaos with down servers and glitches when trying to connect.If you're not familiar with the premise of the video game, the goal is simple: successfully build the largest thriving city with the biggest population. (Of course, there's no prize at the end for building the largest city. Rather, the idea is just to have fun constructing, destructing, and dictating a town full of simulated people at your discretion.)Despite the hiccups, when the game is up and running, reviewers are loving it!It looks ages better than previous versions.IGN reports on how super-detailed the game looks: "It starts with the elegant, mostly intuitive interface, and extends to graphical nuances like sunlight reflecting off solar panels and the unique ambient sounds that play every time you select a building like a police station."Here's the original PC SimCity in 1989:YouTube screencapHere's SimCity 4 from 2003:YouTube screencapAnd, here's the latest one: Maxis, EA / YouTubeYou will never want to leave your computer screen … ever. Polygon:"You may play a hundred hours of this game without noticing, but behind the curtain, SimCity is working furiously to hook you — and keep you hooked. And in my case, it was enormously successful at both."Slate: "I’ve been playing SimCity since late last week, and, like every previous version, I’ve found it to be unyieldingly addictive. (I’ve got a 2-year-old and a 3-week-old at home; my wife texted me to let me know they’re doing fine.) But SimCity isn’t just habit-forming. It’s also deeper and more realistic than any other sim game I’ve played."IGN's Greg Miller has posted a story with the headline, "Let's Play SimCity Every Day Forever." The idea is he'll play the game every day with 10 minute commentary. Why? It's simple to navigate.Again, Polygon: "The user interface is intuitive enough to make finding what you need amidst a potentially complex array of options easy even at the most frenetic of times. I only very rarely felt lost for what button to press or which menu to find what service under."Mashable:"There is a great tutorial included which has you tackling the problems of an already built city to understand the game's basic systems, but it doesn't scratch the surface of all the cool ways to explore and build up your city."However, that doesn't mean it's all seamless."Roads don't always want to connect because of proximity to another intersection, or crowded terrain, so you may have to occasionally bulldoze and redraw a few areas. I found placing the largest structures often difficult."It's fun!You can experience tornadoes ... YouTube screencapAlien invasions ... YouTube screencapMeteorites ... YouTube screencapAnd a zombie apocalypse. Sure, these features were available in previous SimCity games, but it sounds even more fun in this version. Multiplayer.Everyone's connected through leaderboards and global markets. And, you can see other people's cities and merge with other player's creations. IGN points out this is both good and bad: "You can share a region with up to 15 other mayors. It does work, and with lots of coordination it can work well, but in the multiplayer sessions I've played so far it had nearly as many drawbacks as advantages ... I'm going to go ahead and predict that, much like Blizzard found with Diablo 3, Maxis will soon discover that the majority of SimCity players will want to play by themselves most of the time."It's like The Sims meets SimCity. Unlike before, you can track what each individual Sim in your city is doing, similar to EA and Maxis' breakout game The Sims. Slate: "SimCity simulates discrete urban behavior, tracking how every person and every object interacts. 'We now have every car and every person and every garbage truck and every criminal represented by an autonomous agent in the environment.'"Not everyone was impressed, though. Two editors at Arstechnica found that cities can only have smaller populations before compromising game functionality. "I've reached a functional limit around 200,000 people. I have no more space," said ar gaming editor, Kyle Orland. "I've reached a functional limit around 200,000 people. I have no more space."
The Biggest Downsides:
1. The game requires you to ALWAYS be online. To play SimCity you need to be connected to EA's servers in order to download and play the game. The plus side is that this allows gamers to interact and connect their cities.However, in order to save or virtually do anything, you need to be connected. Problems, glitches, and save issues occur when servers aren't working. Currently, EA and Maxis have been working to add updates and more servers to fix this problem.2. Resources are finite. Whereas, you used to have an unlimited supply of water, oil, coal, etc., now, once you're out of resources your city — and the innocent Sims living in it — are doomed!3. You can't play it on the Mac ... yet. Sorry Apple users, it's for Windows PCs only. Don't fret, Maxis says the Mac version will hit stores later this spring.You can download the game on Origin HERE.
