Developer: Maxis
Publisher: EA Games
Genre: City Building Sim
Players: 1
Console Reviewed: PC
Also Available On: Mac
ESRB Rating: E 10+ (Everyone 10 and up)
Progress: 10 cities built across 4 regions
SimCity will go down in the history books as a monumental disappointment. More than a month after its failed launch, the game remains somewhat broken. I had picked up this game early after its release and I was plagued by the familiar server problems that you’ve probably already heard of on the Internet. Held up as the poster child for unfettered DRM run amok, SimCity is still suffering under a diverse portfolio of problems due to poor servers, and I suspect poor programming as well. That these issues remain unresolved to this day is incomprehensible, but as a courtesy I have waited more than a full month before publishing this review to let Maxis and EA iron out the wrinkles. During this time and to no one’s surprise, publisher EA was once again crowned the worst company in America for the second consecutive year. Congrats, it takes some real effort to outshine even those corrupt American bankers.
At the best of times SimCity shows great unrealized potential, but most of the time it’s just broken or literally unplayable. EA has staked their reputation on always-connected gaming and will have to deal with the consequences, but they did at least issue a half-hearted apology and allowed us early adopters to download an additional free game for the ordeal. If they were truly sorry I could accept it, but this episode will change nothing. Future EA games will more than likely continue to be smothered by DRM and their servers will just as likely continue to be the very definition of unreliable. But enough about EA, the more they equivocate the more I realize that they are not inherently evil, just completely clueless.
Let us instead discuss the work of developer Maxis, a studio that I used to hold in high regard. It has come to light on the Internet that SimCity does not exactly function as advertised in spite of its pedigree. Maxis had some ambitious ideas on how to craft a better city building sim, many of which are legitimately good, but they seem to have somehow lost themselves in the implementation. On the positive side, I like how you can upgrade and expand existing buildings like police stations to meet the growing needs of your city without plopping down a whole new building. I really like how you can develop a specialization in your city; my favorite is the tech and trade industry combination. I also love the detailed attention to graphics and the polished user interface. When these all come together during those fleeting moments of glory, it is a great feeling. Perceptive players have noticed, though, that behind this competent façade lies an intrinsically inconsistent experience. There is that odd behaviour of SimCity?s citizens who never work the same job or sleep in the same house each day. There are bizarre traffic tie-ups that take place while adjacent roads lie empty. My department advisors keep hassling me about problems while nothing looks to be wrong. I cannot seem to get neighboring cities in the region to work together as well as they should. And finally, region “Great Works” (such as the Arcology) frequently get confused about the progress of their own construction and are ultimately not worth the effort. At the end of the day, Maxis clearly has some adjustments to make before the game can even be considered to operate at a functional level. If the game was otherwise stable I could live with these relatively minor issues, but this is unfortunately not the case.
SimCity?s server problem is unbelievably maddening, no online video game can survive without strong server support. Whether SimCity can yet be saved is unclear, but the onus now falls upon Maxis to fix their substandard product. EA’s servers may be a stab in the back, but Maxis’ programming and MMO philosophy is the twist of the knife. SimCity is definitely not a game that should rest entirely on an online-only gameplay experience, yet here it is despite the fact that it remains at its heart a single-player game. Maxis has since admitted that they could have included an offline component, but chose not to because it would not have reflected their “vision” of essentially making SimCity an MMO. Their PR machine continues to grasp at straws and make it seem like thousands of gamers are happy with this, but what about the tens of thousands who feel downright betrayed?
That SimCity must be constantly tethered and completely dependent on its connected server is the root by which nearly all of its other problems originate. This brings me to the ultimate deadly sin that breaks this game: cities can only be synched to one server and you cannot make saves directly on your hard drive, meaning that the server exclusively handles the saves, or so in theory. The sad reality is that the servers routinely lose cities, occasionally lose entire regions, and very frequently roll back countless hours of progress. Almost every time I develop a decent city it gets unceremoniously lost or rolled back or made otherwise inaccessible by the servers. As of this writing, SimCity just tossed out my 3rd try at making Victini City. Gone, for no specified reason. SimCity doesn’t even give me the courtesy of saving a backup on my hard drive. Why in seven hells does it not allow local saves? The most crushing insult is when the game kicks me out onto the title screen and says, “Your city is not processing properly” ? as if somehow it’s my fault ? after which it prompts me to “roll back” to an earlier state whereby I lose several hours of playtime. If situations such as this were the exception, I could grit my teeth and try again. Unfortunately this is the norm, and it happens more often than any sane person can tolerate. I challenge any person who has played this mess to come forward and tell me that they have not lost a city or had a city rolled back and lost hours of playtime.
Losing saves breaks trust and is completely unacceptable. If SimCity allowed local saves, the servers could still sync with them Steam Cloud-style and there would be virtually no risk of lost progress. How can anyone invest time in a game not knowing whether their work will still be there the next time they play? How would you feel if today you booted up Call of Duty and found that all of your weapons and experience were gone? Or that your ranking has been rolled back to an earlier state because it was not “processing properly”? Every single week? Somehow Maxis believes this would be acceptable. Good thing they don’t make first person shooters.
Before writing this review I just lost what will be my final city and therefore I am putting SimCity away for a long cool-down period. I cannot bear to look at the icon on my desktop without feeling inconsolable rage. My hope is that several months from now either Maxis will have fixed their game, or modders will find a way to enable proper offline play. I really wanted to love this game because I am a huge fan of the SimCity series. I have been extremely patient with SimCity and have given it every opportunity imaginable to prove the haters wrong, but my generous amounts of patience cannot tolerate another second of this abuse. How Maxis and EA let this broken and unstable product out the door for $60+ is a mystery for the ages. It really is a shame because it could have been a fantastic offline single player game with an optional online component. Whether SimCity may yet be saved by copious amounts of patching remains to be seen, but I’ve decided that my time and money are better spent on games that actually work.
- Clean interface and great attention to graphical details
- Some great ideas (such as city specializations), though not fully realized potential
- Strange and inconsistent sim and traffic behaviour
- Neighboring cities in the region don’t work together well. “Great Works” are not worth the effort.
- Fans wanted a solid single-player city builder, Maxis delivered a broken MMO
- Online-only gameplay still unstable, servers still unreliable a full month after release.
- Servers regularly lose cities and roll back progress. You can only sync regions to one server.
- Most of SimCity‘s flaws can be traced back to its always-connected dependency.
