SimCity Beta Weekend - dusting off my mayor's hat

[illusionofjoy]

When EA announced that they were working on a new SimCity release, I was cautiously optimistic. After the debacle that was SimCity: Societies, I figured that the franchise had nowhere to go but up, assuming it didn't die completely. Maxis is the studio back at the helm for their flagship title (one could argue that distinction actually belongs to The Sims - it's a hard call, given how obsessive fans of each franchise tend to be), which was the first positive sign for SimCity (2013) - EA had outsourced the production of SimCity: Societies to Tilted Mill Studios.

Of course, with every scrap of positive news, there are always things to be apprehensive about. EA is not a company known for caring about much else than fattening the wallets of their executives and with that mindset comes the fallacy of making games which attempt to be all things to all people and, at times, fail spectacularly at doing so. Even when a game is good, EA has a nasty habit of reaching as far into their customers' pockets as possible. Witness the ridiculous number of expansion and mini-expansion packs available for any iteration of The Sims franchise - and then, on top of that, for The Sims 3 there was the implementation of micro transactions for digital clothing and furniture. It was a crazy-making move for both completests and the frugal.

Still, as SimCity Classic was the first computer game I really enjoyed playing and the one which led to an addition leading me to SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000 and finally SimCity 4 Deluxe, I signed up for a chance at the closed beta of the new SimCity when it was made available. I doubted I'd get picked, however last Friday there was an email containing a code just for me.

I initially installed the game on my desktop XP machine, where upon launching, it gave me a warning dialogue about my graphics card not meeting the minimum standards required to run the game. After clicking "okay," the game loaded, and spread before my eyes was the most beautiful graphics glitch I'd ever witnessed on a high-definition monitor. Had the EULA of the beta not prohibited me from doing so, I'd have taken a screen shot and posted it.

Annoyed, but undefeated, I instead installed the game on my laptop, which is running Windows 7. Again I got a warning about the graphics card not being up to spec, but this time I was able to actually see the game I was trying to play.

So, how was that gameplay?

Overall, I enjoyed it. Despite the limitations imposed by the beta - being booted from game play after one hour being the most obvious one - I think I got a fairly good feel for what this new SimCity is all about. The "societal energies" are gone and the classic balancing act of zoning and making sure those zones don't gentrify while drawing roads to keep things moving has returned. When the girls would let me, I sucked it up and dealt with playing sans proper mouse and spent many hours remaking various cities. Even in my trackpad-handicapped state, I was engrossed in the new ability to lay out roads without being locked into a grid. Perhaps my favourite new feature was the ability to upgrade and customise municipal buildings. Instead of bulldozing and building - for example - a bigger fire station, one could simply click to edit an existing fire station and add what was needed, be that garages for fire trucks or a siren on the roof, if one had left enough room on the map.

And it is the issue of room on the map which is my first quibble with the new SimCity. Frankly, the city maps - one size fits all this time - seem a little on the compact side of things. In one hour of gameplay I'd have my municipal land allotment 60-75% full. I was really hoping for a larger map to build in and I am wondering if I'd be bored after several hours of game play because I'd filled up all of the available area. Variable city sizes have been a feature of this game since SimCity 3000, and to see this removed is a bit of a disappointment - especially since regional play is so strongly emphasized as a selling point.

Which brings me to another bone of contention: I am a control freak. The region play of SimCity 4 allowed one to connect cities in any manner the player saw fit. The region play of the new SimCity, however, is largely pre-defined. Highways are not a routing option when one is playing a city, as all highway connections are already placed for every city as regional connections. Perhaps this is technically more realistic as municipal governments rarely have much say as to where state and federal highways are placed, but I am hoping that a regional editor tool is released for SimCity like Create-a-World was released for The Sims 3. To be truly useful, the tool must allow editing of not only neighbour connections, but terraforming as well.

These are minor drawbacks at this point, more aesthetic than anything else. My major point of contention with this game is the online aspect. I don't refer to the option to play with friends in a region - that can be easily ignored. What irks me is the fact that this game does not save cities to one's local hard drive, placing them instead on EA's cloud server. Furthermore, the option to save and reload at will is simply nonexistent - no more wreaking havoc one one's metropolis just for laugh and then roll back the clock with a previous save so that your pixel people never know the alternate timeline where autosaurus rex kills them all. Of a greater concern is the replay value of a game where players do not have their save files on their own hard drives. SimCity 4 is over a decade old and still very playable. Could the same be said of the new SimCity if EA decides that it isn't profitable and pulls the plug on the cloud servers for those who are still actively playing? What happens if the cloud is unavailable, suffering downtime? EA has assured players that in the event of an outage, one can continue playing and their progress will be saved - a sort of buffer, if you will. With that information, I wonder if a mod could be created to redirect save files to one's local hard drive...but would it be worth the effort to create?

As I stated previously, I actually enjoyed playing the game but I am hesitant about buying it. First and foremost, I need a new desktop PC in order to actually play it - that purchase is still at least a year off, if things go as planned. Even so, while the game is fun, I'm not certain that it is $60-80 worth of fun. Since I participated in the beta, EA sent me an email stating that purchasing now would get me a "coupon" for $50 off any future purchase of one of their games. Mores the pity such savings can't be applied immediately. Between price, my subpar hardware and my lingering doubts over the game being programmed to be constantly "phoning home," I won't be an early adopter. What is likely is that I'll buy a copy when/if the price comes down and after the modding community has had a chance to tinker with it.

Funny thing - I didn't buy SimCity 4 until I built a new computer way back when either. That turned out okay.