SimCity Limited Edition

Pros: This game is very in-depth lots of things to plop and upgrade the whole online community/ region thing is awesome I can share stuff with my friends and they can help me, The cloud based SimCity is neat I can play at home, on my laptop, and at my office and all of my cities are with me.

Cons: Maps are a little small but having lots of plots in the region make for easy expansion.

Other Thoughts: I really like this game very additive!!

Pros: Graphics, Glass Box, Region View, easy way to upgrade buildings or roads Etc. just click on it and then click upgrade! Loads of camera angels and views that are easy to navigate via the mouse.

Cons: So many options and little to no help in game! The only tutorial that I've seen thus far is the general getting started tutorial that you play when you first open the game. But this is a minor thing! You have to be connected to the internet to play, annoying but not the total fail it's been made out to be.

Other Thoughts: I've played every Simcity since the original came out in the late 80's and each one has had it's ups and downs, but this one is awesome. I know the game has a bad reputation due to the launch problems, but anytime something new is done you should expect problems. They now have a good portion of the major problems worked out with more patches to come. So if you liked any of the versions of Simcity over the years you will probably like this, but I will caution you that this version is aimed at multi-player. So if you want to play on your own you have to develop multiple cities, but I could see this being extremely fun to play with friends. As for the required internet connection, it has it's up side in that your games are saved on the servers not on your computer and you don't have to worry about saving at all! The game is saved every second as you go, down side to this is that you can't load from a previous point if you decide you want to change something. Final conclusion: This is a great game and should only get better as time goes by and EA and Maxis supply patches and continue to work out the bugs.

P.S. I bought this locally at Target, sorry Newegg didn't want to wait for it to ship :-(

Pros: got a free game for activating in timely fashion due to epic fail

GlassBox

regional interactivity and intra-activity

Cons: choice for free game limited to a couple of titles i already owned, handful of titles already free and a few EA games recently released

bugs in GlassBox e.g. my city lost power because my coal powerplant ran out of coal despite having coal mine in city...it seems my coal delivery trucks didn't feel they were allowed to drive infrontof my train station in order to reach my coal power plant, however a tiny dirt road around perimeter of city taking them hours out of their ways was an acceptable route!

artificial temporary limitations placed on regional multiplayer featureset due to server capacity and launch fail

Other Thoughts: great game but requires lots of work

Pros: More patches are coming....

Cons: I launched the game and tried to play the learning scenario. The game freezes after about 90 seconds of playing time... Yep, this game is a complete mess. I'd wait at least 6-9 months before considering buying this title.

Pros: it's a fun time-killer.
somehow, it feels therapeutic to manage a city. it's like taking care of your very own little pet and watching it grow

Cons: broken game - you literally cant play it. period.
drm disallows local play/saves
tiny maps that you can fill in an hour(yes, you fill the entire city map with structures in an hour. youtube it.)

i'm astonished that what EA has done here is even legal. how on earth can they get away with taking customer's money, and then giving them an unusable product?
We need better laws to protect customers from this type of garbage. the better business bureau should be working hard to shut EA down.

Other Thoughts: gosh this game could have been so great.
i would hope that dozens of people at EA got fired over the debacle known as simcity 5, but let's be honest, it's EA... they all probably got promotions.
4 hour wait times if you call customer service
8 hour wait times if you attempt to live-chat with customer service
no refunds! yes, that's right. no refunds!
imagine you bought a brand new car and it wouldnt start. imagine you bought an ink-pen and it wouldnt write. imagine you bought a television and it wouldnt turn on. you would be furious, and guaranteed a refund right?
simcity is a game that you cant play, yet nobody is getting refunds for it. outrageous!

Pros: It's nice to have another simcity out there. I also got a free game out of the deal (bribe)

Cons: Short version: Buggy, online only, hard as hell to find a game to join.

Long version:

Here's my experience: opening day, all servers busy -- they say 20 minute waiting period to connect and start counting down. I decided to cancel and rejoin a server. Ok, sure. I was finally able to get in from cancelling and rejoining a europe server (I'm in USA) and built my first town. I had fun... played a few hours with occasional crashes. That's fine, I can expect that on opening day. It's only gotten worse. After attempting to join about every full game known to man I finally found an open game and joined. Most people will end up playing for a few hours then abandoning their city which prevents anyone else from taking that city over. I took over a city and built quite a nice town. I kept playing this for a week or so off and on. One day about a week ago, I opened the city... and played for maybe 15 minutes or so and it crashed to the main menu. I closed out of the game completely and tried to rejoin the city that I played for the last week or so and it disappeared.. POOF. I've started a few more cities since then but really have lost interest as I have no idea when they'll disappear, players playing the other cities will disappear or what other bug might come out of the walls and eat my city alive.

You'd have better luck randomly hitting numbers in your cellphone to find an open public game to join. And when you do? People abandon it.

Other Thoughts: Origin / EA has lost it and they know it. The way they admitted this was to give everyone a game in hopes to shut people up for awhile. It worked for me. It kept me quiet for an extra few weeks.

Whoever did quality testing (assuming anyone did) should be fired. They did a pathetic job with the in game browser, no stress test whatsoever (OPEN BETA WOULD HAVE FIXED THAT), and no ability to save/run offline.

They could totally fix this by having an in game browser that looked for AVAILABLE / RECENTLY PLAYED games only. I'm not sure who would want to play in a 16/16 region with no availability and all the players havent played in a week.

Also, offline mode is a must.

I am disappointed more than anything.

Pros: The demo for the game was fan-tastic. I got into the Public Beta weekend a month ago and while I could only play the game for an hour at a time (EA claims that they wanted uses to focus on the early game), I was hooked deploying the various regions and watching them grow and change as I fiddled about with the landscape was brilliant! The graphics looked great and the interaction with the city - the missions and the like was actually fun and the game is incredibly dynamic. Sure I had to restart my city every 60 minutes, but it was a blast!

Cons: At the time of this writing, I've had the game for four days now and I can't actually play. You see, Electronic Arts, in their efforts to fight piracy, have implemented a "Must always be connected to the internet" functionality in their single player game. Not just a CRC check at the games start-up, but if Sim City can't connect and stay connected to EA's servers, then you can't play the game. No active internet connection, no Sim City. Period.

The problem is that upon release day, me and 20 million of my closest friends have all been slamming the install, download and play servers. For four days now I've been unable to connect to the game servers. I'd love to actually review the title in more depth than just the hour demo that I was able to play, but either I have the game freeze at initial start up, I have the game freeze at the Updating Game state, the servers are unavailable at the "Server Select", the servers are selectable but full, I can log on to a server and start the game only to find I can't connect to the server. In short, I can't actually get on any of the servers with any consistency. Plus if you do have to start over on a new server, not only do you lose all your city's progress (which sucks), you have to go through the tutorial again. While tutorials are fine - unskippable ones are lunacy!

It's got a very lovely looking front end (although the music is starting to wear on me) - but that's all I can tell you about the actual release game.

And it will only get worse with the European and Asian release of the game this Friday. Soon the entire world will fight for server space that EA seems unable to deliver. In response, Electronic Arts is stripping away non-critical game play features including leader boards, achievements and region filters in hopes of getting stable servers up.

While I have no doubt that these issues will sort themselves out as people give up on the game and drift away, this is very much a glimpse into the future when EA decides to shut the servers down the Sim City servers for good in four or five years. Or if you want to play in the park or at Gran'mas house? Tough luck kid! You'll be stuck looking at a dead game and very pretty front end.

So no, I cannot recommend a single player game that is internet connection dependant no matter how brilliant the game may be. My copy is going back to Newegg straight away and I will go back to playing Railroad Tycoon 3 - a game that I've had for 13 years now without an issue. After 10-ish hours of trying to connect without success, my patience for Electronic Art's shenanigans has worn thin.

(A rebuttal to those who say "Well, review it after EA fixes it" - Should I go back and review games once they have been patched and made better, or should they be reviewed as they stand right out of the box? Did anyone give the lousy Elemental: War of Magic higher scores after the fact? No, they didn't. So the original lousy score stands.)

Other Thoughts: Electronic Arts released a beta version. Go get Sim City IV instead.

Pros: Has a lot of replay value and the new region play is cool once you get used to it. The overall feel and look of the game is great. I find myself thinking about new things to try often when I'm not even playing it because you can use a lot of different options to find success with your cities and region. I'm not a huge PC gamer but this game is bringing me back to it.

Cons: There have been server issues which gives the game the 4 eggs instead of 5. A lot of load time failures and problems that can be dealt with if you're patient. They are starting to decrease a lot recently though for me personally.

Other Thoughts: Overall, I think this game is worth going for. The price point may be a bit high due to the server issues but I would say I am happy I got it. It is one of those games that has caused me to lose track of time because I am trying to use strategy through situations and the gameplay is fun.

Pros: This game is great, amazing graphics and a big improvement from the previous, with many new features

Cons: This game runs DRM ( you must be connected to the Orgin servers while playing and to log in) the servers have failed to run for some time now and all youtubers are saying it too.

Other Thoughts: So great game, just fix the servers EA just get a new center for 100k and that's that

Pros: none

well, in all fairness, when it did work, it was nice.

Cons: Game does not work reliably because it requires connection to EA/Origin servers, AND the servers themselves are UNRELIABLE. So it is not always possible to connect. CANNOT PLAY THE GAME. I paid for something that I cannot use when I want to use it!

The servers do not reliable save game state AND game state is NOT stored locally! So it is VERY POSSIBLE TO LOSE ENTIRE CITIES!

EA/Origin/Maxis attempted to calm the bitter buyers by offering a free downloadable game from Origin/EA catalogue. This was a terrible gimmick because they only offer six or so games that are not even comparable!


EA claimed the always-on always-connected nature of the game was a requirement for gameplay. BUT this was proven FALSE! and later admitted by EA.

The Origin DRM client MUST have internet access to allow SimCity to run. It also routinely connects to Origin servers. Be careful because it attempts to send sensitive information about the hardware, software, running program, etc on the installed machine.

Even worse, there is IN THE WILD an exploitable flaw that allow specially craft URL/URIs to download malware DLLs that get run by the Origin client. No user interaction required. (EA claims it is merely hypothetical. See release notes for Origin client 9.1.15: "Version 9.1.15 (Beta)
Closed hypothetical exploit of Origin URI (uniform resource identifier) by malicious web sites"

Other Thoughts: worse software purchase I ever made.

and Newegg will not refund (which is perfectly understandable).

BUT it would great if Newegg would push back against EA and refuse to offer this game for sale. help your customers because EA provided a bad product.