SimCity Free Demo

Last night I took advantage of the free four hour demo of SimCity.   And first off just want to say the reviews weren't wrong.  The maps are way too small, making city layout awkward.  But the actual buildings are HUGE.  Maybe if the scale of things were a bit smaller it wouldn't be as bad.

Since I only had four hours to play I didn't get to play around with the settings.  And heck, didn't even find the settings until I had about a half-hour left to play.  But the graphics were just...not good.  Now this could be my computer.  It's not exactly on the newer side not exactly highest of specs but it really reminded me of The Streets of SimCity or even my beloved SimCopter.  Yeah, getting a totally 90's groove there.  I tried pushing stuff to the highest settings but nothing really changed.

Overall, it wasn't a bad game.  It was still SimCity enough but I'm not rushing out to buy it.  I think the single player mode was the best they could've added to it.  I can't imagine playing a region waiting for other people to help you out.  It seems like I was pushed into adding more stuff before I could fully realize what I even wanted to do.  This was probably because I was on a time limit of playing though.  I'm sure once I had the game I could play around with a region and make it into something I wanted.

And because they are sims, they will complain.  But as you can see, the city wasn't doing all that well.  Apparently, you can take pictures and movies but I never figured it out until I hit the C key and got this gem.

 I don't have any commentary on all the new Sims 4 news since I didn't really look at the new info.  But from the little I've seen, still feeling all meh about it.  Good thing I can't afford a new game right now anyway.

Go 4th and Sim!  Simmer 4 life!

And don't think I don't see some sort of irony that I use the 4's up there despite my feelings for this new version.

Random Sims Musing 10-6-13 Sim City Update Edition

I just got finished reading this article about the State of Sim City.  Now I don't own this game but I may get it eventually especially once The Sims 3 has finished it's run and I have money to spend on other things.  :)  The size of the maps has been an issue since Day 1 at least when the servers were working at the time and an offline mode.

Again not having had played it except for a beta version on a computer that couldn't handle it and just going on my experience with previous versions I think I may be okay with a smaller city size.  I usually get lost when I tried bigger cities and preferred the smaller ones.  The guy did say that did look into it and it just wouldn't work out.

Reading the comments on articles like this always makes me laugh..  Some of the commenters don't understand what goes into something this huge.  I believe I may have mentioned this in another musing but the creative teams behind this have to make something that runs for the majority of players and yeah things are going to fall on the wayside (or whatever that  phrase is).  It's nothing personal, people!

What I do think is that they took a really good game and made some really bad decisions with it.  Online only was the biggest one.  It really shouldn't been added later and optional.  But it is what it is and they have to live with those choices.  Hopefully they can come up with and offline mode.  Not that it will still satisfy everyone.

Ahh, people are just a bunch of crybabies and whiners.

Go 4th and Sim!

Random Sim City Musings

So I figured I got this blog sitting here and I might as well use it for something since I can't really play my game the way I'd like.  Which is to just get it running period.  A few months back the computer borked itself and it took a few months to get it back and running.  It's still not running good but it's five years old.  Now I find myself with some extra cash so maybe I can spare some to get a new machine.  I need something to play The Sims.  We shall see what comes with that.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to play the closed beta of Sim City.  Don't be hatin' just cuz I got connections.  Now despite the fact that my video card wasn't good enough and my computer is running on half the RAM it should and the graphics were just lines and not even fully formed buildings.  I liked it.  It's a bit steep for me to get when it comes out (especially on the same day University does) but maybe down the line I will.  It was my gateway game into everything Sim.  I had the DOS version with the red paper that you had to match the symbols on it to play.  Sim Ant, Sim Life, Sim Tower, Sim Copter (would really love to see that one update <3 <3 <3 it!!!), Streets of Sim City and finally The Sims.

But back to Sim City.  I really liked how you can see how all the Sims are living in the city.  It's like peeking into people's windows to see what's going on.  Not that I do that of course.  Then I watched the live chat the other day celebrating 10 years since Sim City 4.  Didn't even realize it had been that long since it's release.  It was a nice to see the process of how the new one came to be.  Of course I've owned and played  probably every version of Sim City out there.

Even Sim City Societies and Destinations.  Those were interesting to me.  Not so much because I played them but it seems like glimpse of what was to come.  Getting on the street level and being able to follow a Sims as they go about their business.  To be honest I kinda just set it up with unlimited money and would just build.  Why follow those pesky rules and wait for things to become unlocked??  No sir, I want it to play with it all now!!

Right now it seems The Sim franchise is going full speed ahead.  There's at least another year of stuff for Sims 3.  Sim City seems to be a big thing too though it's hard to imagine to expand on it, at least for me.  Then probably Sims 4, which is something I'd never thought I'd even be thinking about it.

I guess as far as hobbies go I could've picked worse.  It's not cheap but it's not the most expensive thing either.  I honestly don't know how gamers keep up with all the new games coming out.  One franchise is enough for me to keep up with.

And because a post wouldn't be complete without a picture...