It has been ten years since the last interaction of SimCity, and time has changed but not for the better. When its functioning it’s one of the addicting simulators that you will ever play, but online problems have ruined the experience. The game should have been delayed, and by not doing so Maxis Studios, and Electronic Arts have produced one of the most broken PC launches that shatters every ambition this game has.
If you’re a newcomer to the series, and this is your first entry you will have a hard time adjusting to the steep learning curb. The tutorial doesn’t cover enough ground, and it just focuses on what’s new in SimCity. Players will have no clue how to increase land value, or how to balance their city income. It’s a missed opportunity as I expect this will be the first installment for many consumers. But last, but not least I need to address one of the biggest issues surrounding the SimCity, which is online DRM.
The game is only available digitally only through Origin, Electronic Arts digital distribution service to stop illegal piracy. However instead of relaying on the game’s loyal, and hardcore fan base this solution is causing major problems. On launch day the game’s servers crashed due to large volumes of people on at one time. Since then load times have averaged ten to thirty minutes for most people. Once you were connected it was very frequent to lose progress that you made due to saves being stored in the cloud.
DRM is a Deal breaker, and server issues will be cleaned over time, but all of this could have been undone if the game provided an offline mode. I am all for providing the best online experience, but there is no excuse for not providing an offline option when previous installments were formed on that very initiative. It just comes across as being lazy for not taking the time to balance both modes. Sadly it doesn’t plan on providing an online mode in the near future as they recently said, “We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts.” So if you’re hoping to play with SimCity on your laptop on the go, you have to look at a different output.
SimCity was designed from the ground up to be a dedicated online experience, but when the entire infrastructure falls flat on its face everyone is at blame. SimCity is a lot of fun, but only when it works, which at this moment is at a very fragile state. Until the online problems are resolved I can't recommend picking it up until further notice.
Score: 7 / 10
