As previously noted, that vision had clouded any user friendly design. Special debugging commands became widely distributed online (in an ironic move to disconnect the game from the world wide web), to which Maxis responded saying that they opted against implementing the developed offline mode as "it didn't fit with our vision". Yes, it was online and yes there were some cool features with curved-roads and a wide variety of natural (and unnatural) disasters, but SimCity 2013 felt to many like a step backwards.įurther criticism came when it was found that SimCity could've been run in an offline mode all along as the code was there but Maxis hadn't implemented it. It was also frustrating to many that a franchise which had been the granddaddy of city building simulations for 25 years now offered far less available land for city building than previous iterations. Given the strength of criticism in those early reviews, EA and Maxis also promised to make improvements to the artificial intelligence - They did not. Perhaps this was the push EA and Maxis needed as they did eventually resolve the server issues by expanding capacity and disabling certain "non-critical" features.īut that's not all. It got to the point that the complaints around the server issues created enough negative user reviews at that they temporarily halted sales of the game. This critical connection issue went on for several weeks following the launch. Once in, players would have to hope they didn't get disconnected part-way through a session before they had a chance to save any progress on their city. Players were made to wait upwards of thirty minutes to just play SimCity. When SimCity was released in March 2013 there was no offline mode included and the servers for online connectivity were well over capacity. In best Arrested Development voiceover - They did not. Due to the limited amount of people online many reviewers connected OK and could play the title, but some reviewers were unable to review the game, labeling the launch a "disaster" and the game "unplayably broken", urging players to avoid purchasing SimCity until the issues were resolved. All of this was vital because SimCity 2013 was only playable online at this time. When they were finally sent the 'completed' game for review, it was riddled with technical issues including network outages, problems with saving progress and difficulty connecting to the game's servers. Many pre-release peaks at game demos had been met with praise by gaming magazine reviewers, but none of them had been hands-on with SimCity at that point. Sounds like a cool idea in theory, but somewhere along the way vital components to support that idea where overlooked, and vision seriously overtook playability. Developed by Maxis and Electronic Arts (EA), the aim was to augment the normally single-player city-building game with online features that would allow players' cities to interact with one another, building a software platform rather than a single game. Just like every title in our Terrible Games collection, it's not that the 2013 reboot of SimCity is just bad, as such, it's that given the strength of the franchise it really should've been better.
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