Added: 06.01.2014 0:16 | 10 views | 0 comments


Gaming wise 2013 was great (even though SimCity tried to tarnish it), we had studios who pushed the envelope on a last generation of consoles and stories were told that rivaled movies and books. A new era of systems entered the fray and we even saw yet another Call of Duty. Personally 2013 was the year that he strived and succeeded to play quite a bit of games. He dipped his toe in the open world genre, comboed his way through some action adventures and even took another crack at JRPGs.

Added: 22.12.2013 17:16 | 15 views | 0 comments


Kotaku: I love watching the streets of SimCity 2013. The cars and people zipping by, streets stretching to the horizon. Look too closely or zoom out too far, and the game's problems are impossible to miss. I'd stay on those streets forever if I could, but there's a review to update.

Added: 19.12.2013 7:17 | 13 views | 0 comments


Jonathan from Awesome Games writes: 'One thing youll definitely find while leafing through pages of bygone games magazines are the tales of rockstar gaming excess. I can remember countless tales about Civilization or SimCity causing people to lose all sense of time, causing them to fall asleep at their keyboards or to find their alarm clock ringing just as they were about to stop playing. I can even remember an interview with a Cannon Fodder developer smiling with amused pride as he recounted getting fan mail saying I failed University because I was up all night playing your game!.'

Added: 17.12.2013 17:55 | 58 views | 0 comments




SimCity - Biggest Disappointment 2013

Platform: PC
Publisher: EA
Developer: Maxis

There's always plenty of disappointment to go around during a year of new consoles. Knack received the brunt from critics for being laboriously repetitive and padded, while both God of War: Ascension and Gears of War: Judgment fell short of expectations as prequels to trilogies that were already complete. But since these games were all playable and even somewhat enjoyable, none of these compare to the problems with Grand Theft Auto Online and all the disconnections and the lack of heists. It is that single blemish on Grand Theft Auto V, no matter how much Rockstar would like to separate it from the main game, and though the online portion has largely been fixed and amended now, the effects still linger.

Added: 07.12.2013 12:17 | 6 views | 0 comments


At this stage of the calendar year, with the transition to new hardware and the current onslaught of software, its easy to get swept up in the annual gaming maelstrom. Tis the season, after all. Having said that, although this year may not signal the curtain call for the seventh generation of consoles per se with Dark Souls II et al slated to release in 2014 2013 will still go down as a notable twelve months for the industry at large.

Added: 22.11.2013 19:30 | 16 views | 0 comments


B. Altano Bay needs to be bled dry of its natural resources, and the new SimCity expansion pack is the best way to do it.

Added: 21.11.2013 19:30 | 17 views | 0 comments


We're back! Yes, Greg's doing four Let's Plays to break in the new SimCity expansion pack!

Added: 15.11.2013 18:46 | 7 views | 0 comments

As someone who does this game-reviewing gig alongside serving as a real-life mayor of a small town in Canada, I come at a game like SimCity from a different angle than most. Not that different, mind you. The multiplayer focus and always-on Internet demands of Maxis' latest city-builder are beyond irritating. And the cramped borders that force you into constantly demolishing and rejigging your bulging-at-the-seams mini metropolis are almost enough to drive me to adopt the pastimes of another Canadian mayor who has been making the rounds of late-night talk shows recently.

But what really bothers me is the missed opportunity. This fresh take on SimCity comes a full decade after

One other problem lingers from the game's horrendous launch early this year. You still have to connect online to play, and there are still regular periods when the servers cannot be accessed. I didn't play the game in the spring, when it went through long stretches of being unavailable, so I can't comment on whether or not this issue has gotten better. But during the course of playing the game for this review, it regularly refused to run because it could not connect with the servers. This generally lasted for no more than five- to 10-minute stretches, and was usually much shorter than that (although there was also one five- or six-hour outage). Still, these outages remain absolutely unacceptable, especially for a game that you should be able to play solo. The always-on Internet connection requirement needs to be removed so you can take your single-player city-building offline.

All that said, SimCity can hook you for lengthy stretches of time before the frustration of dealing with its flaws wears down your patience. The game excels in a number of areas. You couldn't ask for a tuitive interface. A glance at the menu bar tells you immediately if you've got trouble brewing with the water supply, schools, police, electrical grid, and so on. The needs-and-wants heart of the gameplay is handled very well, too, so you're never left in the dark over such vital information as why businesses are failing or why citizens are loving your town. Click on any structure in the game, and you instantly get a rundown of what's good and bad in your city, from the perspective of the sims who live or work there.

Go too big at first, to allow for eventual growth, and you soon wind up demolishing buildings to add roads allowing more space for homes, businesses, and industries.

Visuals and sound are superb for the most part, though the graphics get oddly blurry at times when you're down near street level. Cities boast neat lived-in details that you can see when zooming in on your sim citizens, and the soundtrack includes a jazzy score and atmospheric effects that always tell you what you're looking at (though the developers could have chosen a less-disgusting glug noise for those moments when you're checking on sewage flow). All of this just accentuates the letdown in the end, though, because you're always aware of how much better this game could have been.

Whether you're a mayor or a wannabe or a constituent, SimCity is a big disappointment. As the first game in this classic series in a decade, it should have been something special that took the city-building concept in exciting new directions that let everyone see what it's like to serve as a mayor. Instead, the developers got tangled up with a multiplayer concept that is little more than an albatross hanging around the player's neck and never addressed the many, many ways that this look at a mayor's life could have been made both more realistic and more enjoyable.

Added: 15.11.2013 18:46 | 6 views | 0 comments

As someone who does this game-reviewing gig alongside serving as a real-life mayor of a small town in Canada, I come at a game like SimCity from a different angle than most. Not that different, mind you. The multiplayer focus and always-on Internet demands of Maxis' latest city-builder are beyond irritating. And the cramped borders that force you into constantly demolishing and rejigging your bulging-at-the-seams mini metropolis are almost enough to drive me to adopt the pastimes of another Canadian mayor who has been making the rounds of late-night talk shows recently.

But what really bothers me is the missed opportunity. This fresh take on SimCity comes a full decade after

One other problem lingers from the game's horrendous launch early this year. You still have to connect online to play, and there are still regular periods when the servers cannot be accessed. I didn't play the game in the spring, when it went through long stretches of being unavailable, so I can't comment on whether or not this issue has gotten better. But during the course of playing the game for this review, it regularly refused to run because it could not connect with the servers. This generally lasted for no more than five- to 10-minute stretches, and was usually much shorter than that (although there was also one five- or six-hour outage). Still, these outages remain absolutely unacceptable, especially for a game that you should be able to play solo. The always-on Internet connection requirement needs to be removed so you can take your single-player city-building offline.

All that said, SimCity can hook you for lengthy stretches of time before the frustration of dealing with its flaws wears down your patience. The game excels in a number of areas. You couldn't ask for a tuitive interface. A glance at the menu bar tells you immediately if you've got trouble brewing with the water supply, schools, police, electrical grid, and so on. The needs-and-wants heart of the gameplay is handled very well, too, so you're never left in the dark over such vital information as why businesses are failing or why citizens are loving your town. Click on any structure in the game, and you instantly get a rundown of what's good and bad in your city, from the perspective of the sims who live or work there.

Go too big at first, to allow for eventual growth, and you soon wind up demolishing buildings to add roads allowing more space for homes, businesses, and industries.

Visuals and sound are superb for the most part, though the graphics get oddly blurry at times when you're down near street level. Cities boast neat lived-in details that you can see when zooming in on your sim citizens, and the soundtrack includes a jazzy score and atmospheric effects that always tell you what you're looking at (though the developers could have chosen a less-disgusting glug noise for those moments when you're checking on sewage flow). All of this just accentuates the letdown in the end, though, because you're always aware of how much better this game could have been.

Whether you're a mayor or a wannabe or a constituent, SimCity is a big disappointment. As the first game in this classic series in a decade, it should have been something special that took the city-building concept in exciting new directions that let everyone see what it's like to serve as a mayor. Instead, the developers got tangled up with a multiplayer concept that is little more than an albatross hanging around the player's neck and never addressed the many, many ways that this look at a mayor's life could have been made both more realistic and more enjoyable.