So, Manged to get this unlocked and had a really good play last night.
Really really enjoying it, they have simplified it whilst leaving lots of cool visual info-graphics to help you easily understand what is going on.
If you've played the beta or read anything about it then you'd know that they have removed the need to buy power lines/water pipes. Water and power now runs inside of any kind of road or path, for me this is much better, it lets you get on with the main bulk of building and managing your city without having to do fiddly time wasting type things.
The city space is significantly smaller than previous games, there have been many comments about this, from what I can gather the game now revolves around having multiple cities within a region and trading between them.
Sims and resources can move between your multiple cities, but as time doesn't pass in another city whilst you are in another the game is actively encouraging you to play the game socially and in a region with other players.
It does feel like a multiplayer game in that respect, there is a little chat box in the corner of your screen so you can actually politely ask for assistance if your city has become overrun with crime or fires for example.
The smaller cities also allows you to very quickly put together a city, but the real trick is creating one that doesn't break.
Each person in your city lives out a real life, so there are true flows of traffic between the different districts you have created, people leave work, go shopping, commute out of your city etc so actual city planning can become really meticulous if you want it to.
Now I will talk about the white elephant in the room, it is truly online only, a trend becoming more an more apparent, following on from last week's Tomb Raider Digital Edition on PS3 which also has online only DRM.
You require a connection to the server to start playing, but once you are going it's not so bad, the city is stored on a server and not on your machine, if you lose your connection mid game you are ok, you can carry on playing, but unless you reconnect your city will not sync and be lost upon exit.
In itself it's not a bad thing, the game has very clearly been built from the ground up to be played with others, strangers or otherwise, but you are at the mercy of EAs servers.
The servers have been going haywire and right now I am not able to play.
Really really enjoying it, they have simplified it whilst leaving lots of cool visual info-graphics to help you easily understand what is going on.
If you've played the beta or read anything about it then you'd know that they have removed the need to buy power lines/water pipes. Water and power now runs inside of any kind of road or path, for me this is much better, it lets you get on with the main bulk of building and managing your city without having to do fiddly time wasting type things.
The city space is significantly smaller than previous games, there have been many comments about this, from what I can gather the game now revolves around having multiple cities within a region and trading between them.
Sims and resources can move between your multiple cities, but as time doesn't pass in another city whilst you are in another the game is actively encouraging you to play the game socially and in a region with other players.
It does feel like a multiplayer game in that respect, there is a little chat box in the corner of your screen so you can actually politely ask for assistance if your city has become overrun with crime or fires for example.
The smaller cities also allows you to very quickly put together a city, but the real trick is creating one that doesn't break.
Each person in your city lives out a real life, so there are true flows of traffic between the different districts you have created, people leave work, go shopping, commute out of your city etc so actual city planning can become really meticulous if you want it to.
Now I will talk about the white elephant in the room, it is truly online only, a trend becoming more an more apparent, following on from last week's Tomb Raider Digital Edition on PS3 which also has online only DRM.
You require a connection to the server to start playing, but once you are going it's not so bad, the city is stored on a server and not on your machine, if you lose your connection mid game you are ok, you can carry on playing, but unless you reconnect your city will not sync and be lost upon exit.
In itself it's not a bad thing, the game has very clearly been built from the ground up to be played with others, strangers or otherwise, but you are at the mercy of EAs servers.
The servers have been going haywire and right now I am not able to play.
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