http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Sun, 17 Nov 2013 20:40:16 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/ratchet-clank-into-the-nexus-gameplay/2300-6416195/ Watch as this beloved duo make use of a seemingly infinite arsenal of bizarre weapons in this gameplay clip from Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus. Sun, 17 Nov 2013 12:07:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/ratchet-clank-into-the-nexus-gameplay/2300-6416195/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-serious-are-the-ps4-s-blue-light-of-death-and-broken-hardware-reports/1100-6416222/ <p dir="ltr" style="">Just a few days after launch, the PlayStation had already earned a dubious honor: a nickname for its potentially fatal flaw. What some users are calling the Blue Light of Death, mimicking the <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-extending-360-warranty-to-three-years/1100-6173633/">infamous Red Ring of Death</a> that plagued the launch of the Xbox 360 for years, has forced hundreds of PlayStation 4 owners to send their systems back to Sony and vent their frustrations in online reviews and forums. But just how widespread is the issue?</p><p dir="ltr" style="">While it's impossible to accurately gauge how far the claims of broken systems extend, prior to launch Sony shared that their expected failure rate for the console was 0.4%. To put that in perspective, that's about 1 in 250. With <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-sells-1-million-ps4s-on-day-one-in-north-america/1100-6416221/">over one million PlayStation 4 systems sold</a>, that comes to about 4,000 potentially broken systems. While that's a small number compared to the 996,000 that do work, that's little consolation if you're one of the 4,000 affected waiting to mail a $400 paperweight back to Sony.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">This is also the first console-launch since the wide spread of social media, where users can quickly and easily share their opinions with a world-wide audience ready to listen. And studies have shown that people are much more likely to share negative experiences over positive ones. We've grown accustomed to publicly berating companies that offer a subpar service and crowd-sourcing our troubleshooting needs, asking friends on Twitter or Facebook for advice before trying to go through any official channels.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="small" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2380947-amazonpic.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2380947" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2380947-amazonpic.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2380947"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_small/1534/15343359/2380947-amazonpic.jpg"></a></figure><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">Even still, the PlayStation forums have several constantly growing posts dedicated to <a href="http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-4-Support/Broken-PlayStation-4-Systems/td-p/42122503/highlight/false" rel="nofollow">broken PS4 systems</a>, and the Amazon review thread is divided between 5 star and 1 star reviews, with most of the 1 star reviews specifically calling out the flashing blue light.</p><h4 dir="ltr"><strong>Exploring Sony's Customer Service</strong></h4><p dir="ltr" style="">A thread on the official PlayStation forums walks users <a href="http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-4-Support/INFO-Blinking-Blue-Light-PS4-Issues/m-p/42154071#U42154071" rel="nofollow">through potential fixes</a> for the flashing blue light, but if that doesn't work, the best advice I've read online is to take the PS4 to a Sony store. Official Sony stores can sometimes perform maintenance on-site, and they're generally able to offer immediate replacements without having to wait to mail anything back and forth.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">While the PS4 I ordered from Amazon has been working just fine, I wanted to find out what the customer experience would be like if my system didn't work. So after reading up on all the troubleshooting I would have done, I tried accessing the live chat system on the <a href="https://support.us.playstation.com/app/contact_options/" rel="nofollow">Sony support site</a>. Over the course of an hour, I was only put in line to talk to a representative three times. Each time I was queued at either number 16 or 17 and given a 5-minute wait time. After two minutes, I was booted from the queue with no explanation.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Not a great start, so I tried calling the support system by phone. Although the automated voice on the other end told me that the wait could exceed one hour, I was patched through to a live person in 28 minutes.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">I asked about the process for returning a console that doesn't work and has a flashing blue light. First, I was told about the possible Sony store return policy I mentioned earlier, but if no stores were in my area, the representative would collect my shipping info. I'd have a return box in two days (or I could ship it to Sony myself right now via UPS), and after trying to repair the machine, they'd send me a repaired unit or replacement in 5-7 days.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The representative told me that, outside of the flashing blue light, she'd been able to fix most issues for users over the phone. However, she couldn't verify how widespread the irreparable issues were nor what was causing the blue light issue. The representative was incredibly courteous, knowledgeable, and almost made up for the wasted time I spent waiting to chat with someone online.</p><h4 dir="ltr"><strong>Ongoing Research</strong></h4><p dir="ltr" style="">Maybe the GameSpot office and I have been exceedingly lucky. The consoles we were sent by Sony for review worked fine, and held up to the brutal 12-hour gaming sessions they endured for our livestreams. The system I ordered from Amazon has been on and online for hours without a stutter, and all of my acquaintances that ordered a PS4 have been streaming weekend play sessions and posting images of their games.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">But even if Sony's estimates are correct and the issues users are facing only affect 0.4%, it's obvious that a vocal minority is having an effect on public perception of the system. And the customer service experience on Sony's side could be handled better, especially for compensating the gamers who aren't near a Sony store and who might not have a better course of action than mailing their system back and waiting for a replacement.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">For the potentially thousands of gamers who have had to spend the weekend after launch troubleshooting a system and waiting to talk to customer service, there's a lot of justifiable unhappiness. But on the bright side, it doesn't seem quite as serious as some reports seem to suggest. GameSpot will continue looking into these issues to determine just how widespread they are and if they affect more than Sony's projected 0.4%.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">If you've run into any issues, good or bad, we'd like to hear about them in the comments below. But if you're looking for technical support, you probably don't want to ask the commenters. For that, I'd recommend heading to the <a href="https://support.us.playstation.com/app/contact_options/" rel="nofollow">PlayStation support site.</a></p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6416206" data-width="854" data-height="480"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6416206/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p style=""> </p> Sun, 17 Nov 2013 06:14:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-serious-are-the-ps4-s-blue-light-of-death-and-broken-hardware-reports/1100-6416222/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/simcity-review-a-real-mayor-s-perspective/1900-6415554/ <p style="">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.</p><p style="">But what really bothers me is the missed opportunity. This fresh take on SimCity comes a full decade after <a href="/simcity-4/" data-ref-id="false">SimCity 4</a>, yet it still repeats most of the same old mistakes, doubles-down on the regional approach introduced in that game with an obnoxious multiplayer push, and destroys the zoning system through unnecessary simplification. While you're supposed to be the mayor of a city, you're actually more of a dictator at the reins of a city-state. There are no limits to your power when it comes to spending tax dollars. You can rezone neighborhoods at a whim. Whole blocks of supposedly privately owned apartment buildings and businesses can be demolished with two mouse clicks if you get a sudden urge to create a massive football stadium to suit a Jerry Jones-size ego.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378787-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378787" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378787-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378787"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2378787-0003.jpg"></a><figcaption>Tight city borders cause you to continually demolish and rebuild blocks. And they also force you to plop down key infrastructure in terrible places, like this nuke plant in City Hall's backyard.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Not that you would want to get too tied down to reality. Dealing with a council, staff, and senior levels of government involves a lot of process and red tape that wouldn't translate well into a game. Well, a game that anyone would want to play, at any rate. It's much easier and more enjoyable to click on a button to build and destroy than it is to shepherd real-life municipal legislation through public hearings, consultations with planning advisors, three readings of a bylaw, and so forth.</p><p style="">Yet the changes made to this new take on SimCity actually make the game tougher to enjoy, and knock back the realism even farther than it was a decade ago. Maxis continues with SimCity 4's regional approach, although there are significant differences. You still have the option of guiding more than one city on a regional map that can include up to 16 separate municipalities. But city size has been cut back by around 75 percent in comparison with SimCity 4. This forces you to branch out and take over the other cities in the neighborhood while playing alone or by playing online multiplayer, because you can never fit all of the facilities and businesses and homes that you need to survive and thrive within the borders of just one town.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378785-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378785" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378785-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378785"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2378785-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>City zoning seems to work well in the early stages, but after a few hours of play, it becomes clear that the game sacrifices too much control for the sake of simplicity.</figcaption></figure><p style="">This "honey, I shrunk the city" approach has been geared to hamstring you into playing the game how Maxis and Electronic Arts want it played--always online--with you filling all the roles and taking over every city in a region as a godlike hizzoner. Try building a self-sustaining city that is all things to all citizens, and you will soon bang your head against the wall so thoroughly that you might come out on the other side thinking about running for municipal office in the real world.</p><p style="">Even if you can somehow appreciate this regional approach, cities are just way too small on their own. You can build out to the limits within an hour or two of starting a city, and have no way of expanding beyond that besides taking over a neighboring town as the incredible multiple mayor or making nice with fellow human mayors in multiplayer. Once you hit the dotted-line wall (which has been made extraordinarily aggravating due to how maps have huge stretches of wilderness between cities that you can never touch), you have to start demolishing and rebuilding. You have to rework everything as your city grows, inventing ways to cram in Godzilla-size new municipal facilities like sewage plants and universities, expand neighborhoods to jam in more residents, and play with factories to create more jobs.</p><p style="">Get beyond these frustrating mechanics, and you don't feel like you're doing the work of a mayor, either. Municipalities function more like independent nations than cities, trading services and goods back and forth like members of the EU. Granted, this sort of thing happens with cities and towns in real life, but not generally for the reasons SimCity puts forth. I can't think of any cities that have contracted out police and medical services to other municipalities because they didn't have room for police precincts and hospitals within their own borders. My suspension of disbelief also takes a hit when it comes to natural resources, which are a national responsibility, not a civic one. Municipal governments looking after oil and ore is a bridge too far.</p><blockquote data-align="center" data-size="large"><p style="">Try building a self-sustaining city that is all things to all citizens, and you will soon bang your head against the wall so thoroughly that you might come out on the other side thinking about running for municipal office in the real world.</p></blockquote><p style="">Even when you do manage to team up with other human players or build a few sharing-is-caring cities on a map of your own, it all still seems pointless. Building cooperation seems great in principle, but I always find myself thinking that I could handle all that garbage myself, or put out all those fireworks fires without needing help from a sister city, if only the game would give me more room to grow. Push out the dotted lines that hamper city growth, and I'd never have to petition the Duckburg next door for any help. The interrelationship attributes come off as fake and forced.</p><p style="">Another major problem lies with zoning. At the center of your "mayoral" powers is the ability to zone areas for residential, commercial, and industrial development. You lay down roads, select the zoning tool, pick one of those three aforementioned categories, and draw a box around what you want to zone. Presto, you've created a zoning bylaw for part of your city. As soon as you've finished any sort of zoning, developers arrive and start building homes, stores, or industries on the block or blocks in question. If only it were this easy in the real world.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378786-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378786" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378786-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378786"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2378786-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>HQ may be called a "City Hall," but it sure doesn't feel much like you're the mayor of a city.</figcaption></figure><p style="">But even though this system might seem to be a fitting simplification of how municipal zoning really works, it actually makes SimCity more complicated, and is a huge step backward for the series. Back in 2003, SimCity 4 got zoning (mostly) right, with a low-, medium-, and high-density system very similar to how real municipalities function. Now you've got "build it and they will come" zoning where you pick from one of the three main categories and then watch as buildings get denser and bigger all by themselves. Growth occurs naturally based solely on economic conditions, how wide you've made the roads in the area, and how much land you've set aside to let three-bedroom bungalows expand into 20-story condo towers and little assembly warehouses balloon into massive chemical factories.</p><p style="">The result of losing zoning control? Utter chaos. This problem is exacerbated by the ludicrously small territory that each city is jailed in, since there is no room for mistakes. You need to guess at both how big you want your blocks to be and how wide you want your roads in order to accommodate future growth. Go too small at first, and you soon wind up demolishing roads to give buildings room to expand. 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. You can't win. You're either bulldozing blocks because you don't have enough room, or you're demolishing blocks because you've left too much room. Perhaps this is supposed to mirror the evolution of a city over time, but it plays out like you're making one mistake after another and correcting these errors by blowing up huge swathes of the city to start over and over again.</p><figure data-align="left" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378792-0008.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378792" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378792-0008.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378792"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2378792-0008.jpg"></a><figcaption>This used to be my playground.</figcaption></figure><p style="">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.</p><p style="">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 more intuitive 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.</p><blockquote data-align="right"><p style="">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.</p></blockquote><p style="">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.</p><p style="">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.</p> Fri, 15 Nov 2013 10:46:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/simcity-review-a-real-mayor-s-perspective/1900-6415554/
http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Sun, 17 Nov 2013 20:40:16 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/ratchet-clank-into-the-nexus-gameplay/2300-6416195/ Watch as this beloved duo make use of a seemingly infinite arsenal of bizarre weapons in this gameplay clip from Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus. Sun, 17 Nov 2013 12:07:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/ratchet-clank-into-the-nexus-gameplay/2300-6416195/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-serious-are-the-ps4-s-blue-light-of-death-and-broken-hardware-reports/1100-6416222/ <p dir="ltr" style="">Just a few days after launch, the PlayStation had already earned a dubious honor: a nickname for its potentially fatal flaw. What some users are calling the Blue Light of Death, mimicking the <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-extending-360-warranty-to-three-years/1100-6173633/">infamous Red Ring of Death</a> that plagued the launch of the Xbox 360 for years, has forced hundreds of PlayStation 4 owners to send their systems back to Sony and vent their frustrations in online reviews and forums. But just how widespread is the issue?</p><p dir="ltr" style="">While it's impossible to accurately gauge how far the claims of broken systems extend, prior to launch Sony shared that their expected failure rate for the console was 0.4%. To put that in perspective, that's about 1 in 250. With <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-sells-1-million-ps4s-on-day-one-in-north-america/1100-6416221/">over one million PlayStation 4 systems sold</a>, that comes to about 4,000 potentially broken systems. While that's a small number compared to the 996,000 that do work, that's little consolation if you're one of the 4,000 affected waiting to mail a $400 paperweight back to Sony.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">This is also the first console-launch since the wide spread of social media, where users can quickly and easily share their opinions with a world-wide audience ready to listen. And studies have shown that people are much more likely to share negative experiences over positive ones. We've grown accustomed to publicly berating companies that offer a subpar service and crowd-sourcing our troubleshooting needs, asking friends on Twitter or Facebook for advice before trying to go through any official channels.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="small" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2380947-amazonpic.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2380947" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2380947-amazonpic.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2380947"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_small/1534/15343359/2380947-amazonpic.jpg"></a></figure><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">Even still, the PlayStation forums have several constantly growing posts dedicated to <a href="http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-4-Support/Broken-PlayStation-4-Systems/td-p/42122503/highlight/false" rel="nofollow">broken PS4 systems</a>, and the Amazon review thread is divided between 5 star and 1 star reviews, with most of the 1 star reviews specifically calling out the flashing blue light.</p><h4 dir="ltr"><strong>Exploring Sony's Customer Service</strong></h4><p dir="ltr" style="">A thread on the official PlayStation forums walks users <a href="http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-4-Support/INFO-Blinking-Blue-Light-PS4-Issues/m-p/42154071#U42154071" rel="nofollow">through potential fixes</a> for the flashing blue light, but if that doesn't work, the best advice I've read online is to take the PS4 to a Sony store. Official Sony stores can sometimes perform maintenance on-site, and they're generally able to offer immediate replacements without having to wait to mail anything back and forth.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">While the PS4 I ordered from Amazon has been working just fine, I wanted to find out what the customer experience would be like if my system didn't work. So after reading up on all the troubleshooting I would have done, I tried accessing the live chat system on the <a href="https://support.us.playstation.com/app/contact_options/" rel="nofollow">Sony support site</a>. Over the course of an hour, I was only put in line to talk to a representative three times. Each time I was queued at either number 16 or 17 and given a 5-minute wait time. After two minutes, I was booted from the queue with no explanation.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Not a great start, so I tried calling the support system by phone. Although the automated voice on the other end told me that the wait could exceed one hour, I was patched through to a live person in 28 minutes.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">I asked about the process for returning a console that doesn't work and has a flashing blue light. First, I was told about the possible Sony store return policy I mentioned earlier, but if no stores were in my area, the representative would collect my shipping info. I'd have a return box in two days (or I could ship it to Sony myself right now via UPS), and after trying to repair the machine, they'd send me a repaired unit or replacement in 5-7 days.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The representative told me that, outside of the flashing blue light, she'd been able to fix most issues for users over the phone. However, she couldn't verify how widespread the irreparable issues were nor what was causing the blue light issue. The representative was incredibly courteous, knowledgeable, and almost made up for the wasted time I spent waiting to chat with someone online.</p><h4 dir="ltr"><strong>Ongoing Research</strong></h4><p dir="ltr" style="">Maybe the GameSpot office and I have been exceedingly lucky. The consoles we were sent by Sony for review worked fine, and held up to the brutal 12-hour gaming sessions they endured for our livestreams. The system I ordered from Amazon has been on and online for hours without a stutter, and all of my acquaintances that ordered a PS4 have been streaming weekend play sessions and posting images of their games.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">But even if Sony's estimates are correct and the issues users are facing only affect 0.4%, it's obvious that a vocal minority is having an effect on public perception of the system. And the customer service experience on Sony's side could be handled better, especially for compensating the gamers who aren't near a Sony store and who might not have a better course of action than mailing their system back and waiting for a replacement.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">For the potentially thousands of gamers who have had to spend the weekend after launch troubleshooting a system and waiting to talk to customer service, there's a lot of justifiable unhappiness. But on the bright side, it doesn't seem quite as serious as some reports seem to suggest. GameSpot will continue looking into these issues to determine just how widespread they are and if they affect more than Sony's projected 0.4%.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">If you've run into any issues, good or bad, we'd like to hear about them in the comments below. But if you're looking for technical support, you probably don't want to ask the commenters. For that, I'd recommend heading to the <a href="https://support.us.playstation.com/app/contact_options/" rel="nofollow">PlayStation support site.</a></p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6416206" data-width="854" data-height="480"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6416206/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p style=""> </p> Sun, 17 Nov 2013 06:14:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-serious-are-the-ps4-s-blue-light-of-death-and-broken-hardware-reports/1100-6416222/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/simcity-review-a-real-mayor-s-perspective/1900-6415554/ <p style="">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.</p><p style="">But what really bothers me is the missed opportunity. This fresh take on SimCity comes a full decade after <a href="/simcity-4/" data-ref-id="false">SimCity 4</a>, yet it still repeats most of the same old mistakes, doubles-down on the regional approach introduced in that game with an obnoxious multiplayer push, and destroys the zoning system through unnecessary simplification. While you're supposed to be the mayor of a city, you're actually more of a dictator at the reins of a city-state. There are no limits to your power when it comes to spending tax dollars. You can rezone neighborhoods at a whim. Whole blocks of supposedly privately owned apartment buildings and businesses can be demolished with two mouse clicks if you get a sudden urge to create a massive football stadium to suit a Jerry Jones-size ego.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378787-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378787" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378787-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378787"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2378787-0003.jpg"></a><figcaption>Tight city borders cause you to continually demolish and rebuild blocks. And they also force you to plop down key infrastructure in terrible places, like this nuke plant in City Hall's backyard.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Not that you would want to get too tied down to reality. Dealing with a council, staff, and senior levels of government involves a lot of process and red tape that wouldn't translate well into a game. Well, a game that anyone would want to play, at any rate. It's much easier and more enjoyable to click on a button to build and destroy than it is to shepherd real-life municipal legislation through public hearings, consultations with planning advisors, three readings of a bylaw, and so forth.</p><p style="">Yet the changes made to this new take on SimCity actually make the game tougher to enjoy, and knock back the realism even farther than it was a decade ago. Maxis continues with SimCity 4's regional approach, although there are significant differences. You still have the option of guiding more than one city on a regional map that can include up to 16 separate municipalities. But city size has been cut back by around 75 percent in comparison with SimCity 4. This forces you to branch out and take over the other cities in the neighborhood while playing alone or by playing online multiplayer, because you can never fit all of the facilities and businesses and homes that you need to survive and thrive within the borders of just one town.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378785-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378785" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378785-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378785"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2378785-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>City zoning seems to work well in the early stages, but after a few hours of play, it becomes clear that the game sacrifices too much control for the sake of simplicity.</figcaption></figure><p style="">This "honey, I shrunk the city" approach has been geared to hamstring you into playing the game how Maxis and Electronic Arts want it played--always online--with you filling all the roles and taking over every city in a region as a godlike hizzoner. Try building a self-sustaining city that is all things to all citizens, and you will soon bang your head against the wall so thoroughly that you might come out on the other side thinking about running for municipal office in the real world.</p><p style="">Even if you can somehow appreciate this regional approach, cities are just way too small on their own. You can build out to the limits within an hour or two of starting a city, and have no way of expanding beyond that besides taking over a neighboring town as the incredible multiple mayor or making nice with fellow human mayors in multiplayer. Once you hit the dotted-line wall (which has been made extraordinarily aggravating due to how maps have huge stretches of wilderness between cities that you can never touch), you have to start demolishing and rebuilding. You have to rework everything as your city grows, inventing ways to cram in Godzilla-size new municipal facilities like sewage plants and universities, expand neighborhoods to jam in more residents, and play with factories to create more jobs.</p><p style="">Get beyond these frustrating mechanics, and you don't feel like you're doing the work of a mayor, either. Municipalities function more like independent nations than cities, trading services and goods back and forth like members of the EU. Granted, this sort of thing happens with cities and towns in real life, but not generally for the reasons SimCity puts forth. I can't think of any cities that have contracted out police and medical services to other municipalities because they didn't have room for police precincts and hospitals within their own borders. My suspension of disbelief also takes a hit when it comes to natural resources, which are a national responsibility, not a civic one. Municipal governments looking after oil and ore is a bridge too far.</p><blockquote data-align="center" data-size="large"><p style="">Try building a self-sustaining city that is all things to all citizens, and you will soon bang your head against the wall so thoroughly that you might come out on the other side thinking about running for municipal office in the real world.</p></blockquote><p style="">Even when you do manage to team up with other human players or build a few sharing-is-caring cities on a map of your own, it all still seems pointless. Building cooperation seems great in principle, but I always find myself thinking that I could handle all that garbage myself, or put out all those fireworks fires without needing help from a sister city, if only the game would give me more room to grow. Push out the dotted lines that hamper city growth, and I'd never have to petition the Duckburg next door for any help. The interrelationship attributes come off as fake and forced.</p><p style="">Another major problem lies with zoning. At the center of your "mayoral" powers is the ability to zone areas for residential, commercial, and industrial development. You lay down roads, select the zoning tool, pick one of those three aforementioned categories, and draw a box around what you want to zone. Presto, you've created a zoning bylaw for part of your city. As soon as you've finished any sort of zoning, developers arrive and start building homes, stores, or industries on the block or blocks in question. If only it were this easy in the real world.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378786-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378786" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378786-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378786"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2378786-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>HQ may be called a "City Hall," but it sure doesn't feel much like you're the mayor of a city.</figcaption></figure><p style="">But even though this system might seem to be a fitting simplification of how municipal zoning really works, it actually makes SimCity more complicated, and is a huge step backward for the series. Back in 2003, SimCity 4 got zoning (mostly) right, with a low-, medium-, and high-density system very similar to how real municipalities function. Now you've got "build it and they will come" zoning where you pick from one of the three main categories and then watch as buildings get denser and bigger all by themselves. Growth occurs naturally based solely on economic conditions, how wide you've made the roads in the area, and how much land you've set aside to let three-bedroom bungalows expand into 20-story condo towers and little assembly warehouses balloon into massive chemical factories.</p><p style="">The result of losing zoning control? Utter chaos. This problem is exacerbated by the ludicrously small territory that each city is jailed in, since there is no room for mistakes. You need to guess at both how big you want your blocks to be and how wide you want your roads in order to accommodate future growth. Go too small at first, and you soon wind up demolishing roads to give buildings room to expand. 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. You can't win. You're either bulldozing blocks because you don't have enough room, or you're demolishing blocks because you've left too much room. Perhaps this is supposed to mirror the evolution of a city over time, but it plays out like you're making one mistake after another and correcting these errors by blowing up huge swathes of the city to start over and over again.</p><figure data-align="left" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378792-0008.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378792" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2378792-0008.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2378792"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2378792-0008.jpg"></a><figcaption>This used to be my playground.</figcaption></figure><p style="">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.</p><p style="">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 more intuitive 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.</p><blockquote data-align="right"><p style="">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.</p></blockquote><p style="">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.</p><p style="">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.</p> Fri, 15 Nov 2013 10:46:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/simcity-review-a-real-mayor-s-perspective/1900-6415554/
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