Gamespot: First Impressions

[John-SJ]

Read them here. (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/simcitysocieties/news.html?sid=6172717&om_act=convert&om_clk=multimodule&tag=multimodule;picks;title;1)

[majortom1981]

wow that was a waste (no offrense to the topic poster) that wasnt even an impression.

[King Faticus]

has anybody looked at the thumbsup-down under all the comments:rolleyes:

basically if they say "this game is *(&^%&&%%" they get + 20 thumbs up and if they say, I think this sounds interesting you get +20 thumbs down:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

I hate it when people abuse things like that:(

[Hardin]

I don't think that's abuse I think that's just what the people think.

[King Faticus]

I don't think it is suppost to be "do you agree with this poster's point of view?" so much as"is this comment helpful vs abusive and detrimental?"

[Hardin]

All it says is rate this comment. If they don't like a comment then they can say so.

[King Faticus]

I havn't been to gamespot for a while so I cannot remember what it says.
is there a punishment for having too many negetive ratings?

[prof786]

people tend to be cynical jerks (me included) from time to time. we think of ourselves as the center of the world and only we matter, nothing else. remove the forums, there is nothing left but a bunch of pre-pubecent imbeciles who know no better.

[Rnett]

Some of those comments look familiar.

[MarkDuffy]

has anybody looked at the thumbsup-down under all the comments:rolleyes:

Dat's funny! :D

<all one way too>

BIG FAN OF SIMCITY very cool

(+1 | -7)

[simdude]

The way the camps are divided right now, this game is either going to be a horrible flop or it's gonna be a so-so game. I haven't seen any true positive article or preview about it yet.

And more and more people seem to notice this City Life 1.5 tendency in the gameplay.

Wich is still my biggest concern about SimCity Societies, I would really hate to see anything following that idea since I think it sucked and I totally hate it.

I can't see why Tilted Mill would look at City Life and think: "wow, what a great game, let's do our version of it and call it SimCity". I don't think City Life was such a big hit to be worth copying it.

Although I try to look and find positive things in all the screenshots and images, I can't seem to get over the impression that this will be a City Life clone. I wish someone from TM would pop up and say: "NO! CITY LIFE WASN'T OUR STARTING POINT, WHAT INSPIRED US, THIS IS GONNA BE NOTHING LIKE THAT!". But I don't think they can.

[King Faticus]

I bet they want to though

I somehow don't think the inspiration was Citylife in and of itself.. but I cannot say what it was.. I think something scared EA about it though.

[Aushun]

I'm not sure if the inspiration was more in Children of the Nile or City Life, the game seems to contain elements of both.

[gem1n100]

My opinion and first impression of this game is that I think it looks like it will be a very fun game. Now, I haven't played some of the newer simcity games but I did play some of the first ones that came out and loved them and played them for a long time. Then I got more into COTN and The Sims 1 and 2 and I love all of them!!! I have never played City Life but I might try it. I feel alot of these people posting the negative comments are afraid of too much change and think about it most of hate changes anyway. LOL

But I will more than likely get this game when I can afford it and I really think I will enjoy it!!:)

[Adagio]

I feel alot of these people posting the negative comments are afraid of too much change


Several of the features I hate the most in SC:S has been tried in City Life and I really HATED those

[Kiya]

My first impressions are very optimistic about SCS when I was reading EA's official site news. We can build many kinds of cities, idyllic, urban, futuristic, industrial and so on, and what I especially like is that we can share our cities online with friends. :)

[Romaq]

!?

Can we share our cities online? Where does it have that info? That's a specific feature I look forward to seeing, but I don't know if they have made that as a feature statement yet.

--Romaq

[Cobblepot]

Smaller cities, well that is no good news at all. We wanted bigger and bigger cities, not smaller ones.

[Azeem]

Numbers are just numbers to me. I don't think I've ever built a truely large city (150k-200k range or so) in any SimCity game. I'm more concerned about the aesthetics, depth of gameplay, and what can be done in the game than how many faceless numbers I can cram into a space.

Not exactly on topic, but something interesting; "cities" as defined in the US legal system:

In most U.S. states, a city is designated by the election of a mayor and city council, while a town is governed by people, select board (or board of trustees), or open town meeting. There are some very large towns (such as Hempstead, New York, with a population of 755,785 in 2004) and some very small cities (such as Shafer, Minnesota, with a population of 343 in 2000), and the line between town and city, if it exists at all, varies from state to state. Cities in the United States do have many oddities, like Maza, North Dakota, the smallest city in the country, has only 5 inhabitants, but is still incorporated. It does not have an active government, and the mayoral hand changes frequently (due to the lack of city laws), but it is considered a relatively inactive government.

[Kiya]

!?

Can we share our cities online? Where does it have that info? That's a specific feature I look forward to seeing, but I don't know if they have made that as a feature statement yet.

--Romaq
On EA official SCS Finnish site (http://suomi.ea.com/games/10981/KeyFeatures/), the headline of the last chapter there says "Jaa omia kaupunkejasi ystäviesi kanssa verkossa" = you can share your cities with your friends on the web.

I take this means online, not sending them by email or something. Don't really know. :o

[ManagerJosh]

On EA official SCS Finnish site (http://suomi.ea.com/games/10981/KeyFeatures/), the headline of the last chapter there says "Jaa omia kaupunkejasi ystäviesi kanssa verkossa" = you can share your cities with your friends on the web.

I take this means online, not sending them by email or something. Don't really know. :o
That really isn't anything new. People have been zipping up their old simcity 2000 and 3000 cities for sometime now and putting it up on the net.

[King Faticus]

if that is the case then why would they bother to mentioned it at all?

[Romaq]

if that is the case then why would they bother to mentioned it at all?

Indeed. While I am, in fact, working on the means to share SC4 cities using SVN, it is *not* for the faint of heart. It's more a proof of concept, a way of saying 'this is possible.' An obvious response might be 'why in hell would I want to do that?' And that's as valid a response as any.

If SC:S doesn't have an obvious means to 'share cities', I do dearly hope they provide better support for CVS/ SVN tools than what the SC4 team did.

But not needing to use CVS/ SVN or other third party hack to make it work would be very VERY nice.

--Romaq

[King Faticus]

I pray it does, I honestly have no interest in playing a game unless I can socialize with my firends and share cities and mods... maybe we can build on the same map or maybe connect two saved games and share resources and can look at eachothers cities:)

I would like both a LAN option and a direct connect IP too

[Romaq]

One of the reasons Mikaela dropped SC4 is that she was more interested with the friends and interaction she has on Ultima Online. I started another thread specific to 'multi-player online' you might enjoy. I'd like TM to consider their work in that light. Even if they are not in a position to 'directly/ officially' support 'multi-player online', perhaps they would keep the option in mind so as to not close doors to that possibility. Like reading hidden directories, or toggling readonly flags on startup. The inability to direct the game to fetch files from a shared network. If they could debug their file I/O so the game protects itself in the event the attempt is made to share data. If TM could be mindful of *potential* data sharing in their file name conventions and file structure.

Anyway, I have ideas I want to suggest concerning 'multi-player online' SC:S, but to the extent other people are expressing interest and talking 'what if' ideas, the thread isn't so much me talking to myself.

--Romaq

[gem1n100]

Well, I have the sims and the sims 2 and EA has a site where you can download houses, sims and other content that people can upload that they have custom made for their games to share, so I am figuring they will have a way to share our cities, I guess kind of like the way you can upload your COTN cities on these forums to share with others.:cool:

[bosiydid]

Well, I have the sims and the sims 2 and EA has a site where you can download houses, sims and other content that people can upload that they have custom made for their games to share, so I am figuring they will have a way to share our cities, I guess kind of like the way you can upload your COTN cities on these forums to share with others.:cool:

In reading the IGN preview article, TM has not made a definitive determination on this aspect of the game one way or the other. Right now it's up in the air if this will be a part of the game or no.