I got back into simcity 4 last week after reading this thread, kinda realised sim4 is as deep as you want it to be. Had gotten a city to a good size but couldnt make it grow until transport education and health was sorted Dont think ill have a laptop to run this when it comes out but hopefully this year I get playing it
Has anyone had any confirmation of being included in the Beta or not? I only ask as I've just seen on Kotaku that it's supposed to be this weekend.
Nothing yet but I'm really looking forward to it coming out! Couldn't find my copy of SimCity 4 to play about with tho. Be nice if beta announcements were this weekend.
I'm in the Beta! Sitting in a waiting room trying to log in, servers are overloaded. This is definitely why they needed a load test beta...
Thanks, much appreciated. I'll post my thoughts on the beta in the sim city thread when I have played it, incase anyone is interested. The code won't be wasted.
Remember you're under NDA. Honor system! I played the beta twice last night and I'm pleased to report that everything was exactly as I expected minus a bit of polish. The fact that it was limited just made me more excited for the full release so I can have all those cool high-end ploppables and the regional gameplay. I guess you could consider that a successful marketing beta, even though Maxis was swearing up and down that it would be more than that.
Sort of disappointed in the demo... the 60 minute limit was a bit of an annoyance when you first start off, would rather have it just run the one level with limited build items. The map sizes seem far too small, and the removal of certain large landmarks (airports) seems a bit odd. You can have a regional airport but not an international airport. The zoning isn't too difficult to figure out: Build it next to larger streets, OR place parks that correspond to the appropriate wealth group you want to develop in that area (medium/high) to instantly level up that area without having to upgrade roads. Inability to adjust terrain is a really poor choice, I always preferred "Flat Land" maps where I could just build a sprawling metropolis with perfectly square streets blocks. The "Hold Shift" option is a nice tool to help you draw out street blocks. Zoning is... terrible. I preferred the old "square" system where I could plan my streets in advance. Here it's a crap-shoot where you have to guesstimate how big the zone should be to make fully use of the terrain and avoid "dead" spots behind rows of buildings that face different streets. Maybe there's more fluidity in the look of the city long-term, but it just looks messy and unkempt to me. Having cloud based saving with no roll back is very odd. Can't say I like it. I prefer Civ V's option to send a save file to the Steam Cloud, but still have an option for local saving. But while I do love Sim City as a franchise, I don't see myself spending the money on either edition at their current price. I don't feel the value in the game... yet. Something is off, I'm not sure what, but it's enough to make me want to hold off until EA has a 50% off sale.
