"SimCity Shame"

Image courtesy of "Electronic Arts"

It's been a while (over a year!) since I've posted on this page but I feel like what better opportunity to return to form than to comment on the brand new Electronic Arts reboot of the classic "Simcity" franchise and the great big cesspool of hate and disappointment it seems to have found itself floating in since its March 5th launch.

Let me start out by saying that unlike many other blogs and posts out there I'm not here to trash EA's new release (well not exactly). I am instead concerned about some of the comments I've come across in my research of the game, especially what I've been seeing from major video game reviewers such as Gamespot and others.

Although issues with server availability, subsequent game crashes, loss of data and a prevalence of systemic bugs have reduced what is, at it's heart, a dazzling display of programming ingenuity to a galactic head shaker, is it entirely fair to summarily slap this game with a reduced rating even before experiencing all it may (one day) have to offer?

A Gamespot editor recently reviewed this game at an 5.0 out of 10 (which doesn't really shock me given his brutal review of Resident Evil 6), thousands of people who have purchased it on Amazon.com have resorted to giving the title the web site's lowest rating: 1 star out of 5, and it seems amid the chatter on "SimCity's" facebook and Twitter pages, even die hard fans of the series have forsaken the American based developer once and for all.

My opinion? I've taken to adopting the wait and see approach to many games today, and this release will be no different. In the past five years or so, I have become an avid PC gamer so it hurts me to see such ambitious efforts such as "SimCity" flounder upon it's release when it could have stood as another jewel in EA's already impressive repertoire including titles such as the "Madden" franchise, the "Dead Space" franchise, and of course, we can't forget about "The Sims"!

My advice to fans of "SimCity" whom haven't abandoned ship and still hold out hope for a day when the game (finally) achieves full functionality is to look to Diablo 3 as it too had to deal with similar lauch day issues concerning a ubiquitous Internet connection requirement and "DRM".

Amidst all of hate posts and controversy I am fairly confident this fiasco will soon find it's resolution and all in the world will be as right as rain (ahhh..).

Although, taking into account the outrage concerning a lack of offline functions coupled wih a seemigly growing facetiousness in regard to EA's tackling of the concerns coming from it's fan community, something tells me that this publisher's PR problems are far from over...