So after kicking the couchsurfers out of the study and with the girlfriend away I settled in for a big weekend of that new SimCity game everyone has been complaining about. And hey the 2.0 patch just came out, so they must’ve fixed all the bugs and added a host of new features right? Well, let’s just say Maxis’ approach to version numbering is ‘non-traditional’. In fact since starting this draft article on Monday they’ve released two patches, containing a solitary bug fix each. The version numbering appears to represent the amount of time since launch, since any reasonable person could not claim this game to be out of beta.
This is why I call the game SimSuburb. Each play area is entirely seperate, linked onto by an oppressive freeway.
It’s the podcast you all asked for! What, nobody did? Good, because it’s a radio show! Experts at nothing, amused by everything; Grubdog, Bill Aurion, RABicle, Deguello and Matto all got together in the Pietriots Studio to talk about current games, SimCity, Rayman Legends and tackle the hard issues behind DLC and HD collections.
We were also lucky enough to score an interview with an EXPERT! Michael Pochter gave us some time on his busy schedule to provide insight on the year ahead. Please enjoy!
The SimCity brand has been through a lot. The last good SimCity was SimCity4, released back in the start of 2003, but even that wasn’t a true step up from SimCity3000 until the Rush Hour expansion. Future expansions were theorised but never eventuated, leaving the game’s enthusiastic moddingcommunity to push the game engine to it’s theoretical limits and polish SimCity4 into a kind of modern society simulator come digital train set. Since then, EA have kept original developer Maxis distracted with Spore while conspiring with Tilted Mill Entertainment to ruin the franchise with SimCitySocieties and forcing their Japanese affiliates to badly port remixes of SimCity3000 to DS and iOS. Apparently they also got the work experience kids to make a unique SimCity for Wii but no one actually played it because, you know, it was a third party game on the Wii. EA’s latest betrayal of Will Wright’s legacy is assigning Playfish to develop SimCitySocial for Facebook.
People will call me a hippy when I say this but I’ve always felt a resonance with Nintendo consoles. They speak to me through channels I can’t describe. This isn’t some delusional fanboy shit – this is real hippy waves of energy that you just gotta feel, man. When Project Dolphin was announced I was living on a tropical island in the Pacific; when Project Revolution was announced I was a political activist; and for the past year or so I’ve worked as a barista.
Project Café.
Today I was working and thinking a lot about E3 and how it was going to change my life and give me new meaning and direction, man. I looked down at the latte I was making and there I saw it: everything I needed to know about Project Cafe. I was just like Agent Morgan from Deadly Premonition, ciphering messages from the milk and coffee. I stared at it in a trance and it all came to me. This is how it will take place at E3…
With the east coast of Australia underwater, the North American continent buried under snow and the Korean peninsula on the brink of nuclear war, gamers across the world have even more reason to bunker down on the comfort of their couches and the warmths of their computer. The dangerous world outside does present a problem though; how to acquire more games? The leader in digital distribution has capitalised on this captive market and this year’s Steam sales have been destructive to gamer wallets. It’s been a storm of it’s own to weather, one in our mind, to restrain ourselves and avoid the perils of credit card debt.
Pending transactions on my credit card bill.
There is some sort of addictive quality to cheap games. I’ve bought games I previously had no interest in like Mass Effect. I heard the second one won a few awards this year so I got that and then though I might as well get the first so I know what’s going on. Then there’s other games, like Assassin’s Creed that I thought I bought, but in the long line of transactions I guess I haven’t. There are other games that I’ve decided for one reason or another to just wait and buy at the last moment of the sale, like Eufloria. There’s other games like the Tomb Raider spinoff thing but I didn’t get that, despite it going on sale twice. There’s also SimCity 4. It’s on sale right now, I’ve already bought this game twice but my brain is telling me if I get it on steam, I wont need the CD!
And of course, in typical steam sale tradition, the only games I’ve played while hiding from the jellyfish that infest this retirement village my parents call home are SimCity 4 and Osmos, which I picked up from the Humble Bundle. Might post some Osmos impressions tomorrow or tonight, it’s an absorbing (lol puns) game.
Pietriots 