Realistically, name means absolutely nothing. It’s the console that counts. Design wise, I do actually like the look of the X1B. Yes it is just a ginormous brick, but the two tone gives it a nice sleek look and I am always a big fan of the slot loading disc drives. The color scheme moving away from Black & Green towards Black & White I think also gives the X-box a more tasteful look. However, the size of the system is huge and seems to be making the same mistake that the original X-Box made. It is surely a sign that Microsoft has no inclination to even try to get the Japanese market anymore but I also think it is a miscalculation to think that Americans even still want larger electronic equipment rather than smaller. In a time when everything else is getting smaller, X-Box got a great deal bigger.

The controller is essentially the same as the original X-Box with some improvements like the battery pack being built into the controller similar to the Wii U’s Pro Controller which is about time. Weirdly, though the controllers from the X-Box 360 do not actually work with the X1B even though they are almost identical to the old ones. I find this kind of strange to be honest. Even if the new ones are using a better technology, usually that sort of thing is backward compatible and this seems like a bit of a money grab by Microsoft to me.¹

The kinect. Meh. It can now read what people are doing more accurately which is always good. It can sense your heartbeat too which I find puzzling. This is an idea that Nintendo announced at E3 several years ago. Originally it was supposed to be an add-on for the WIi, but Nintendo didn’t even bother to include it on the Wii U. I feel like Nintendo liked the idea on the surface but never found any game play to make it worth while. Meanwhile, Microsoft likely assumed Nintendo was in fact going to have the functionality on the Wii U and so developed their copy cat toy to again copy Nintendo’s ideas. When they realized Nintendo wasn’t going to do this, they were probably too far into development and just decided to add it anyway without having any concept of why they wanted it in the first place other than to steal Nintendo’s ideas (which now they can’t do). Now it just seems out of place. Realistically, I think that motion game play was a bit of a fad and that is a dilemma that Nintendo is now grasping with. Yet Microsoft is seemingly putting many eggs in that basket even though they themselves think it is a gimmick.

For the hardware, I strongly suggest reading Eurogamer’s summation of the system versus the upcoming Playstation 4. Of course, at this point neither the specs for the X1B or the PS4 have been announced and neither has had people digging through it but it does look like the X!B has a slightly weaker processor, slightly weaker GPU, and much slower RAM. I find this a little puzzling in that Microsoft has always lived and died on the idea that they need a powerful system and that has been the knock on Nintendo for so many years. Certainly it is more powerful than the Wii U but i honestly feel like Microsoft is stepping back and falling into Nintendo’s game which is odd considering they constantly say they don’t feel Nintendo is their competition.²

Microsoft went in saying they weren’t showing games, which they really didn’t. A bunch of EA Sports games that come out every year all the time and that people have got to be getting sick of. A new Call of Duty, like we need another one. A game based on Quantum Leap.³ And a racing game. None of it looked particularly impressive or worth buying the system for.

I guess their big thing is their TV features. You can now turn on your TV and flip channels and what not… well assuming your TV isn’t made by Samsung and has been doing that for a couple years already… and assuming you have cable or satellite TV which more and more Americans don’t… And assuming you are likely going to continue to pay for X-Box Live which is the only system that still makes you pay for that functionality… as if Cable wasn’t expensive enough. I have no intent on paying for X-Box Live or Cable, so I care not for any of these features but it does sound like I’d rather just give my money to Samsung as there isn’t a giant brick in the living room with their TVs.

Lastly, the non-announcements that came out later. The system isn’t always online but does require a connection to play games none the less. They say it is that it needs to connect once per 24 hours, but it is probably far more often than that. At best, once per 24 hours per game. You also can’t sell your game to the local gamestop, well you can, but if you buy a game from gamestop that is used, you’ll bring it home and have to pay full price anyway to actually use it on your own X1B. You won’t be able to play games from the previous system because they didn’t want to write an emulator, even XBLA games you will need to rebuy. And they don’t plan on revamping their support for indie developers which means that the exodus away from Microsoft for quality downloadable games will continue.

Overall, I don’t think the Xbox One B is all that impressive. I was very meh on the PS4, and I’m even more meh on this. Graphics don’t really do it for me anymore, and this system isn’t even doing graphics well. Overall I think more and more Sony & Microsoft are working on building PCs more than Consoles. This system in particular is not a console at all. Which is why I just assume Valve makes a Steam Box so that we just stop pretending that they are even consoles at all.

20 years ago, I was 15. Just winding up my wife, just starting. I didn’t really know what I was going to do with my life, in many ways I still don’t. I had just discovered the wonders of MMOs and thus began a downward spiral away from school and probably a long term career of some sorts. Though I doubt even had i gone to school and then gone to college right away if my life would have been any better than it is now… Still a regret.

10 years ago, at 25 I had decided to do without regrets. To live life thinking about making my choices in a way that whatever I do I won’t have any regrets. I feel like that was a naive thought now. Is there anyway to not regret parts of your life? Oftentimes, when you think about 2 choices that sit before you, in retrospect either choice would have led to regret. I suppose there is something to be said for less regret than you might otherwise have. To be fair, I do think that I have less regret from the last 10 years of my life, than I did for the 10 before. 15-25 was filled with regretful decisions, and 25-35 was spent fixing many aspects of my life and getting it back on track. 10 years ago, I was just getting back into college. in a few years I’d transfer to UW-Madison, fulfilling a life long goal.

20 years from now I will be 55. Holy shit. I can’t even imagine how terrible my body will be at that point. I hope to god that I find purpose and meaning in my life by then. That I get my life back on track completely and feel that I have done something with it. Even if it is something that only I care about.

IN 10 years, I”ll be 45. Hopefully I’ll have that book done that I wanted to do 10 years ago. I think 10 years is a good number to think about life in. What do I see for myself in 10 years and how do I make it happen? I want to be able to afford things. To not always be scratching my way through. I am hoping to have much of my debt in order 1 year from now and hopefully by 10 years, I will have 90% of debt canceled out. My book does factor into this. By then, I hope to have more than one book done and hopefully my career path can step away from my current job into my own world. I don’t do well with bosses, never have. And even though you aren’t completely away from bosses in a writing career, I do believe that you are more free than the job I have now. I need freedom. Hopefully, in 10 years. My finances will be in order where I can travel more, at least once a year. Where I can upgrade my current condo into a condo that allows me to stretch and smile and say I did it!

It’s weird to think that I very likely may be at the half-point of my life. Double my years and I’ll be 70, though I hope that 60-70 will be much more self realizing than 1-10. IT’s hard to tell really. I could be senile. When I was 25, I thought that was going to be my mid-point of life. I figured I wouldn’t live too much past 50. I felt that the life expectancy of a Hemophiliac wasn’t likely going to be as long as the average person. I may have been right, however now I feel like 60 is an achievable goal. 70 seems a bit of a stretch but who knows.

Interestingly at 20, I wouldn’t have given up Hemophilia for the world, I thought it gave me character. Now, at 35, I’d give the world to be rid of it. What a difference 15 years makes. Here’s to another 15.

First, I gotta say that while Enterprise disappointed, it did get much better in the last year of its existence in particular. A lot of the early story line that was silly got left behind and we were left with a truer Star Trek that was worth watching. I loved Scott Bakula before this show, however this show was not good for him which is too bad. He looked terrible in it.

Voyager is always kind of the example to me of the sins of Braga and Berman. They seemed to have great ideas but then they would bury the show in stupidity. This show had great promise. Take opposing sides in a conflict, fling them across the galaxy and stick them both on the same ship. Oh and lets have them struggle for things like power and food while we are at it. Doesn’t that sound awesome? Well the two opposing sides were best friends after the first two or three episodes, and after those first few the power and food situation wasn’t really a problem either.¹ They then added a borg to the ship to add more controversy on the ship, but again the struggle wasn’t major and didn’t come up too often. A holographic doctor? Yeah he’s more human than the rest of the cast combined. Still, they did great with the Q, with the Borg, the predator race (whatever they were called), and many other things. It was a show I wished was good.

DS9 is, in my opinion, to this day the most overrated show in the series. I have a friend who loves this show and when I talked to him he said wait till you get past the first couple of seasons it gets much better. And to be sure it did. The first two seasons are just utter crap. I mean Voyager and Enterprise weren’t good as a whole but i don’t even think they had seasons this bad. It did get better once the dominion war came about. But then Worf joined the case, at an obvious grab to try to get Star Trek fans back into the season. You know, that guy from TNG that nobody actually liked. Well maybe DS9 is for those few Worf fans. But for me, I was annoyed that the show went from not having traditional races like Klingons and Romulans to being all about Klingons all the time. I thought one of the nice things of DS9 early was its exploration of new races, but they quickly got rid of that. Was anyone else as disconcerted as I was that some founders could emulate humans perfectly but the main founder woman could not do any better than Odo? Was anyone else annoyed by the fact that they had the same actor playing the three different villains so that he could be in every episode?² Anyone else not like the weird mental breakdowns of Sisko?³ And then the show got worse for the last season again. Overall, it was still a bad show. Probably not as bad as what followed overall, but still not good.

And now I am on The Next Generation. I am only into the second season but it strikes me at how good this show is. It is REALLY good. I remembered TNG as being a very political minded show, and to some degree it is, but it still was very much a show of discovery the same way the original series was years before. It was just discovering the universe in a more civilized setting. It wasn’t the old west anymore, it was Discovery in the 19th century. But the dynamics that Roddenberry had here was more than just discovery. It was between the characters. He had the juxtaposition between Wesley Crusher and Picard. The young and Naive versus the older and experienced captain. Picard went from despising the child to be a fill in father, which worked so well considering he was partially responsible for the father’s death. Then there was the friendship between Data and Jeordi. Both Disabled in their own way, and computerized in their own way. But working hard to overcome their deficiencies even with the help of modern technology. And then Jeordi also turns out to be Data’s doctor too. I’m sure he has a line of like “Damn it Jim, I’m an engineer not a doctor.” But if they don’t they should have because it would have been a nice touch. The crew though was balanced. Everyone had an interaction and a story so much better entwined than any Star Trek got afterwards. Roddenberry’s genius in this particular series was evident from the get go. It was too bad that when he died the show got left in the hands of who took it over because the show deserved better.

Luckily, JJ Abrams is doing it right these days. Let’s hope that continues.

I feel the need to do something special. I don’t know many people who have been playing online RPGs for 20 years, even being online 20 years. Hell, I don’t know many people who played MMOs longer than WoW these days. It seems like I should do something to celebrate.

My initial thought was “Hey let’s go back and play Shadow of Yserbius.” This may or may not be possible though I’m not entirely sure. There used to be a site that had the game up for play as well as forums and what not that a lot of former YSers used to go to. The forum is still there but it seems rather wonky and I don’t think they have the game up anymore which is too bad.

I played Asheron’s Call 2 recently, and AC1 doesn’t seem all that special. I also considered Dark Sun Online which again no one seems to have bothered creating a server for. Emperiana seemed like a good idea. I’m not sure if that is available or not. The website is still up and it says it is free but there is no way to sign up anymore. But at least that game has the look & feel of YS. I may end up playing The Realm which was a game a lot of YSers went to after YS shut down while we waited for Ultima Online to go live. Though they only have a 7 day free trial, after that you have to buy a full year which I’m not fond of.

The other thought is to try something new. I’ve always wanted to give Lineage and Eve Online a better shot, but I don’t really have a crew or the time to go into a PvP game. I could play Meridian 59 since I never played that before if I want to go retro a bit. Maybe the ever popular Maple Story? Or go back to a MUD of some sort that I never played back in the olden days, there are many MUDs still alive and cooking.

IT’s difficult to come up with just the right way to celebrate. But I good 6 months to really celebrate so I will give it more thought. I got more time. If anyone has any suggestions I am more than willing to listen though!

I don’t know what most sub-genres really are anymore. A few of us once had a discussion at work of all the random sub-genres of rock once and what each one meant and all I really got out of is that none of them mean anything at all. People are really trying to differentiate themselves from all the other crap that came before and all they are doing is making themselves look like idiots.

I went to the Wikipedia article that put out a list of all the sub-genres of rock and there are nearly 150 different sub-genres for rock alone. Now I grant that this list included pop and country genres and I don’t really think those really belong in rock. But can anyone really tell me without reading about it what the “Oi!” genre is all about?

So here is the deal. I am going to list approved genres of all music. And we should just stick with it because they are distinct and tell you about what you are listening to:

* Pop
* Rock
* Country
* Techno
* Rap
* Ska
* Punk
* Heavy Metal
* Classical
* Blues
* Jazz
* Hip Hop
* Polka
* Swing

And to anyone who asks… Indie is not a genre, it is whether the musician is signed to a major label or not and honestly if you heard them on the radio, they aren’t indie even remotely. I will also note that I personally don’t like my inclusion of Alternative music, though much of that was just Rock anyway.¹

The first question that comes to my mind is this… So you are sitting down to watch Lord of the Rings.. and you say to yourself… “man this big screen high definition television with surround sound really suck, I’m turning it off in favor of slapping in ear buds and watching it on a 5″ screen”? Really? That is your thought process? Now I understand the convenience of having a phone on you and being able to watch stuff on the go… that is great, but if you had a choice between a normal television and an iPhone, you would really sit on your couch and watch a movie on your iPhone and keep the TV off? You sir, are doing it wrong. In the biggest sense of the word wrong.

I imagine this fellow is a New Yorker who is always on the go and very rarely home. I think this is a much smaller minority than he realizes. Sure all his friends might be in a similar place. They are likely all literally in the same place. The reason New York is important is that most New Yorkers don’t even own a car. Most New Yorkers commute via public transportation and thus might have a little downtime to blow using the phone such as watching a movie or television show. The problem is, most Americans don’t commute that way, most people drive. If you don’t commute via public transportation or have a lot of traveling in your profession, chances are you are going home and enjoying your television set more than going home and enjoying your tiny iPhone screen.

The point of not getting your television shows from broadcast is a good one. More and more people are getting their entertainment via internet streaming. I heard this morning on NPR that 1/3rd of all internet usage between 8pm and midnight comes from Netflix streaming, and I don’t doubt it. I myself watch far more on Netflix than I do broadcast television (I only watch about 3-4 hours of broadcast a week, yet likely 2-3 hours a night on netflix). The problem with this being an avenue away from television is that I would rather still watch Netflix on my TV (which I often do via my Wii U).

I’m actually in process of creating an HTPC which would actually replace my PC almost completely so that all computing would be done on my TV. And I think this actually is what is going to happen more and more. People are still more comfortable with their TV than PC anyway and people like their TVs for the most part, I don’t think it is going away. Instead, TV companies and other companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nintendo, Sony, and yes even Valve are going to figure out how to merge the two so that you can use your TV as a PC and still watch your movies and television shows on your TV. Even with me, the only reason that my HTPC idea may not work is that I have ADD and will most certainly have issues with concentrating on one thing at a time. To me, this is a reason to get a tablet or convert the Wii U tablet in order to be a second monitor, so that I can do multiple things while doing things on the big screen. I may also decide to run things on split screen on the TV just so that I can do something while watching TV.

Broadcast television is a different story. That is definitely going the way of the Dodo. For one, like the article mentioned, most television can be streamed from the internet, and I think people in general would rather watch things when they want to watch them rather than when broadcasters want us to watch them. Further, streaming usually gets you less or no advertising than broadcast television which means you can generally see more in the same amount of time. I know I personally would rather pay to not see commercials and to see older television at that and be able to see it at my leisure than watching new television with 40% of it being commercials. I doubt I’m the only one. It also doesn’t help that most of the broadcast television is utter crap.

So yes, Broadcast television is on its deathbed, but rest assured Television itself is nowhere near dead.

It is like a car crash in the making. How can you not look? That’s how I felt when I saw Shroud of the Avatar go up on Kickstarter. I gleefully put in my $25 in order to get a front seat view at the wreckage that will surely follow. And now more than 22,000 other people have followed suit and given Richard Garriott more than $2 million dollars in order to ensure that this car wreck happens. So far, Garriott has not disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong, I am fond of the Ultima Series and think very highly of Ultima Online as well. But there is no doubt, Richard Garriott is one crazy dude. The sad thing is, I understand some of his craziness. I mean got a ton of money? What better way to spend it than to build a home with tons of secret passages and fly into space? I might not go bankrupt doing it like he did, but I can’t think of a much better way of going bankrupt.

But you just sit and listen to that boy talk. This was affirmed recently with his comments that “most game designers really just suck.” Again, I don’t entirely disagree with some of the points he makes, it is just how he says it here. But really what takes out the crazy is when he said “I’ve met virtually no one in our industry who I think is close to as good a game designer as I am.” Wow Really? I don’t even think you are top 10 designer… most good game designers come up with more than 1 game idea. And yes every single Ultima is the same game. Had Will Wright only come up with Simcity and Simcity 2000, he would likely not have been in the halls of great game designers.

Shroud of the Avatar is essentially a merger of Ultima X and UO2. It might be as great as Ultima VII or Ultima Online, or it might be as bad as Ultimate Collector or Tabula Rasa. I have a feeling it will creep more to the latter rather than the former. It doesn’t matter to me, I paid for the show not the result. The show is when he sticks his foot in his mouth, or the awkward youtube videos where he talks about the game and how great he was in the good ol’ days. If the product turns out to be halfway decent, that is a bonus.

For a few years, we went to the Ikea once a year and it was becoming a yearly late winter tradition. But we kind of got off that habit over the last two years because of monetary issues both my friend and I have battled with. This year suddenly we are both slightly better, just not better enough to buy so we decided to at least go.

We went to our usual hotel which was still good, though we discovered it was far too busy due to being Easter weekend. Kids were out in spades and we didn’t get to really enjoy the pool almost at all as the kids were hopping and diving everywhere. Breakfast was good however and even though the kids set us back in the pool we still thought the hotel was worth the amount we spent on it by far.

Upon first arriving in town, we stopped by the Wildberry Restaurant for a brunch. This may have been the best breakfast place we’ve ever been to. They told us it’d be a 25 minute wait, it was about 15. We sat down, and ordered fairly quickly, and in kind they brought us our food within 2 or 3 minutes. It was the fastest I had ever been served and we loved it. The food was hot and not under-cooked and just amazing. I had an omelette with avocado, basil, sun dried tomatoes, and provolone cheese. It was a baked omelette which is not usually my favorite but this was terrific, there must have been 3 full avocados in the omelette with big chunks and then a full half plate of hash browns and a side of pancakes. It was an enormous meal. My friend had oreo s’mores pancakes which was a stack of 5 pancakes with chocolate and marshmallow drizzled over it and crumbled oreos on top. Again, great. We were thoroughly amazed by the place and will make it a frequent stop in the future.

After that we went and walked through the Woodfield Mall. I feel like previous trips to this mall have occurred on Sunday mornings (like 10 or 11am), and so again we felt like it was really crowded compared to previous trips. This mall is really quite huge. I find it amazing that living in Madison I live within 2-3 miles of 2 of the biggest malls in the country.¹ We explored many stores in it and made a couple of small purchases. My friend bought a dish towel set at Anthropologie and I bought Munchkin from a Game Store in the mall.

My purchase turned out to be a bust. I bought it so that we could play a new board game for Tabletop Day and when I looked at it, I didn’t notice it was 3-8 people and so we were left short one. There are some alternative rules but I’m not sure how great of an idea it is to do that with your first play. It also turned out at the end of the night that we were just way too tired to comprehend the rules and so it didn’t really work out as well as we hoped.

Once the night was done, we ordered from a local pizza joint a small pepperoni pizza with asiago stuffed crust. it was quite good, though the asiago added $3 to the cost of the pizza and we felt this was a little steep for what we got. Still we were not disappointed by the food.

After soreness and a good sleep we woke up the next day finding ourselves with an awkward time before Ikea opened at 11am. Because it was Easter day, there wasn’t actually much open for the day so we had limited choices. We decided to head to downtown Chicago to see the lake. The drive there went pretty well, it took us awhile to find some place to park that was on the lake but didn’t cost too much and then we drove through downtown Chicago to get back to I-90. I-90 turned out to be insanely busy on the way back for no apparent reason and it took twice as long to get back as it took for us to get there which was odd.

We had a good time exploring Ikea. I got a lot of good ideas I think on stuff I could do to maximize the space of my home if I had some money. I think it gave me a good starting point. I also think I found the bed frame that I’d like to get for my eventual new bed one of these days. It had drawers under the frame and then cubbies behind it. I thought it was a really good use of space which is one of the primary things I am concerned about with my slightly small condo. I am also partially amused with the idea of building a loft in my condo as well but think that might be kinda silly. We didn’t buy anything from Ikea, but we enjoyed walking through it and looking at all the cool furniture and doodads. It is a little sad to walk through and not be able to afford anything but overall, again we had fun.

After Ikea we wanted to eat before heading home. We considered eating in the store because it is just so weird to, but I worried that my friend wouldn’t find anything she liked and I thought their cafeteria lines were crazy so we decided against it and went to Sweet Tomatoes instead. Yes, Sweet Tomatoes is crazy in its own right but the thought of a salad after eating bad the day before was appealing. We also wanted to give it another shot and to be honest we liked it much better this time than our previous trip here so I am glad we gave it another shot. It was a standard salad bar and we did enjoy the salad and bread and desert bar. It helped that this place was not nearly as busy this time as it was last time we went.

I do feel like the trip was a little late, but very much needed and it did help quite a bit. I left the trip a bit happier and more relaxed. Though I didn’t want to come to work this morning, it wasn’t a dreaded thing. It was more of a “time for work, who likes to work” sort of thing that I feel is normal. It was a good trip.

I feel more and more disappointed by the fact that exclusivity seems to be going away. More and more, companies are trying to ship games on as many consoles as possible, and in reality this is making me like the games less and less. I am actually less inclined to buy Batman: Arkham City because it is on Wii U, PS3, X360 and PC than if I were to buy a title that was only on one… for example, I am more interested in Halo 4 than I am Call of Duty, though I’ll be honest in saying my interest in either is low just because I don’t care about shooters.

It’s odd though, Console developers used to live and die off of exclusive titles. If you didn’t have the titles, you wouldn’t do well. It had nothing to do with getting the cross platform titles at all. For example, PS1 didn’t really trounce N64 and the Sega Saturn because they had the likes of Tony Hawk Pro Skater, they won because they were the only system to get Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. Super Nintendo won because of the hundreds of exclusives it had, not because it had a version of Mortal Kombat. Don’t get me wrong, Mortal Kombat and Tony Hawk didn’t hurt, they just did create a reason to have them.

Yet today, I feel that when Sony and Microsoft announce their systems they are trying to be as similar to their competition as possible which means getting the same games on them as everyone else has. They aren’t trying to get customers, they are trying not to lose customers, and this is a bit of a shame. On Nintendo’s side, they aren’t really trying to get exclusives either, they are just doing their own thing as they always have and kinda hope everyone else comes around eventually which doesn’t really worked out either. This may have worked back in the days of the NES where there just wasn’t competition but this is a bad habit for today’s world.

Even so, Nintendo has a built in exclusive system already. They have more exclusive titles coming in house than either Sony or Microsoft produce in house and maybe combined. Not only that, all of them are really good. The one place they have traditionally struggled has been the mature crowd games which is why the Nintendo consoles always get this “kiddy” image. They do have games that tend to be enjoyed by the mature crowd like Metroid, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, and even Zelda. But these are few and far between. I am heartened by their purchase of Monolith recently to help with this, but I digress.

Exclusivity is a rare thing these days. I love that Bayonetta 2, the Wonderful 101, Monster Hunter 3 & 4, and Dragon Quest X are exclusive to Nintendo. Rayman Legends moving cross-platform make it so that it is a game that I am less likely to buy whereas I once was guaranteed to buy it. I will eventually buy games like Assassin’s Creed 3 on the PC, but at deep discount (at $25 today and that’s more expensive than I need to pay for that game).

To me, that a company feels the need to throw a game on every platform imaginable is similar to every cartoon movie slapping 3D on it’s movie. It is a move that they are hoping increase the sales because their game is too crappy to sell on its own regardless of the console it is on. And that is kind of the point. If these games really were as great as the companies lead us to believe, they wouldn’t be worried about putting it cross-platform. The game would sell regardless, and might sell consoles right along with it. Companies should be looking at every title as titles that will sell consoles, regardless of if it is Microsoft’s console or Sony’s console. Nintendo I feel does this, and that is why their titles tend to be such a high quality. Maybe this is why their games always sell so much better than everyone else’s…

Since that point in time, I have played many incarnations of the game. SimCity 2000, 3 and 4, and even the Super Nintendo version of SimCity. So of course, when this new reboot of SimCity was announced, I bit.

Sure it was online only, and this was terrible I agree. I also didn’t like supporting it, but this never stopped hordes of Blizzard fanatics from purchasing Diablo 3. There are also rumors that both PS4 and Xbox 720 will have online only presences (though Sony currently denies). Let’s face it, online only is the wave of the future, the best way to avoid people from pirating games. And though I doubt pirating is really biting into the profits of game companies any more than it has in previous years, they see diminishing video game sales and it is their only solution as to why (not too unfamiliar to what the RIAA and MPAA have dealt with too).

Off that soap box and onto the game. There are a lot of really great ideas in the game that I really enjoy. I like that there are different ways to unlock new buildings and even parts to buildings. I like that they allow you to modify buildings that you’ve already placed, like adding new windmill turbines to your wind farm to produce more power, or police cars to the police station to help them patrol.

I like some of the multiplayer functionality. Like relying on the the region to help you with basic services so that you can use the space in your city to work on getting ore which in turn can help your region all the better. You do your job, they do theirs, everyone prospers all the more. It’s a great theory and it is the only thing that makes you understand why they intended this to be a multiplayer game only.

However, it is extremely flawed. Everyone has to work together in order for this to work, but if there is one thing I’ve learned in more than 16 years in online game playing, that almost never happens. Which means to say that you will never get this Utopian society to occur, and when it doesn’t happen you won’t have fun with the intertwining systems. And for all that, it didn’t need to be online. There isn’t a real reason why this couldn’t be simulated in the world by computers.

Similarly is the sim tracking that the game has. The game takes it upon itself to track every single sim within the game. It knows where it works, how it gets to work, what it likes to do, where it shops, goes to school, everything. It’s big brother in a box. And in all honesty, it is kind of nifty tech. But the problem is this tech is also the reason why each city is so small in area. You see that kind of tech takes a ton of strain on your computer and to counter it, EA decided to make the cities smaller in area to handle it.

This lack of size does have a positive in that you have to pick and choose what to do with your city. You can’t do it all. A good example is the pre-order bonus of MaxisMan headquarters, a building to house your own superhero. However, the building is huge and doesn’t actually provide happiness, or really any purpose on its own. You can however choose to send Maxisman out on patrol for 500 simoleons and he can do various tasks while out. I decided this value wasn’t worth the added space the city took and vowed never to use it because the space was actually more valuable than the 500 simoleons per task.

The other negative is that city population seemed really off. After a few hours of play, I had finally gotten skyscrapers all over the city and the best high tech industries. This is actually quite a success for a single player closed system I felt. It didn’t take long to get there though and the population was only 60,000 people. Now I may not know a lot about numbers. But I live in Madison, WI and we are a fairly small town with no skyscrapers in sight. Yet we manage around 250,000 people and a thriving university. This city was packed to the gill with only 1/5 the population and a tiny university, a single grade school and a single high school. I don’t even understand how this is even possible. But the more problematic thing is how do they expect us to get populations in the millions to challenge the New York Cities of the world? I doubt they expect you to, but he population is hugely unrealistic all the same.

Balance also seems off in the rest of the game. A good example is making smelting plants. I decided with my first city to make a city dedicated to making metals. In order to do this you must first unlock a smelting plant which you need to unlock a metals HQ first. In order to unlock the HQ, you must first trade something like 90,000 ore and coal in a single day. This is difficult. In order to then unlock the smelting plant, you must first sell around 200,000 ore and coal in a single day. With three ore mines and 2 trade depots all maxed out, I wasn’t even really getting to half. Maybe this is a regional goal and not a goal of the city, but it isn’t spelled out that way. And now that I’ve sat here trying to achieve these goals, I’ve almost run out of iron altogether, because oh yeah, resources don’t respawn. So by the time I do unlock the smelting plant, I probably won’t be able to actually mine ore myself to make it metals. This may be as planned because I then have to buy ore from other newbies instead, but it is extremely disheartening all the same.

And then there is the online issues, which despite EA saying that it is “hard” or maybe thinking that we should give them a break on it because it is new, we can’t. This is their product, they insist with no option for offline, it is their issue not ours. Connection issue have gotten better after a week. It no longer takes 2 to 3 hours to get connected, but it is still not good. Monday I spent a good hour getting connected still, better? Yes. Good? Hell no. I have lost data a couple of times as well.

Another issue that I recently found it is that of finding populated regions. Obviously this game may work better when there are other players in your region. So Monday I went out to find one. I clicked the “join” tab and it gave me 12-15 regions that were active, all of them were full. Clicked “show more” another 12-15 full. I actually went through about 100 regions, there were a few that had empty cities in them, but those ones said they were processing and I couldn’t join the game so my guess is someone else already clicked it and it was still setting up. Blah. Seems like the only way to actually play multiplayer is to set up your own region and leave it open, which I did on my absolute first city that is on East 2 which is always busy or full so I abandoned it. That one probably is full of other people now on the bright side. Future cities I chose private, and once you go private you can’t go back.

Other Random Positives

Graphics look good

I like the customization of the buildings

There is actually a good variety of buildings at least in commercial and residential. Once all my buildings turned skyscrapers I can’t remember seeing a duplicate which is pretty impressive.

It is fun for a little while at least

Arcologies return…. well kind of, they are great works so you only get one for the region not the city but I don’t mind this implementation.

Great Works. Speaking of which, when making it multiplayer this was a good idea to really come up with goals for the region.

Rewards. I don’t think I felt this level of rewarding since SNES SimCity, it felt good to hit those population landmarks!

Other Random Negatives

No undo. I nearly cried the third time I accidentally bulldozed my power plant costing me over $100k!

No Subway. With as little space as there is in a city, it would be nice to build a subway to help the transportation woes.

No wonders… well kinda. I believe there are a couple of wonders in the tourist section of your city building, so if you concentrate on tourism you get a couple wonders. I don’t really like this limitation because I think every city should have one, they were always the fun bits of previous simcitys… is too bad they aren’t really there anymore.

No Offline. I need to re-iterate. This needs an offline version, they keep saying how there is no way to do it, I don’t believe them because *I* could figure it out. If they really can’t figure it out, layoffs need to occur because people aren’t good at their jobs.

No easy doco. This seems odd in today’s world, but I feel that they should have a “?” on every building to give me more detail as to what it does and what requirements it has. Everything seems to require digging.

Can’t name streets. Was my favorite feature of 4, too bad they don’t learn from past games, probably because no one actually was on those teams.

No terraforming. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to have to wind roads miles around just to get into valleys and connect up with other roads. It is isn’t even remotely realistic. I understand that because it is online they can’t have people drastically changing environments but they should have made the auto-terraforming capable of road connections.

Overall, I wouldn’t really suggest most people get SimCity, even fans of previous versions would probably be better suited not to play. I view this game as I did SimCity Societies… it might be an ok game in its own right but it isn’t really SimCity. If you really need a SimCity fix, I would suggest getting SimCity 2000 off GoG, it’s only 10% of the cost ($5.99), but 1000 times better. I would realistically rank This game worse than 2000, 3000 and 4. I may give it an edge out on the original. So I guess if they are rebooting the original, it is better than that one.