When you make a review, you're making a rating about how a game is. I've played the game, and it's good. It's very good. It's very buggy, and there are a lot of functions that aren't working properly right now, but it's still a very good game.

However, majority of reviewers chose to look not at the game, but at the technical aspects surrounding the game that are temporary. It's like they were just pissed off at the servers and DRM and they decided to take a piss on the game without bothering to try it. Right now, like a week after release, there are no more server issues. I play every day and I never have any moments that I'm not able to play. DRM is annoying, but do you really base how good a game is on the platform it has? What if all nex-gen games are online only? If that's the case, it seems like reviewers will be playing a lot less and just making up scores.

Reviewers should focus their energy on how good a game is, not about its technical issues. Either way, they're irresponsibly bias. When Diablo 3 came out, it was next to unplayable and it was almost impossible to get into the game. Yet they rate it 90+. I hate reviewers.

Anyway, any Simcity players out there? I have some questions:

1.) How do you make money from firefighters, police, garbage collectors, etc.? I know you can volunteer them to other cities, but they don't seem to be generating any money.

2.) How do you get gambling to work? I've tried all sorts of things but I keep getting negative on my casinos.

3.) How come my fire and police helicopters never move?

4.) How do I increase happiness without increasing land value of a place? I want to create a high density area of low income workers.

5.) Can you list the alternate sources of income aside from city specialization and taxes?

http://www.polygon.com/game/simcity-2013/2630

Firts score: 9.5
Update 1: 8.0
Update 2: 4.0
Update 3: 6.5

Poor reviewer :D

A very good buggy game? Sounds like Skyrim

One person. Check metacritic. I read that review, and I respect him because he based his scores on the game, and not on the servers.

you can't ignore DRM when reviewing a game. if it affects your gameplay (as in doesn't let you play) it should be noted. If it happens on launch then there will be other down times too. Sim City could of avoided this by having an offline mode. You cant just pick and choose what is important about a game, but must take it in its entirety. Diablo 3 is a great game, but for me its not worth playing with the always online and the once a week maintenance down times. Stuff like that affects people and gameplay and should be noted in reviews.

Edit: Customers whho purchased Diablo 3 did rate it badly on amazon. its only a 2 star out of 5 http://www.amazon.com/Diablo-III-Pc/product-reviews/B00178630A/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

:LOL what exacly is so good about this piece of crap? The size of the "city" is so small that this game should be a facebook app that you can play on smartphone.

You're asking them to ignore the state of the game at the time they reviewed it on faith that these issues will disappear? Should the reviews of FF14 have been good because three years later A Realm Reborn would fix it?

The major problems of the game (forced social element, requiring good internet, lack of saving, city size, traffic bugs) are inherent design flaws and will not be fixed.

If all next-gen games have similar issues at launch they deserve similar scores. Reviews should be an honest reaction to the presented game. The game is inseperable from its technology, sorry.

EA has been unfair and irresponsible with the Simcity franchise.

Did they fix the ridiculously small city size yet?
Is there an off-line version yet?
Do all the underlying systems work correctly yet? (I guess not by looking at your questions)

This is another problem with the rush to review games on or before release day. People will look back at a review score that might not be accurate anymore. Fanboys of other games will hold up a metacritic score as definitive even when a game has evolved. You'll see reviewers publish pre-release reviews that talk about certain problems even when a day one patch is scheduled that will fix key issues.

That's the metacritic-obsessed environment we live in right now.

The best example of how this fails the reader is something I remember from when I used to frequent Destructoid. Jim Sterling had destroyed a game in a review (I can't remember for certain, but I think it might have been SOCOM 4) because when he tried to play it during the late beta, the multiplayer had been laggy and nearly unplayable. With that, he'd simply given up and wrote his review as if the multiplayer was broken, never mind that the point of the beta was to sort out net code and server problems.

In contrast, he'd given Killzone 3 a perfect 10. The problem there is that the KZ3 late beta was ALSO plagued with connection problems (I remember, I played it every night), but it seemed that he got lucky when he wrote his review and the multiplayer was going fine. KZ3 even had serious connection problems at launch (again, I was there) and required a massive patch. Keep in mind that I'm saying this as a fan of Killzone 3.

The whole process just seems to arbitrary and worthless sometimes, and really illustrates why critics aren't really as important as they think they are. Another good example is Gran Turismo 5, which is a MUCH better game right now than it was a launch, yet those launch scores still stand.

The funny thing is that exact the opposite happened with SimCity.
The first 5-10 reviews were all around 9/10 because the reviweres could play the game before it launched, so there weren't any server issues.