There are a lot of people on r/gaming and r/games who are upset that they pre-ordered it and are being hit by unreasonable DRM problems which make it impossible to play the game. The Amazon.com reviews are consistently terrible, too.

For some reason, there's an artificial delay in the UK release until Friday. Which nicely gives everyone the chance to cancel their pre-orders. Good guy EA memes incoming?

I was hesitantly looking forward to SimCity ever since I read a preview, if you can call it that, on none other than Ars around a year ago. They framed it to sound fantastic. I even liked the idea of giving it online components. If they've done it right (i.e. not made it into a traditional multiplayer [...]]]> The much anticipated SimCity release seems to have turned into a bit of a damp squib. The gaming press love it but everyone less likely to have been bribed/threatened doesn't. Ars Technica especially think it's a bit rubbish, and they're far more reliable than dedicated gaming sites.

There are a lot of people on r/gaming and r/games who are upset that they pre-ordered it and are being hit by unreasonable DRM problems which make it impossible to play the game. The Amazon.com reviews are consistently terrible, too.

For some reason, there's an artificial delay in the UK release until Friday. Which nicely gives everyone the chance to cancel their pre-orders. Good guy EA memes incoming?

I was hesitantly looking forward to SimCity ever since I read a preview, if you can call it that, on none other than Ars around a year ago. They framed it to sound fantastic. I even liked the idea of giving it online components. If they've done it right (i.e. not made it into a traditional multiplayer game, not some shallow Facebookesque 'social' game, and made it optional to people who want real single player), that could be great.

Unfortunately I'll probably never know. I'm not buying anything with always-on DRM, and I'm not buying anything on Origin (I'm already tied into Steam, I don't need another problem thankyouverymuch). Plus, at £45 on Origin... err, no. Wasn't CliffyB telling us a few days ago that games hadn't adjusted for inflation? Haven't adjusted, have had 50% inflation... easy mistake to make.

As a sidenote, one of the big problems in gaming is the amount of promising IP that gets consumed by bad publishers/developers who acquire it on anything but creative merit, who then drive it into the ground in a destructive quest for short term profit. Tribes, Fallout, SimCity...]]>