Simcity

[DaShi]

So they sacrificed all that was great about SC4 so you could watch a bunch of blurry people walk around and basically do nothing interesting?

[Wiglaf]

What was so great about SC4's gameplay that is not in SC5? Other than the highway connections or whatever.

[snoopy369]

What I got when I hit that review:
"Error establishing a database connection"

(separately from the joke...)

[Wiglaf]

It's great, isn't it? Joke works regardless of whether his server does.

[snoopy369]

What was so great about SC4's gameplay that is not in SC5? Other than the highway connections or whatever.

The fact that you could play it on your own desktop without connecting to some idiotic server, and you could save and reload. Also, better city size and transportation options.

[Wiglaf]

First part isn't really gameplay related, but on the transportation options, can you explain to me how buses/traffic/etc worked under the hood in SC4? With and without NAM (which I haven't tried). It's obvious how it does in SC5, since you can see it working.

[snoopy369]

I assume there are some registers set and there are some registers that are cleared, and eventually some of those registers are cleared and some of the other registers are set.

[Wiglaf]

It's kind of obtuse for a game to not tell you how exactly a bus station works, isn't it? SC4's mechanics were opaque.

[snoopy369]

Yeah, SC4 certainly wasn't a perfect game either. Really SC2000 was the last good SimCity. Let's all go play it now.

[Wiglaf]

Why does no one ever mention SC3000?

[snoopy369]

Because it sucked.

Okay, gog.com carries SC2000. Downloading now

[snoopy369]

What is it about 2nd versions of games that's always the best, or at least very good? Civ2, SimCity2000, Empire Strikes Back, Tie Fighter (the game)...

[Wiglaf]

Empire Strikes Back was a film you ******.

[Wiglaf]

Because it sucked.

Okay, gog.com carries SC2000. Downloading now

Not only that, they tweeted a link to the sales page after asking if people were having server issues with SC5. Douchebags. SC2k is pretty weak.

[Guynemer]

The fact that you could play it on your own desktop without connecting to some idiotic server, and you could save and reload. Also, better city size and transportation options.

You also had more freedom as far as zoning goes. I think "freedom" is probably a good one-word summary of why SC4 is superior to the new game in its present state.

EDIT: Also, you can still actually play SC4 10 years later, while the new game is completely at the mercy of however long EA decides to maintain its servers.