SimCity 5 (2013) Beta 3 News

game is still an abortion. that is all.


ETA:
I'll expand upon the above.

1) City Size is Tiny
EA tries to pass it off as the same size as a medium tile from SC4, but looking at it from a scale perspective this is BS. The ploppables of SC5 are much larger making it similar to the tiny 1x1 km tile in SC4.
This is supposedly due to the fact the new engine (glassbox) is a resource hog and they want to make the game mainstream. Thats fine and all, but from interviews from Quigley - the HNIC - (thats head nerd in charge) seems certain that the city tiles wont grow until your average computer is more powerful. Essentially they expect this game to run on an x86 box with 2 GB ram. So i wouldnt expect any improvement until a sequel - SimCity 2018 ?

2) City Tiles are NOT Connected
Each region as 16 spots for cities and great works, or maybe its 16 cities and then extra spots or great works, regardless... THEY ARENT FREAKING TOUCHING EACH OTHER. This exacerbates the first flaw in the game - the city tiles are too damn small. You can't make a sprawling metropolis even if you had the whole region to yourself in sandbox mode.

3) Leaderboards
Who in the sam hill frick thought this was a good idea?

4) Regions have Finite Resources
Want to build a Oil power plant? Better check your city map to see if it has oil. If not, you will have to import it from the region. Same goes for a myriad of other resources. While this improves the simulation, it also makes the regions have a shelf life. Once you draw all the resource out of a city tile, that city must either pivot to a new specialization or go bankrupt. In other words, you dont get to build your perfect city and then simply improve upon it... it will always be changing.

5) Transportation is Still Lacking
No Subways. No Highways or Rail (other than the region ones which are pre-built).