SimCity: DLC Before Bug Fixes!

Unsurprisingly EA is already rolling out the first wave of DLC for SimCity, which isn’t a problem in itself. However they seem to have prioritised it over fixing critical bugs. To my dismay, I only discovered them after many hours of play within the same game region, and after writing my own review.

The first bug I encountered was caused by trying to build a regional wonder with the help of a friend. After he paid the hefty price of one million Simolians to begin construction on an Arcology, we both noticed strange occurrences in our cities. Random warning messages from our advisors would pop up, stating buildings weren’t open due to a lack of workers. Incredible traffic jams would form at the freeway junction and buildings were being abandoned at an alarming rate. After some investigation, it turned out that almost my entire population was going to work on the Arcology every day. Something that shouldn’t occur until the required amounts of construction materials had been delivered to the site.

Despite this completely crippling my cities economy and forcing me to abandon my gambling specialisation, I decided to carry on. I was curious to see what would actually be achieved if we finished building the Arcology. At this point you may sensibly be thinking, “why not cancel building it, if it causes so many problems?” Well that was plan A until we realised the game won’t let you.

Several hours of careful city management later, I bumped into a rather typical nuisance of playing SimCity. My game had failed to synch with EA’s servers again. Great, another twenty minutes of play lost I thought as I clicked the ‘roll back’ button again. Then as I tried to re-enter the game, it never got past the loading screen telling me to try again later. After leaving the game for an entire day, I was still running into the same loading error. A quick search turned up a massive thread on EA’s tech support forum, as thousands of players who had encountered the same bug were having to manually ask EA’s tech support to recover their save files. No proof was needed to show that games which only allow cloud saves are a bad idea, but now we have it. Having run into this bug, I know it’s not worth my time playing another minute of SimCity.

As for the DLC itself, players can now build Nissan Leaf Charging Stations as extra mode of transport. This lets your Sims zip around in non-polluting electric cars. Obviously it’s a little piece of advertising for Nissan, and to make up for that the DLC is free.

“Plopping down the Nissan Leaf Charging Station will add happiness to nearby buildings. Adding the Charging Station will not take power, water or workers away from your city. Zoom in to the streets of cities and players will start seeing a percentage of their Sims from all wealth classes driving the electric vehicles. The Charging Station produces no garbage or sewage as well making it pollution free.”

While I’m not entirely opposed to large companies being able to put adverts into games, it would be nice if the added content was actually balanced. Much like the special editions of the game that included the British, French or German theming, it just makes an already easy game even easier. Of course it is optional DLC, but considering the bad PR EA and Maxis have already attracted for the game; you’d expect them to get their priorities sorted.

Dishonored

I went into Dishonored expecting an action adventure title heavily focused on stealth mechanics. What I found was a game full of possibilities, with a series of focused missions and beautifully crafted levels including whole mixture of gameplay throughout.

Set in the steam-punk city of Dunwall, the game opens with your return to the city. You had been sent out by the Empress to find a cure for her citizens who have been blighted by a mysterious plague. However things quickly go wrong; as you report in, the Empress is assassinated before you. As her bodyguard, your left helpless by the assassin’s magic at the scene of the crime to be framed for her murder.

Thankfully a group of Loyalists are all too aware of the foul play and help you escape prison, which doubles as the game’s tutorial zone. The mechanics for stealth and line of sight are fairly straight forward. Crouching reduces the chance your chance of being seen and clear areas of light and dark highlight the best places to hide. If a guard detects your movements or an unexpected noise, his alertness is clearly displayed. So you can react before being discovered. And with the basics explained, you begin your mission to escape to the Loyalist hideout. You quickly learn that you’re the key to restoring the young Lady Emily, daughter of the Empress to the throne.

Right from the start you can choose your approach to the game. Each enemy can be stealthily knocked unconscious or assassinated by a swift blade to the throat. Equally, you can go toe-to-toe with guards and lock swords, using brute force to progress.

The sword mechanics are kept simple with just a swing and parry. Deflecting an opponent’s blow gives you the opportunity to land a killer lunge.  And if you’re overly aggressive, you leave yourself venerable to counter attacks, as well as further guards responding to the disturbance. The AI is smart enough to fight you at both close and long range, so a group of enemies can quickly become deadly.  As you progress through the game you acquire an array of weapons and gadgets to hold in your other hand, which range from a versatile crossbow to grenades. Either looted from the bodies of your victims or bought from Piero, a friendly engineer who can also craft you upgrades.

But not everything in Dunwall is as it seems. On the night of your escape, the Outsider reveals himself. A supernatural being, that looks like he is part of a rebellious boy band from another dimension. Having taken an interest in your activities, he bestows you with a number of gifts for your journey. This includes the ability to blink across large distances. Allowing you to scale tall buildings, adding a vertical element to every level. You also gain heart fused with whale bone. An odd creation allows you to find runes and bone charms belonging to the Outsider. Runes can be spent on unlocking extra powers such as time manipulation, while bone charms give small passive bonuses. You can also listen to the voice trapped inside the heart, as it reveals hidden truths about the world.  

Rather than being an open world, the story provides the framework for a series of missions. Each is set in a lovingly crafted level, with multiple routes and secrets to find. There are often side quests to find and interact with. Some span multiple levels and give you further insight into the city of Dunwall. The story is well paced, with three distinct acts. It did use a few typical plot elements, although these weren’t the ones I was expecting.  The characters are well defined in the main story, and there are plenty of additional conversations you can have which add to the richness of the world.

How you approach each mission is entirely up to you, and to a point defines the difficulty of the game. It’s possible to evade a lot of the guards in the game, leaping from one shadow to another. Alternatively, you can go in with the goal of assassinating every guard in murderous revenge.  The game adapts to your play-style with minor adjustments. As I chose to kill any guard in my way, I found in later levels that guards discussed my lethality and doubled their patrols. Your actions also define the ending in a similar manner to the original Bioshock; with small changes to the ending cut scene, but unlike Bioshock. Dishonored keeps you updated and the end of every level on the chaos you’ve caused. So you can track your progress if you want to aim for particular conclusion.

The design of Dunwall is fantastic and the team behind it deserve some praise. Each level is a distinct area of the city and provides the variety needed for the gameplay choices. The colour pallet used is eye catching. Rather than using the shades of grey and brown that has been a staple of the generation. There’s excellent use of sunset yellows and oranges which makes the game stand out from the aesthetics of other games.

Depending on your approach to the game, it can be a lengthy title or rather brief. Again this is defined by your approach to the game, so the choice is yours. It is a wonderfully focused adventure and Arkane Studios have created a fantastic world in the city of Dunwall. The only faults of the game are a lack of combat options for non-lethal play, and slightly awkward climbing if you use blink to reach a ledge. I found I didn’t always grab onto roofs as I expected and ended up having to re-load or use up more mana elixirs to avoid some nasty falls.

There’s plenty of scope for expansion to the existing story, and Arkane have already been busy working on DLC. My hope is they use the world they’ve created as the setting for future titles, as there are plenty more stories to be told in Dunwall.

DLC and Play Expo

It's been a busy week, so only a quick update this week. Borderlands 2 has had it's first DLC appear sooner than expected. The Mechromancer is now available and is possibly the best class for playing solo. The class is designed around a summonable companion Deathtrap. A bigger and meaner version of the ever irritating Claptrap.

Deathtrap comes with the amazing power of no clip, which initially looks a bit silly, but makes sense as he's a melee death machine. He comes armed with a pair of combat claws and gets stuck in. This distracts enemies a lot and alleviates the problem of being the only target in single player. Most importantly the character is unique and doesn't feel like a re-work of a character from the first game.

This weekend has seen the Play Expo visit Manchester. The Saturday was definitely well attended. I was hoping to see a lot of current games on exhibit, but the majority of the expo was the EGL and the rather fantastic Re-Play event which I had seen earlier this year. Ninetendo brought a small booth to demonstrate the Wii U, but it wasn't big enough to accommodate the crowds. A full write up here next week!

Re-mass-tered: ME 3's Extended Cut Endings

Warning: there are ending spoilers below...


Mass Effect 3 has finally been updated with the Extended Cut DLC; designed to add clarity to the end of the series. Bioware received a lot of criticism for the original ending lacking explanation, which relied heavily on fan interpretations to fill in the blanks. On announcing the Extended Cut, they faced accusations of compromising their artistic vision for revisiting the ending. It seemed that Bioware couldn't put a foot right, but thankfully the Extended Cut kills two birds with one stone.

The majority of the additions are in the form of narrated segments, voiced by Admiral Hackett, EDI or Shepard depending on your choice. Although the endings still share a lot of CGI cut scenes and artwork, the narration makes them distinct choices. In the original version, I was left wondering if the choice I made impacted the galaxy in a distinctive way. The DLC solves this problem by serving as an epilogue, showing what happens next to the characters and civilisations of the galaxy we have come to love through the story.

Whilst working on the new endings, Bioware claimed that there would be no narrative changes. However, they did make a u-turn on the fate of the Mass Relays. Now they are simply damaged and shown to be under repair. Some may cry foul, but it was a necessary change. The destruction of the entire Mass Relay network didn't work with the story's established canon.

There were also changes to the Catalyst's explanation of the Reapers. Its argument remains unchanged, still believing that synthetic life will always destroy the creators. Therefore, the Reapers are a necessary solution to maintain balance in the galaxy. A point that many questioned, after brokering peace between the Geth and the Quarians. But now it's clear that the species that created the Catalyst were forced into becoming the first Reaper. This can be interpreted in different ways. Possibly the Catalyst is a flawed creation, incapable of assessing the balance between organics and synthetics.

Interestingly a fourth option for the ending can now be opened through dialogue choices. Players can now refuse the other options, leaving the allied forces of the galaxy to be crushed. The cycle continues, with a sequence that shows a data cache left by Liara for future species. It’s an interesting ending with a dual purpose. Firstly it removes the indoctrination theory as a possibility, which is a shame, as it was one of the best interpretations of the original ending. Secondly, it just makes sense to have it as an option. Why should Shepard accept the solutions that the Catalyst offers?

A couple of other plot holes are also filled in. In the final run to reach the Citadel, your squad mates are injured and taken out of action. Shepard briefly brakes off from the surge to call in the Normandy, to evacuate the team and say goodbye. Thankfully Harbinger waits patiently, rather than obliterating you there and then.


As the Crucible is activated, the fleet is ordered out of the area by Admiral Hackett. Joker refuses to leave without Shepard, until he is brought to his. This clears up why the Normandy is then shown trying to escape the ensuing explosion. And why your squad who were by your side in London, step out onto the Jungle planet after the crash landing.


The ending could still be improved on. Decisions you have made as Shepard up to that point, still have no effect on the choice of ending. It does have the benefit of not punishing the player for poor decisions. But it would be interesting to see options been opened or closed, based on your play through. For example, on a very successful run. Being able to beat the Reapers in conventional warfare, using the knowledge, warnings and preparations you have been able to make.


It's likely that people will still be annoyed by the Catalyst appearing to Shepard as a child. And that war assets are still tied to multiplayer, given that the update would have been the perfect time remove that link. But it’s impossible to please everyone. Last, but not least, the ridiculous DLC advertisement that followed the credits has been replaced by a thank you message from Bioware.  


Taken as a whole, the Extended Cut DLC is big improvement. There will still be debates around it. But importantly it completes the series, making it the best story driven intellectual property of this generation.