SimCity: Keep Your Fun Inside the Dotted Line at all Times!

SimCity looked very promising at its initial unveiling. The best known city building simulation getting another instalment, coupled with a brand new game engine which promised an even greater level of detail. Then EA made the horrendous decision to slap useless, always online DRM on it. They didn’t just manage to match Blizzard’s cock-up with Diablo 3, but actually beat it. And just like Diablo 3, you’re left wondering if there’s a game worth playing?

Thankfully for everyone who bought and persevered with the launch day troubles, the answer is yes. The updates in the new instalment bring some interesting re-works to the mechanics of previous SimCitys. Most notable is the changes to roads. They now act as the veins of your city, distributing the heartbeat of the power stations and other utilities. Water and electricity trickle down them to all attached buildings, whilst sewage is pumped back along them to your waste treatment plants.

Because of this, you can no longer place buildings in the middle of nowhere. Instead you have to build a road to every space you want to make use of. It seems odd a first as it redefines how you plan your city. Now roads are the most important element, and building the right roads at the start will save you a lot of painful demolition work later on.

Roads also control the density of your city. Previously your choice of zoning defined an area as low, medium or high density. Now your roads are the key to your city’s development. Upgrading a road to ease a traffic jam can suddenly cause a whole street of skyscrapers to pop up out of a trailer park.

The core gameplay remains unchanged. You take on the role of city mayor with all the powers of a dictator. You mark out areas for residential, commercial and industrial buildings and then entice tax paying Sims to move in by providing all the utilities and services a budding metropolis will need. As always, you have a group of advisors who’ll keep you informed of your Sims needs.

And it’s just as hard as always to keep everyone happy. Your Sims will often speak up with speech bubbles, alerting you to services or objectives they’d like you to achieve. If you accept their challenge, you’re often provided with a monetary reward to help you city grow. The only problem is you’re often asked to ‘plop’ buildings which will be useless for your city’s specialisation. You can be a mining tycoon; then out of the blue be asked to build an airport for tourism. Even worse are the constant requests you receive to build any DLC you have. I get constant requests to build the superhero DLC I received with the limited edition, and there’s only one way to shut your Sims up. You have to turn all Sim speech bubbles off in the options. It’s a minor problem, as speech bubbles really serve the purpose of being an extended tutorial. However I know I’m missing out on any challenges and money rewards I might be interested in which is a little annoying.

The UI is very nicely laid out. Clicking on any icon on the tool bar brings up all the construction items associated with it, as well as the appropriate city overlays. Each overlay provides a living graph, displaying all the information you need to track anything you need to see in real time. As you wait for your taxes to roll in, it’s satisfying to sit back a flick through the overlays; watching your city grow and spotting how its needs change.

And there’s an impressive level of simulation occurring. Although the big problem, as with many simulations is; if you look too closely the cracks show. And this comes from the new ‘agent’ simulation used. Each blob of utilities, vehicle and Sim can act independently, which leads to some odd scenarios. Often, conga lines of rubbish trucks form as they compete to serve the same buildings. And this happens with plenty of other services such as busses and emergency vehicles. Even more bizarrely, the AI is enticed by the freeway like moths to a bright light. I’ve observed my fire trucks drive straight past Sims in desperate need of saving from a horrible fiery death, just to go for a joy-ride on the freeway! Presumably all my emergency crews crave the open road where there’s no red lights to stop them, because for no explicable reason they will stop at red lights!? Until a recent patch, they would happily join traffic queues and junctions and patiently wait their turn instead of using open lanes to jump the queue.

The AI also acts like a fool when it comes to resources. Your city specialists bleat like new born lambs as soon as any coal mine or oil well is full. Completely oblivious of the fact that your fleet of delivery trucks is en-route, just stuck in traffic. Meanwhile your power and water advisors will happily fall asleep on the job and not warn you of any problems until the lights go out.  And if I could shoot the zoning advisor, I would. Many of my cities end up in a bizarre situation where he demands I build more residential housing as there aren’t enough workers for my industry, but also tell me to build more industry; with no explanation for the industry demand.

Multiplayer has the most obvious simulations issues, or really, the lack of simulation. Your city will often receive ‘spare’ workers or vehicles from neighbours to help you, despite having a shortage of the same thing. And it’s not surprising that this element of the game is very loosely based on actual game data. Each city runs asynchronously so that all players can use their preferred game speed. This would make it impossible for real time sharing of resources. It’s a little immersion breaking, but equally it doesn’t really add or take away anything from the experience.

In fact, the majority of the simulation issues are just distractions, only mildly annoying when you notice. The biggest problem by far is the incredibly limited city sizes. You barely have to zoom the camera out to view your entire city. It takes me only a few hours to fill all the usable space. Then all I have left to do is a bit of tinkering. The limited space also means you can only really specialise in one type of industry, and once that’s accomplished your budget takes care of itself. Without being able to build a sprawling mega-city, it’s hard to go wrong. The challenge is prematurely cut off, leaving you with the choice of trying to please all your Sims, or moving on to found your next city.

In the build-up to the game’s launch, EA and Maxis went to some lengths to explain the limited city sizes were due to the complexity of the simulation. Also thrown in was the ‘fact’ that the origin serves handled some of the calculations for you, allowing the game to run on lower end machines. It sounded like a reasonable comprise that even led me to a somewhat optimistic view on the DRM.

It turned out to be a complete lie following some excellent detective work by RockPapaerShotgun, and modders quickly exposing the nature of the DRM. We really shouldn’t have expected anything more than anti-piracy measures from EA, and poor ones at that. The game will only check in with the servers at around a twenty minute interval, do a quick cloud save, update some region stats and then merrily continue on.  You can play offline during that entire time until it reaches the next arbitrary check. And if there’s any synching issue during a cloud save, your progress is lost leaving you the choice of abandoning the city or doing a rollback, undoing the last twenty minutes of play!

Clearly there are no server side calculations going on here. So why were there so many explanations to the contrary from the head of Maxis? Why are we limited to small cities and no local save feature? The likely answer is that EA was expecting to get away with selling some city size DLC before the DRM fiasco blew up so spectacularly. EA showed their corporate side horribly with this pointless DRM, which can be easily removed.

It would be nice to see EA do a U-turn on this stupid decision, and you’d think with their share price failing, they might would to improve their reputation. Instead, it seems dragging it through the mud has been the plan for the past few years. We can only hope than a change of CEO might see a change in direction.

There’s an enjoyable, measurably good game buried under the DRM. Like Diablo 3, it has suffered a similar fate. Until modders remove the DRM (something I’ve never hoped for before now), it’s difficult to recommend because of the message that would be sent to the industry by SimCity being a sales success. Hopefully the wave incredibly bad press coverage will outweigh the ‘success’ of any high sales figure, something I shouldn’t have to wish on any game. 

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.

We Built This City on DRM: SimCity

It’s funny how history can repeat itself. Not quite a year ago Blizzard was weathering a storm of their own making for the launch of Diablo 3. Now EA is scrambling for the umbrella due to the abysmal launch of SimCity.

You’d think EA would have learned from the past. Both Ubisoft and Blizzard have received heavy criticism for their always online DRM, and EA have just joined the club. The launch week has seen long queue times to get onto a server after a faltering start filled with crashes and rollbacks.

Like Diablo 3, SimCity’s always online requirement has been heavily touted as a feature; with multiplayer elements making their first appearance in the series. Players can now choose to be neighbours on large over-world maps, allowing cities to interact with each other in new ways.

The option to play SimCity as a traditional solo experience is still there, however you now have to log into the game through Origin and remain online at all times. The game itself does do some calculations server side, taking some of the burden off your machine. But this can only really be seen as a feature for those running a PC from a decade ago. No doubt there will be a group of players in this bracket due to SimCity’s wide appeal. Realistically it’s an extra level off DRM protection to keep the pirates at bay.

And I would have no problem with that, if the game I bought on release day worked and was guaranteed to be playable after the servers are shut down. However EA clearly missed the former and completely refuse to commit to the latter. It’s worrying to see games moving in a direction where we are not only technically renting them from the publisher, but that the publisher reserves the right to shut down a game when it suits them.

Ubisoft has already backed down from this idea on a number of titles due to the bad publicity. So it will be interesting to see if EA and Blizzard try it again. There is scope for always online requirements to work in certain games (not in anything action heavy). But publishers need to realise that not all gamers have stable connections, and need to put consumers first with reliable servers and DRM removal at the end of the game’s shelf life.

Blood Bowl 2: Now Even Bloodier?

Well this is one game I never expected. And given the fact there are already three different Blood Bowl games on the market; it’s probably a game no one was asking for either, which just makes me even more curious to see what it is.

The only details leaked so far are a logo, six months of development time already completed and a release date scheduled for next year. Not even a hint of a reason to get excited by it. You can already buy a complete version of Blood Bowl right now. So there’s nothing to add to the game beyond new stadiums or improved AI, which could easily be added as DLC.

It’s left me wondering what the purpose of this sequel is. I can only guess that Games Workshop is involved in a ground up redesign, given that Blood Bowl is actually a fairly old game. The current version of Blood Bowl is completely bloated by special rules and mechanics that are heavily driven by die rolls. So there’s plenty to streamline. And they have previously redesigned several of their other games.

But it surprises me that Blood Bowl was selected for a sequel over making a game from another of Games Workshop’s intellectual properties. Currently both Space Hulk and Warhammer Fantasy are in development, which shows Games Workshop is willing to branch out. So it would surely make more sense to adapt a game like Battlefleet Gothic or Necromunda; neither has been adapted for a computer game yet and both could make excellent strategy titles.

It’s likely that the sequel will just be a highly polished version of the Chaos Edition, and have a multi-platform release. This will be a bit disappointing, but makes the most business sense as it will be very difficult to tempt Blood Bowl owners on the PC into anther purchase.

Playing with Fire: Community and Developer Interaction in Planetside 2

Most developer interaction with MMOs is a one way street, usually ramming trucks full of promotional material at gamers until release. Only to be followed by a steady stream of patching and tweaks.  There’ll be an obligatory official forum where only the brave tread as it quickly devolves into a cess pit of whining and cries for nerfs!

This is what makes Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) stand out from other developers. When it comes to community interaction, they’re charting some new territory and it could go either way for them. Of course they have an official game forum like everyone else, but they have also gone all in when it comes to social media.

Want to discuss game mechanics? Start an interesting topic on Reddit and you’ll likely attract comments from the game’s balance team. Want to show off your Outfit? Get in touch with Friday Night Ops (FNO) and you could the focus of an SOE live stream. FNO is also great for keeping up to date with the latest game development and includes a live Q&A with the developers.

On top of that, SOE recently released the Roadmap revealing the next six months of updates. But rather than being an elaborate and lengthy set of patch notes, it details the development team’s ideas. Each element is can be discussed and voted on, highlighting the ideas the community wants to see make it into the game. The most popular ideas get pushed up the list and become the top priority for the next month’s major patch.

It’s great for the community to be able to actually affect the game’s development in a way that suits the majority. The Roadmap does have its limitations though. You can only contribute and vote on the ideas that are added by SOE. And it’s noticeable that there’s a lack of meta-game ideas. Ideas that would add more goals and rewards into the game for players to avoid the game stagnating.

Realities of game development also play a big factor in the game’s Roadmap. No matter how many positive votes an idea receives; if it’s a large chunk of content like a brand new continent, it’s going to need some lengthy development time.

Thankfully the Roadmap isn’t a completely inclusive list of game changes. Balance tweaks are rather sensibly kept under tight control by SOE themselves.  Although they have already shown how difficult it can be to balance an MMO in a way that all players agree with. January’s game update took a large swing at the balance of main battle tanks, with the Magrider in particular taking a heavy hit to its manoeuvrability. The defining feature and advantage it holds over the other tanks. Now it was easy to predict that any Vanu player would be annoyed by SOE’s heavy handed approach to the changes, but the feedback was explosive. And SOE got this rammed at them down every avenue they had opened for player feedback. The Vanu population on every server didn’t just dip, it plummeted.

As it has since been revealed by Matt Highby, the game’s creative director; the Magrider had suffered from some poor coding which had exacerbated the nerf. But for me it showed the pressure they had put on themselves by attempting something as ambitious as the current Roadmap schedule.

The amount of content they’re attempting to cram into a few months of development is great for consumers like myself. However the cost of this rapid development is clearly showing in the quality of the game patches. Part of January’s major update was designed to improve performance on lower end machines. The result was the complete opposite, throwing the game back to its launch day instability. Each patch they release has to be chased up by hotfixes to correct the most random bugs. One minor patch rendered all tanks useless for twenty four hours as their shots vanished into thin air. Quite remarkable in a patch that had nothing to do with them.

Of course Planetside 2 is still a very young game and I’m judging it on only three months of development since release. So it’s easy to be critical of any development flaws. But to me, it would appear that SOE are overburdening themselves. All the means they have opened for player feedback has increased the number voices demanding updates and responses. Even worse is the amplified community response to any negatively perceived move by SOE. They would do themselves a favour by putting the brakes on development to focus on creating stable and bug free updates, and then ramp up their community interaction. It will be interesting to see if SOE’s openness pays off for them in the long run, especially as the first round of server merges has just been announced.