Posts by Thrik

  • SimCity V

    Quote from Hipshot

    I want to play this game so bad - but I'm just gonna wait until it's in the bargain bin and they removed the "online all the time" requirement, if that's possible.

    EA shuts down servers now and then for older games, I suspect they will do the same with this in a not to distant future...

    Exactly my concern. Online support for dozens of their older games has silently disappeared over the years. Considering that the longevity of previous SimCity titles has been so big — 10 years between this and the last one — what happens if people still want to play it after so long? It might seem stupidly irrelevant now but it's going to become a very real issue if going forward any online-enabled game just stops working after 10 years. That's a lot of gaming history down the pan.

  • SimCity V

    This has probably been the single most disastrous launch I've ever seen. After Maxis's last game (Spore) went through the same shit and became the year's most pirated game in addition to sparking off massive DRM controversies, how the fuck were decisions made within Maxis/EA that led to this?

    I feel sorry for many of the developers because from what I can see there's actually a really good game beneath all this, that can scratch that simulation itch many of us have been feeling for some years since the genre disintegrated over a decade ago. But the game's had so many bad reviews as a direct result of these issues that it doesn't stand a chance of living up to its potential. How many people are going to hit the 'buy' button after seeing the 1000+ 1-star Amazon reviews?

    I suspect what'll happen is EA will solve these issues, make dedicated fans happy with less intrusive DRM and bigger cities, then re-release the game either as a special edition or an iterative sequel in less than a year so they have another chance with the mainstream/casual buyers (who would ordinarily constitute a large part of a Maxis game's audience). Saving the review scores of this release is pretty much a lost cause.

  • SimCity V

    Man, look at those scores. Some serious lessons are going to be learnt at EA over this. Also: firings.

    Considering that Maxis's last game, Spore, kicked off massive DRM controversies and resulted in the game getting awful user reviews across the board as well as becoming the most pirated game of the year, it's incredible that this actually happened.

    Third time's the charm?

  • Kickstarter : Race to the Sun

    Haha I saw this earlier, when it was about $1000 away with a few hours remaining. Glad they made it, it would have probably been the most disappointing thing in history if they'd failed when so close. Although if it were my project I'd probably have took out a loan to fill the last bit of funds.

  • SimCity V

    We can just repurpose this one (which is still stickied) if you post your Origin IDs in there:


    Can do the same for Steam and any other widely-used systems if you like.

    If skdr doesn't want to maintain the list I'll just hijack it when I have a bit of time, but if you at least post them there it'll make it easier. Maybe longer term I'll do some kind of page in the top menu which has all these in in a better-presented format.

  • Thief 4

    Maybe I'm just an uncultured swine because I've never played Thief, but to me the series has always seemed to be about some hooded dude sneaking around a medieval setting. This game also appears to feature a hooded dude sneaking around a medieval setting.

    Looks great, though. As HP says, after Deus Ex they pretty much have carte blanche as far as I'm concerned and I will buy whatever they make.

  • Thief 4

    Interesting how Square Enix is putting so much into all these stealth titles. Being my favourite kind of game, I can't complain.

    Although I've just realised that if Eidos Montreal is putting so much work into this, that's time not being spent on a new Deus Ex.

    Quote

  • SimCity V

    It seems kind of bizarre that some of the simulation is done externally, but I guess that's one way of escaping the fact that many people simply won't have the hardware for such sophisticated computations. That would also go towards explaining why the online factor is holding back having larger cities, because there's a limit on how much capacity even their server farms have.

  • SimCity V

    Quote from Mazy

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    srs shit

    LMAO!!!!! He raises fair points but the delivery makes this an instant classic.

  • SimCity V

    Been watching some review videos of this and the small size of the cities is really putting me off. While I don't expect the cities to be as infinitely big as is possible with the relatively basic 2D graphics of old, they really are very small this time around. The more in-depth simulation and such is great, but when the city is more like the size of a small town it's hard to take it seriously.

    At least you can have multiple cities in one region, but that's not the same as one big cohesive city with nice suburbs, proper spitting up of sectors, etc. The size of the cities right now pretty much requires that you squish everything into a big, unattractive mess; if you want distinct zones with their own look and feel you have to split them up into separate cities.

    I read somewhere that the size is so small due to the way the online stuff works, and that it could be increased later. I'm not sure why this would be the case but I hope so, I will definitely buy it when they do this. Wouldn't surprise me if this comes via DLC regions with bigger city plots, though.

  • Thriko's photos

    Just got back from a few days in London. Lightroom pretty much had a heart attack when I tried to import them all, but I've been quite brutal about cutting the number I actually share down to a minimum. Only got like a quarter of the way through so I'll probably post some more when I have more time for processing later in the week.

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37346336/photography/london-picks-8.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37346336/photography/london-picks-16.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37346336/photography/london-picks-10.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37346336/photography/london-picks-12.jpg]

  • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

    It's kind of pissing me off. By the time I got around to playing Brotherhood, Revelations was out. By the time I got around to Revelations, AC3 was out. And now by the time I get around to AC3, this fucker will be out.

    In some ways I think the AC whoring is even worse than what Activision did with CoD. It's just too much too quickly and I'm finding myself too fatigued to really enjoy each new instalment, they're kind of blending into one big never-ending splurge. I'm sure Ubi are making loads of money but holy shit...