Sim City
 

Sim city is back and better than ever. No, really. This is the best Sim City I've ever played. Its completley redesigned and has very little elements of the more recent games (Happiness levels, etc.). Its very multi-city based and the game is built around trading with other cities and establishing an identity or "Focus" for each city you create. If you liked the aspect of building massive, branching cities over a long period of time, sadly that is not in this game. This game is more about building smaller cities and connecting them. I really like the unique direction its taking, its in closed beta right now and I got to play it for a bit, here's some screenshots I took!

http://i.imgur.com/J8medHN.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/X0Onwoe.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/xMiPR8y.jpg

Is this going to be on mac as well?

Great game.

I've heard a lot of bad things about this game.
I heard the beta is only an hour long too.

Lol what bad things have you heard about this game?

I can't wait for this lol.

I got a beta key (I applied several months ago so I was very excited) and it seems very fun. I can only imagine how it will be even better when I can play with friends. Obviously the beta is ruined by the inability to save, but oh well :P

Sim city of all games is a great game to play offline and by yourself.
EA is essentially destroying that with the constant Internet DRM...what happens if you lose connection...poof, hours worth of work is gone.
The one city at a time is a killer and the fact that you're forced to have a specialized city...so you can't have a bit of everything.

Also why is the beta only an hour? That is not sufficient time to play test the game thus far and give feedback and report bugs.
Marketing ploy by EA. They haven't taken my money since BF3 and I don't see any games in the future that will change that.
I don't like the direction EA is taking with this reboot...

This is pre-beta speculation so you'll have to let me know if all this is true, plus things could always change post beta.

You can have multiple cities. In the beta you can't save, so I guess people are assuming that you can only have one city, but EA has stated that you'll be able to have multiple cities and multiple regions in the main game.

I don't have a problem with the internet connection thing. It's all saved online so if your internet goes out you don't actually lose any progress, just the ability to play.

As far as the beta goes... one hour of the beta is better than not having the beta at all. Tbh, did you expect to play the whole game for free?

You only have hour sessions per city (as in you can play it again with a new city later), its pretty much significant enough to test things out. You can have multiple cities at a time and you can specialize in multiple things. All specializing means is having the ability to link cities together, or 'specialize one city as industrial', and another city as residential and then link them together to free up space in your area. Its completely manual. The land is pretty small, but its probably only for the beta. The only thing I agree with is the problem with constant DRM, but that's something EA does with all its games now, its not that horrible if you have a stable internet connection but I can definitely see why its frowned upon. Its not a good idea.
Anyways, I built this city in the one hour time limit. Its pretty much enough to test things out.

http://i.imgur.com/xMiPR8y.jpg

Is it just me that thinks everything looks like toys?

I liked Sim City DS better.

I've always liked Sim City games, and my cities have always turned out fine, until my city expenses are slowly sapped away into nothing. I suck at the balancing income / outcome thing.
I think I'll look into getting it when the full version goes on sale. I don't like the only online thing though.

I know right, it looks like a miniature real life model of a city.

Anyways the I don't like that there is no offline play and that kind of kills it for me. This would have been my go-to offline game.

Agreeeeeeeeeeed