Dewar

Server issues and global trading inconsistencies aside, I really really like this game. I accept that the Sim world is different than the real world and that the percentages for taxes and strange AI are internally consistent, but aren't necessarily related to anything I experience in real life. As long as the simulation makes sense within itself, I'm happy. There have been a few things here and there that have broken that, but nothing so severe that I've shut the game off. In fact, I probably should have shut it off a bit more, I put 20 or so hours into the game over the weekend. I also like the limited city size, as it forces you to make some hard choices instead of expanding until you get bored in old games. Better still is the option to start a new city to help fund your old one, and the intercity dynamics it causes. *shrug* I thought I was going to get really ticked, but I'm happy, if they'd get the damn servers working 100%.

Hmm, tempting, but I dunno. Seems worth it to get in on the $25 one now, just for the hell of it. Not sure if I'd pay $40.

I managed to get in a region with a couple of friends last night on the Euro 1 server (we're all in the US, but it was the only one that would let us get in together.) First off, the region invites didn't show up in the game at all. My friend had sent me three invites over the course of 10 minutes. I got no notifications, and the region page still said "you must be invited to play." On a lark, I clicked the claim button, and it let me in. Once we did get in, the asynchronous stuff was a bit wierd. When one of my neighbors would build a town hall addition, I'd get the offical game notification about it maybe 5 or 10 minutes later. Other things like sharing service vehicles and such seemed to happen a little faster. Sending sewage across zones worked all right, but water still has the bug that they showed in the Giant Bomb videos where all the gauges say that you're buying enough water but some zones say they're out. We all had powerplants, so we didn't get a chance to test that. Something that's a bit unclear is how selling resources works. I'm the only person in the region with a coal mine, so I'd like to sell to friends at a reduced rate, but my only options are to use locally or export to the global market. Use locally isn't exactly clear if they mean in my one city, or in the region (a common confusion across the entire game) but from watching the coal flow it looks like it's only going to my power plant. So the only way to share resources (aside from sending gifts or working on a great project) is to sell to the global market and then your neighbor buys from the global market, which is dumb. Speaking of the global market, the price seems to fluxuate based on external forces of some kind. Hopefully, it's based on supply and demand, but it could just be someone back at Maxis headquarters twiddling a knob for all I know. With all the information that they give you about how your city is running, I'd really like to have more options and info about regional and global trade. Even better would be able to set my own prices and let people buy or not. All those complaints, yet I had a blast and stayed up until midnight (others were east coast and were up until 2am.) If the server issues clear up and they fix and clarify the inter-city trading mechanics, this is a pretty awesome game.

I see a really good game here underneath all the network problems. I mucked up my first city fairly badly, so I started a new city in the same region, sent various service vehicles there from my old city to save on costs, and started over. I was able to build a huge industrial area and put in a rail and bus station, then hopped back to my old city where my housing was expanding out of control, put in a rail and bus there, and bam! jobs! Now I can bulldoze some of the industrial zones in my first city to make room for my solar plant and garbage dump that I accidentally walled in. Traffic is still a pain though, even with buses both of my cities are a gridlock.

Shame that's not real.

North America West 2 has been working all right for me (occasional server disconnects, but it recovered gracefully) until about 10 minutes ago where the whole thing took a crap. Now it's saying there's a 20 minute queue on any of the servers, which is bizzare as most of the east coast should be asleep by now.

My friends and I had no end of problems getting together on East Server 1 last night. It wasn't even pulling up the tutorial or letting me grab a plot anywhere. However, when we all got frustrated I ended up on West 2 on my own and was able to play successfully for a couple of hours at that point. Hopefully tonight things will be a little more tame and we get a team region rolling.

At some level I take the $20 Amazon credit I got for pre-ordering this as sort of an inconvienence fee. I expect the servers will be up and down and things will be tweaked a lot in the first few weeks, but I can always go and try to finish up Tropico for my city building needs while I wait.

Some good... http://www.polygon.com/game/simcity-2013/2630 and bad... http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/ inpressions coming in.

Man, that all sounds awesome to me. Real value in keeping that little guy you've had on the team since getting him in the second hour as opposed to catching a higher level dude and replacing him. I'm going to be disappointed if that bond level stuff isn't true.

Everyone's eyes are different. Watching a movie I can usually tell the difference, but playing a game, I've got more things to worry about, like not dying.

I never had a PS3 and there's a few exclusives (inFamous, Journey, Ni No Kuni) that I really would like to pick-up. I'm dissapointed that there's no hardware backcompat, but if their game streaming service actually works for PS3 games, and at a decent price (that's where onLive failed,) I could see myself picking it up for the back catalog.

I heard a lot of mess about how crappy the conference was, so maybe I had lowered expectations, but I thought it was pretty good. Long, with a lot of boring parts, but pretty good. I wasn't expecting to see near that many games shown off, they went into some detail about the specs (I'm really interested in what using GDRam for primary system memory will really do,) and they officially showed the controller. Obviously I'd have liked to see the box, but I don't really care what it looks like when it's hidden in my entertainment center. Suckerpunch's new inFamous game seems pretty cool, and man did Nate Fox sell it.

I believe, from some of the info released during the Infinity Ward lawsuit, that the concept is that the sphere is protecting the last humans from something, thus it hovering directly above them like that.

I played a lot of good games earlier last year, but I realized today that I never played with the Gods and Kings DLC. Man, there's a lot more depth now. I ended up making a few stupid tech decisions, leaving me way behind in military units when Rome came knocking. In general, I like the original Civ5 stuff better than anything since Civ2, but I'm still not sold on them adding religion back in with the DLC. That always used to be a pain in Civ4.

I like the Sony D-Pad. Edit: Also keep in mind how Sony was showing off the stupid boomerang looking PS3 controller until the last possible second. This might look nothing like the actual controller will.

Too much talk of steamers I guess.

Nice, I've seen videos of parts of this but never have gotten to partake. This might be my first GOG purchase.

That's a pretty hot looking book. I might have to move some money around to pick it up, I always wanted to 100% the achievements in Brutal Legend, but I never got into the online play much. Maybe it's time to revisit it again.

If it's the same unit that I have, it has 8 inputs, 1 for the snare, 1 for the foot pedal, and 2 for each cymbal/drum pair for the other three. Edit: Here's the amazon entry for it. It's become a bit harder to find, but I think you can get it from ION directly. http://www.amazon.com/Drum-Rocker-Cymbal-Expansion-Playstation-3/dp/B001LLPV7E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1360777251&sr=8-2&keywords=ion+drum+rocker+cymbal

There is a third cymbal expansion made specifically for the ION.

You should buy the third cymbal.

I got this on a steam sale, but haven't started it yet. My understanding is that patches have continued over the last 6 months to try and add some more content to the game, but I don't know how much.

I've been known to play it on and off. It can be a tough game to play sometimes, but rewarding when you manage to get 3-4 kills in a round.

I still never got around to playing Witcher 2. The first one took me so dang long to complete (a year and a half) and I was left with such a sour taste in my mouth at the end (not because of the quality of the ending, just the depressing content) that I haven't wanted to tackle the second one yet.