Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have a special place in my heart for SimCity4, and really the entire SimCity series. I've been playing it for eight years on a pretty regular basis. That's why, after attempting to play the travesty that is SimCity5, I knew I had to get online and try and prevent anyone else from spending any money on it. PLEASE - Do not buy this product. If you're like me, and you just want to see what the next iteration of this iconic gaming series to judge for yourself, you're probably thinking to yourself "Yeah, but can it really be that bad?" Yes. I'm sorry. It's true. It may be one of the most anticipated games of the year, as advertised, but it is also one of the biggest letdowns of the DECADE. Because here' the thing. You're not going to be able to play this game. As other reviews have indicated, you MUST be online to play. When you first launch the game you are asked to pick a server. In my experience, I had a choice between 3 servers in the US, or 3 servers somewhere on the other side of the globe. And the US ones were busy. So what the heck, I guess I'm connecting to Eastern Europe to play this game. I was assuming/hoping a lot of the processing would be happening on my machine, with only occasional trips to the server to sync with the live game. Nope - From the moment the title sequence starts playing, the video and sound are extremely choppy, and the cursor is extremely difficult to move, as presumably every time the machine cycles, it is pushing data back and forth to the Hague. My first thought is, my goodness EA, is this really the first impression you want someone to have of your game? But hey, it's only the title sequence, right? Let me just get into the game, I just want to have the experience of putting up a few buildings before heading to bed. You have the option to load a saved game, join another player's game, or create a new one. This being my first game, I try creating a new one. I go through their four-step process of creating a region and selecting a city, click the Claim City button, and, drumroll...it tells me they can't create a game for me at this time. Period. No other explanation. Argh. For someone who just paid $60 to have this experience, this is beyond frustrating. Alright, well, after trying a few more times to create my own game, to no avail, my last hope is to join someone else's game. After selecting the appropriate tab, it shows you a good number of in-progress games you can click on. I select an interestingly-named region with not too many players in it. I select an empty city, click the Claim City button and...am told that this player has set up a private region, and that I can't claim a city. What!?! Why is it even an option for me to click on that game if I can't join it!?! In other words, what it's telling me is that I have no way of knowing which games I can actually join, I have to just keep guessing until I find one. Of course, I'm assuming most other players are like me and aren't going to let random jerks join their regions, and are setting their games to private. Obviously, I'm not going to be able to play this game tonight. So - instead of spending an evening enjoying one of the few gaming experiences I actually pay for these days, here I am writing about how horrible it is. I'm sure they'll be able to work the bugs out, but nothing can erase tonight's experience from my memory. If EA had a QA process worth anything, this would have stayed in development another year. Or, better yet, they would have released it without all this online DRM nonsense. I'm sure Maxis' game is just fine as a standalone single player experience, but nothing is worth putting up with the horrible online "service" you are forced to use to play it. It's astonishing how the same company can take the same game concept and work on it for 10 years, and have it be so much worse than what came before it. Shame on everyone involved with this project.