EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming

iONiUM writes "After EA staunchly denied any offline mode, it would seem the disastrous SimCity launch and continual gamer community anger (as well as a CEO firing), EA finally caved and has now going to make an offline mode. However, the obvious question still remains: is it too little too late?"

EA Sports: It's in the game

[tepples]

Because EA owns exclusive rights to professional and collegiate football. Last time I checked, EA was the exclusive licensee of NFL, NCAA, and FIFA rosters.

Re:50 MB limit

[Shados]

google play allows expansion files at 2gb each (I think it lets you have up to two, for a total of 4gb).

Re:too little too late?

[rhodium_mir]

Between The Erotic Review [theeroticreview.com] and TNA Board [tnaboard.com] it's generally pretty easy to get what you paid for as long as you go with a reputable provider.

Alternatives, if you like the game consept.

[fjin]

To play city building game, you don't have to rely to products of EA. There is few free alternatives aroud.

• Rebranded original SimCity - Micropolis [wikipedia.org]
• Lincity and Lincity-NG [wikipedia.org]
• Opencity [wikipedia.org]

Ya that is near as big a problem

[Sycraft-fu]

The limit in the new Sim City is 2km x 2km. That is pathetic. Literally all you can create is a couple city blocks, or a very tiny small town. I mean I live close enough to work to bike in, and I live a good deal further than that (8km).

While there are always limits as to what you can do reasonably in a game, this limit is way too small to be fun. It isn't a matter of being able to create a "big city" it is a matter that almost all small towns are far larger than that.

Apparently they aren't fixing it either. They say the performance isn't good on larger cities, which translates to "We fucked our engine up bad so it can't scale at all."

Unless that is fixed as well, I wouldn't get it. Offline mode is a requisite for sure, but if gameplay is still broken then it isn't worth money.

Re:Ya that is near as big a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't require route finding for tens of thousands of agents. Once an agent has a route from his home to his place of work, then unless he moves house, moves job, new roads are built or destroyed, or his internal 'pissed off at traffic jams' counter exceeds his 'tolerance' statistic, he can continue to use that route. Exactly as real people do. You don't recalculate your route to work every morning. You use the same one until you move house, job, or get sufficiently pissed at traffic.