SimCity 5-SimCity Updated Review

This is a straightforward patch that removes the need to connect to the Maxis servers before being able to play. Just turn on offline mode in the Origin launcher before firing up the game, and you're good to go without the Net. That pesky DRM disguised as a game feature is now gone, and good riddance. A year ago, the disastrous launch saw thousands of people unable to play the game for lengthy stretches of time due to network issues. Even when you could get online, the game was often sluggish and prone to random disconnections and lost save files.


This gets very tedious, very fast. Entering a new city requires 30 seconds or more of loading time, for starters, and you are constantly slapped in the face by the small city sizes. Swapping back and forth from one Duckburg to another is an insult considering that you could do almost everything you needed to do in just a single city if the borders weren't so ridiculously restrictive that you inevitably ran out of the room needed to build key infrastructures like water treatment plants and high schools.


This is a good thing, especially given how the launch problems proved that this sort of DRM is spectacularly ill-advised. But even though this addition by subtraction makes for a better experience overall, in that at least you can now play the game whenever you want