The last SimCity I played was 2000. I do miss some of the details - like setting budgets by department or issuing city edicts. Mostly I miss the big maps, it felt so gratifying to finally build a neighborhood inside/over the ravine/river what-have-you.

Speaking of individual level simulation screwing you over, last night my dozens of street cars spent all day dinking around my down town each carrying 10/200 passengers while on the other side of the highway 300 sims waited for 400+ minutes at a street car station. AI Fail.

On the plus side I really enjoy playing SimCity with my wife. We have to play hot-seat until the Mac version comes out but it's still been fun.

I have played. I really want to like the game. If you can cut away the online craptastic nonsense that was added to the game, I do like it. I like the visual style - like looking at the buildings of a model railroad. I like the concept of city specialization - but, since the servers are screwed up, that features doesn't work well. And there's no guidance on how it is expected to work.

The excuses the EA folks came up with for requiring the internet connection are bogus - my quad core PC isn't using more than one core most of the time while playing. The fancy-schmancy regional economy could be simulated locally for those of us playing by ourselves.

If they would have used the Steam model for online validation, that would have made the requirement tolerable. But to require a continuous connection just to play alone? Lame. (show less)

Peter's opening text msg should be enshrined in some hall of fame of text msg's.

The original Sim City port on the Super Nintendo was awesome, I spent most of the nineties getting high school/college friends addicted, then watching them discover the Laffer Curve in action.

they sound remarkably like the PJM commenters when PJM changed the format recently