SimCity Finally Comes Out On Mac But Does Anybody Care?

SimCity is finally out on Mac and you know what, at the time of writing, it’s been out for a little while. I was waiting for SimCity on Mac for a long time, but I just missed the whole release date in the sea of more tangible, exciting and inevitable game releases.

SimCity was finally released on Mac on 29th August 2013, after nearly a year of constant delays and botched deadlines. SimCity has been on PC for well over a year and while I can appreciate that the Mac platform is not the primarily gaming platform for home computers, I can’t help but feel a little bit sore after EA’s Mac release. Of course, in my eyes SimCity has suffered the ultimate demise; I quite simply forgot it existed.

Now, I know what you are probably thinking, the Mac isn’t necessarily for gaming (at least not compared to PC) and you shouldn’t expect any big releases to release at the same time, if at all. But this is not why I am annoyed about SimCity. I am annoyed because EA promised something, and they didn’t deliver. They didn’t even deliver the second time. As I looked for new info on the Mac version, I constantly felt that it was more likely that it would be cancelled, than finally get a real release date.

I don’t have the exact quote, but EA put the delay of SimCity for Mac down to performance issues stating that they wanted to get it running as best as possible. Well apparently, there are reports that the Mac release has been just as troublesome as the PC one. Yes, the PC release is well-documented as one of the worst video game releases of recent memory. Servers didn’t work, systems didn’t run, always-online was tarnished.

But somehow I still believed in the game. SimCity is a wonderful series, a deeply intricate simulation game that balances creativity and strategy. Create what you want, as long as everyone has flushing toilets. The new graphics looked great and fit the style of the series perfectly. The thing is I feel like I really don’t care anymore. Not about SimCity so much as about this game. I remember when SimCity for Mac was coming out in June and I downloaded Origin and set up my account, only to find a few days before release, that it had been delayed till August 29th. That is a good way to sum up the whole sorry mess. Because when I went on to research this article, I found that I had forgot my Origin password. It all seems a lot more trouble than it’s worth.

What do you think about the delayed and then delayed again Mac release of SimCity? Make some noise in the comments below…

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PS4: 5 Things We Learned From Sony’s Ultimate User Guide

The next-generation of gaming is on the horizon. It’s hard to believe it but we are just 2 weeks away from Sony’s Perfect Day; the exciting North American launch of their highly hyped Playstation 4 console.

As someone who grew up primarily with the Playstation 1 (I was far too young and innocent to take any game seriously on my Sega Genesis and SNES) I couldn’t be more excited. I am just itching to pick up my console and mess around with it, and to of course write my thoughts here and review some heavy hitting titles like Killzone: Shadow Fall and Knack.

We still have to grind out those final 2 weeks though, and while great games like Assassin’s Creed IV are keeping us occupied, Sony is also releasing some juicy nuggets (or walls of text) of information. I’m referring to the official Playstation 4 ultimate user guide!

I’m not joking around when I say that this thing may as well be a novel. And while a great deal of it is common sense or uninteresting technical jargon, there are surprising details in it. This article will condense that information into key areas.

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GTA V: 9 Awesome Commercials You Might’ve Missed

I probably shouldn’t admit this before expecting you to read an article I am writing about the game, but here goes. I have never played a Grand Theft Auto game before GTA V in my life. Honestly I never had any desire to. Between watching my friends do nothing (or the same exact thing) for two hours in any given urban location I was pretty much sold on the fact that the series just wasn’t for me and I would be an Elder Scrolls man till the day I died or my thumbs fell off.

Then Rockstar released the first trailer for GTA V and I experienced an instant change of heart.

You knew immediately from the first time you saw it that this was a game you had to play, that it was going to take the GTA franchise to the next level by leaps and bounds. Rockstar games would release several more trailers and videos in the months before the game’s release. If you missed any then you missed out. Here’s a chance to view them all in their phenomenal glory.

9. GTA V: 2nd Official Trailer

If you still were not a fan of the Grand Theft Auto games like me after watching the GTA V trailer perhaps you needed more convincing. That’s okay, you are exactly the person Rockstar made the second trailer for.

What truly got me about GTA V’s second trailer was just how incredibly cinematic it is. The video, like the first, contains no gameplay, but manages to grab your attention by giving solid introductions to the game’s three protagonists. It’s like watching a preview for a movie coming out next month that you have got to see. The music is great, the locations are awesome, and the characters look and sound perfect. Who says video games cannot be made into good movies? If this were a movie based on this trailer alone I would go see it.

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10 Classic Cheat Codes Every Video Game Should Have

Back in the day, before the industry began to find mainstream success and was mostly associated as “toys for nerds”, video games were challenging. Some of them were so tough the only way to get through them was by working up the courage to swallow your pride and just enter in some helpful cheat codes to alleviate your frustrations or just completely strip away the difficulty entirely.

If you didn’t need cheat codes, well you were most likely either worshipped by your fellow nerds or envied, and most likely seen as some sort of alpha turbo nerd who received a double dosage of jokes at school. Personally, I think you’re awesome.

In this current generation however, where gaming has transcended in to a mainstream cultural phenomenon, that sense of challenge has mostly been sacrificed for better or worse. Have you ever played Uncharted 3 on Beginner mode? Once upon a time me and my friends did (just to casually blow through the story), but we didn’t expect ourselves to be nearly in tears laughing at how Drake practically becomes a Terminator capable of just running around fist fighting his way through every shootout.

That’s not a knock on Uncharted 3 though, that difficulty setting is legitimately there for a good reason, to make the game beyond accessible for those not comfortable with gaming yet. Its hardest difficulty exists and is still tough as nails.

Factoring this in with the additional trophy/achievement systems and the result is very few remaining games that have or even need cheats. Cheats don’t have to be about lightening the load though, sometimes they’re fun to activate and mess around with, bending the game’s rules to your will. With that in mind it is disappointing that cheat codes are essentially non-existent nowadays. In this article we will be looking at 10 classic cheats and how they could have and could continue adding to gaming if they hadn’t just been tossed aside.

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10 Worst Plot Points In Otherwise Awesome Games

Gamers are a fickle bunch. We can be enjoying a supreme slice of gaming goodness when, all of a sudden, we are struck by something so outrageous, so outlandish, so outstandingly crap that it threatens to spoil the enjoyment of everything that has preceded it.

Perhaps it is a sign of the quality of games nowadays that we demand more than simply getting from A to B via hundreds of faceless cannon fodder. A game needs to have a good story. A story that we become emotionally invested in, to the point where we can justify spending an entire day in our pyjamas in front of the telly.

With that in mind, I have collected the Top 10 worst plot points in games which really should have known better. These can be moments where the plot took a ridiculous turn for the worse or lead to a piece of game design that threatened to undo all the good that came before.

You can expect spoilers for the games I have discussed but I have tried to keep them out of the titles so feel free to skip any games you haven’t played yet.

So, without further ado, let’s kick off the list with a modern classic….

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GTA V Release – Day 1 Of Exposure

In North America Grand Theft Auto V has been out for just under 36 hours, which is approximately the amount of hours needed to burn through single player mode to the end without doing many if any side missions. Fans around the world queued for hours just to be the first ones to drive in Los Santos, a city under development for a number of years with much fanfare throughout.

Unlike previous stories of an ambitious protagonist, this picture is being painted by three individuals whose stories intertwine so naturally that it’s a comfortable ease into the game for such a unique concept. There are certain times, like when being chased by police for instance, that one cannot swap out to an alternative player. Also, I could not help but wonder what would happen when two characters are side by side when not in a mission. Long story short, the player you are controlling will upset the followed to the point of being one-punched to the ground, awakening in a nearby hospital.

Those who pre-ordered a copy have the access to pilot the atomic blimp, “the most iconic and leisurely aircraft in the Los Santos skies.” Those who decided to shell out a few more hours of their pay and put it into the pockets of Rockstar (GTA V is predicted to gross $1 Billion) to collect a few more goodies with the Collectors Edition were able to receive a poster, t-shirt, and a Los Santos hat among others.

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10 Video Games People Died Playing

Death is a synonymous action when dealing with the beautiful battered art of video games. It’s an action that’s usually contained within the game world as digital bodies and other worldly torsos crumple into puddles of blood, heaps of dust or unashamedly stomped into vapour. These deaths help the gushing of endorphins to drown the players brain in an unrivalled joyful pool to help de-stress and act as a controlled outlet for the rage that builds up from interacting with the idiots in their lives.

Gaming isn’t exactly a physically approved endeavour for our bodies, unless you’re flapping like a beached fish to one of the many fitness focused titles. Like TV before it, games and consoles have always come with countless unread warnings that attempt to look out for your best physical interest, such as hilariously taking a break every 15 minutes. These warnings have always been universally ignored by parents and players, except for a few fickle straight laced law abiders, but in some instances they should have been printed on a billboard sized poster. Those instances will be the focus of this article where, in an attempt to lighten in the mood, I will be highlighting a few ill fated gaming escapades that took the lives of their dedicated, albeit massively addicted players.

There are countless mindless deaths like a son shooting his parents because they took away his copy of Halo 3, but I tried, with one exception, to focus on games people died while playing, not games that supposedly trigger pointless cowardly killing sprees. And we all know the mass genocide that was committed once Duke Nukem Forever was played.

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