Switch Lights

The lights are on

What's Happening
Home News
Recent News
Related Posts

SimCity Beta Coming Next Week

News
by Jeff Cork on January 18, 2013 at 08:14 AM
7,110 Views
19

EA is giving would-be city planners an early look at its upcoming SimCity. The company tweeted that it will be holding a beta for the game next week, which will contain about an hour of gameplay.

While an hour may not be enough time to turn your burgeoning town into a smog-filled dystopian nightmare, you should at least be able to make your Sims miserable via constant gridlock and nighttime brownouts. Or you could take the boring approach and try to build up a place where your little people are happy. The choice is yours, even if only one of those choices is correct.

The beta will be taking place between January 25-28. You can register for it here.

For more information on the game, take a look at Joe's preview. The game is set for a March 5 release on PC.

Email the author , or follow on , , , and .

Filed under: , , , ,
Games Mentioned In This Article
Comments
sort by date:
  • by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 08:20 AM

    Time to build a new-urbanist city of transit-oriented development. Sweet!

  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 08:22 AM

    Time to take Godzilla for a spin.

  • by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 08:39 AM

    Yeah, it may be fun to create a huge city full of happy citizens for a while. But then, somewhere along the way, the sandbox kid in me just wants to smash it all down. Oh, my citizens are complaining that there aren't enough trees in the city. Well how about a volcano! I spend ten hours giving you a home and jobs and entertainment, now I'm going to sit back and watch it all burn.

  • by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 08:40 AM
    I'll be sticking to sc4, this adds nothing to the formula and is highly limited. > Small one size lots > No region play between your own cities > Thinly disguised DRM by shoving always online/multiplayer down our throats > Casualised and simplified roads > No terraforming! > NO modding! The worst part being when the dev was asked his bull**** reply was "yes: there will be DLC" as if that constitutes mods. It's a cut down, restricted, constricted, casualized sim city that in no way appeals to me or any real sim city fan. No you don't have to play it first: just read all the interviews and watch the vids they released. So all the white knights can go suck it. The one thing sc5 has is bendy roads which some french modder is already developing for good ole sc4. I'd say eff Maxis but EA is probably the main culprit in this abortion of a sim city.
  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 10:29 AM

    Am I the only one that is not down with another always on gaming platform, such as "Origin"?

  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 10:30 AM
    Looks really nice, but I'm not sure what more they can add to the gameplay at this point. They can't stray from the formula too much or there's going to be backlash, and they can't just update the graphics and leave the core game the same or people could feel gypped. Then again, look at Madden.
  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 10:30 AM
    I want to sign up but origin login servers are always failing to respond...

    EDIT: Scratch that, I can't even *** log in to that site without deadlock errors or it just refreshing and doing NOTHING.
  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 10:38 AM

    Oh man, I'm going to use all of those 72 hours playing that beta...

  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 10:45 AM

    How many gigs?

  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 10:53 AM

    Damn Origin and its errors, damn!

  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 12:17 PM
    Huzzah! Those graphics look fantastic.
  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 03:56 PM

    Sim City looks great. Looking forward to what comes of this.

  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 04:01 PM

    While I'm not a big fan of EA, this is one of those games that will make me cross the line to make a purchase. I just love the SimCity games so much that I don't care who gets the money for publishing it just s long as it comes out and I get to enjoy it!

  •
    by Friday, January 18, 2013 at 11:18 PM

    nice! might try to enter the beta

  •
    by Saturday, January 19, 2013 at 01:47 PM

    A but a one hour beta? Does EA know the difference between a beta test and a demo? I don't think an hour is long enough for anyone to really push this game and see what they can break. But I guess EA figures that people love to say they took part in a game's beta testing so they just call their demo a beta and double the number of people who play it.

    I'm still signing up for the "beta" but only to make sure that it'll run smoothly on my PC.