Why does nobody want to live next to nuclear power stations anyway? They might get powers.

Great review again. It was all highly funny, but once I realized what the music in the end short was I actually laughed out loud.

Is it just me or does Yahtzee sound really bored? Has so in the COD4 review as well. No game bad enough to actually hate, not just be bored by? :(

This game is not representative of the Sim City games since the Amiga days at all. Societies wasn't even developed by Maxis (and therefore not by Will Wright, the god of god games). Sim City 4 is where the city-building action is at.

I loved the review, as always. The Team Fortress 2 bit at the end was a bit unexpected but awesome.

Maybe just me, but this one didn't incur quite as many laughs, maybe because I hadn't played the game.

Glad to see people liked the TF2 thing, but since I spend a lot of time on Garry's Mod forums anyway, I've seen a lot of similar things.

Funny review, and i agree with you on god games.
well its funny.. I like power and should dos like god games, but i dont. iv tried many of them (black and white etc.) and they are lagging something to make it feel fun.

<3 zP

hahaha medic and heavy >____> yaoi in tf2 XDD

I personally think that the little clips you tack onto the end of your reviews detract from the humor. Other people may appreciate a sad little TF2 video, but I would rather see more hilarious review-osity. Hopefully these aren't permanent fixtures...

I must be the only person that did not like the review. I did not hate it I just it was weak compared to some of his other reviews. Not sure why but it seemed his heart was not into doing this review. IMHO it was not up to his usual standards of biting critical humor. I don't understand how people liked the TF2 short, it was not funny at all. Then again it probably due to that I am a old curmudgeon.

Man, I can't wait til Spore comes out so Yahtzee can take that one on. (for good or ill)

Loved the review - I'e always had a hate/hate relationship with God games, and this summed them up perfectly. There's no goddamn point.

Well, except Lemmings, but whatever.

And what's with all the goddamn TF:2 manlove going on? Not that I'm complaining in any way. Still, it was nice that HWG nailed that darstadly Spy.

Forwardassist:
I must be the only person that did not like the review. I did not hate it I just it was weak compared to some of his other reviews. Not sure why but it seemed his heart was not into doing this review. IMHO it was not up to his usual standards of biting critical humor.

I don't see how a critique of a game can be up for criticism itself if he addresses each issue. It's only, after all, an opinion.

The problem with a lot of God Sims these days seems to be that they're being dumbed down with each and every reiteration of it, unfortunately. Sim City 2000 was really the last complicated ( and thus, slightly entertaining ) God Simulator that I've played.

Sim games seem to be assuming that people enjoy doing work and upkeep to the point of stupid repetition. After playing the game for about an hour, really-- this sort of game gets to be very predictable and the only thing keeping me from turning off the Simulator is the promise of some artificial mayhem. ( ie. monsters flinging poo, large UFOs creating swaths of destruction within my beautiful Utopian cities in the sky whereupon dozens of my citizens fling themselves over the edge in hope of salvation. )

In regards to the TF2 short, it was entertaining, but I did appreciate the Painkiller one a little more.

Kaldaris:

Forwardassist:
I must be the only person that did not like the review. I did not hate it I just it was weak compared to some of his other reviews. Not sure why but it seemed his heart was not into doing this review. IMHO it was not up to his usual standards of biting critical humor.

I don't see how a critique of a game can be up for criticism itself if he addresses each issue. It's only, after all, an opinion.

Everyone was praising his review to the high heavens, so I offered up my opinion that the review was not as good as his others. I though the review was lacking in the humor department which is the only reason people seem to watch his reviews. If they where just regular reviews then we would not be here. I would even say this review was more of a standard review where he addresses the major issues with the game but without the humor he is so well know. But that is just my opinion.

Now about the game. The last "god" game I played was Sim 2000, so that was quite a few years ago, which I thought was fun for awhile but was way too limited in appeal. Either you like these types of games or you don't.

"...Places for them to work, day in, day out... Entertainment venues to help stop them realizing that their lives are a never-ending monotony in a walled off bubble society ruled by an omnipotent cretin. Then you wait for the game to arbitrarily throw up some more money for you to do it all over again"

Are you getting bored of this work? Looking into this that's what it seems like. Don't get me wrong, it's still brilliant, but the last bit seemed a bit similar to the picture of the employee throwing money at you or whatever it was.

The TF2 bit at the end was hilarious, but I'd rather be seeing the review. It's not unappreciated, but it seems to detract from the rest of Zero Punctuation.

Forwardassist:
Everyone was praising his review to the high heavens, so I offered up my opinion that the review was not as good as his others. I though the review was lacking in the humor department which is the only reason people seem to watch his reviews. If they where just regular reviews then we would not be here. I would even say this review was more of a standard review where he addresses the major issues with the game but without the humor he is so well know. But that is just my opinion.

Granted, but his humour isn't solely the reason some of us are here-- after all, IGN / Gamespot / etc all have massive readers and reviews with far more serious tones, so while humour in reviews is nice, it obviously isn't the only hook. For me, Yahtzee addresses the primary issues of the games he reviews in a more realistic manner ( without sugar coating it ), and gives you a blunt look at the heart of the game before you decide to fritter away your hard earned slave tokens to the masters of the gaming universe.

the last god game i played was Roller coaster tycoon but i abused my powers by putting every one
on top of a spire with only one bathroom and charging every on 100 bucks every time they needed to go but in the end all that happened was that they pissed themselves to death and my park became condemned but it was still a barrel of Laughs god i love being a bastard nice review though i wonder i my park could be call Nazi land Hmmmm.

GODWIN'S LAW GODWIN'S LAW GODWIN'S LAW GODWIN'S LAW GODWIN'S LAW GODWIN'S LAW !!!!!!

In all seriousness though, great review

"This isn't like the Sims when you can zoom in to see the tears roll down their faces every time you delete the toilets..."

Ah, the wonderful misanthropy of Yahtzee ! We would be lost without this weekly enrichment of our lives, that's for certain.

I would have to agree with a previous poster that this entry was slightly shorter than I would have liked (given a choice of three minutes of acerbic sarcasm over five and I'll always take the latter) but, as Yahtzhee have implied, there really isn't all that much to comment on for a plotless game that simply emulates urban growth. Fortunately, the extra addendum with Team Fortress was a far better add-on than the Painkiller trailer, presenting a novel and funny time-filler to give me my five-minute fix of Zero Punctuation-flavoured joy. The simplicity of the Team Fortress entry was simultaneously whimsically funny and wistfully saddening, a combination I wasn`t expecting from the pen (or rather, keyboard) corrosive and bilious British bastard extraordinaire, B. Yahtzee Crowshaw. It was a nice finish to a good review.

Overall, another witty and well-made entry into the Zero Punctuation canon. Hardly the zenith of Yahtzee`s career, but certainly not the nadir, either.

I loved the TF2 bit, but didnt like the game much though.

The review has been good like most of them. But for some reason that short in the end killed everything. The first few poses have been hilarious but the second half of the short got so annoying that I had to hold back my finger with the other hand to prevent me from stopping the clip. Maybe it's also because I don't like TF2 :D ( TF I liked but TF2 ruined it for me ).

What goes for the review I never enjoyed god games at all. They are so repeating and boring to me that I doze off in a hurry. Most FPS are more entertaining than that ( and FPS games in general tend to be fucking boring nowadays like there's a race between developers to make the most boring FPS with the biggest graphics/physics shit attached U_U ... please bring back quality games like deus-ex [SAD FACE] )

I did not expect this... and... awwwwww Yahtzee is so romantic!

Hey, finally, a review where I completely agree with Yahtzee instead of disagreeing with his grouchiness while still secretly laughing along with it.

So why'd the Spy leave the Heavy standing? He should have gone for two backstabs!

you know, I'd build the houses far away from the industrial and electric plants, then the bitches were complaining about housing costs.

I use to play Sim City 2000, im not about to go buying the new ones any time soon. Also the TF2 bit at the end, what is the title of the music? I really know it but just cant think of the title or where ive heard it before. I think its from a film.

Great review though, look forward to the next one.

Stolfus:
Awwww....The TF2 part actually made me sad :(

Definately, evil s(pies)!

The TF2 movie was great. Review also good but the TF2 short was brilliant.

For anyone who asked:

The game is Team Fortress 2, part of the Orange Box, made made Valve. The fat man is the Heavy class and the man he dances about with is the Medic class, a medic healing a heavy is a great combo as the Heavy will not die nearly as easily and as he is very slow, needs healing as he will take great damage, he also deals a lot of damage and thus why a medic needs a heavy to essentially do his killing for him and get between him and the enemy, the skinny man in blue is a Spy, insta-gib backstabs with knife, great for taking out medics leaving the heavy without healing, easier to kill.

Oh christ, I shed tears of laughter during the TF2 segment.

Can't say much about the Sim City bit. A lot of other reviews seem to have a similar problem; they just can't talk about it too much, because there isn't much to talk about.

Is it just me, or was that moon from the beginning from I wanna be the guy? If Yahtzee is playing that game, it will add to his major awesomeness. Look up the game if you want to prove you are the man, it is awesome but very hard.

Aw, the TF2 bit was adorable. I never noticed how much the Spy looks like Hugh Laurie before. Still, damn you for getting that song stuck in my head all day, Yahtzee.

If ever there was a game that needed a good asskicking, that one was it. Nicely done as always.

dukeofdaggers:
the last god game i played was Roller coaster tycoon but i abused my powers by putting every one
on top of a spire with only one bathroom and charging every on 100 bucks every time they needed to go but in the end all that happened was that they pissed themselves to death and my park became condemned but it was still a barrel of Laughs god i love being a bastard nice review though i wonder i my park could be call Nazi land Hmmmm.

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You get BANNED for a 'first!' post? Sweet! :)

On the original SimCity, after a couple of hours of playing it, I went into the save game file and just gave myself all the money in the world. It was just an RLE compressed raw dump of the game internals. After a little while of playing with that, I bumped the date up so I could get all the 'cool' stuff. Piece of cake. Built up a megalopolis and then set it on fire. Wee. Short attention span, I guess.

"You get BANNED for a 'first!' post? Sweet! :)"

Think you get banned when posting before its actually possible to have seen the entire thing.

I cried at the heavy + medic bit :( . Great review :)

Did anyone else have trouble trying to play this game? I'm surprised he didn't mention the resource hog this game is. Granted I don't have an AlienWare gaming machine ... but I've got a Celeron D 3.06 GHz with 1gb of RAM.

System requirements are:
OS: Windows(R) XP SP2 / Vista*
* Processor: 1.7 GHz Intel CPU or faster, AMD XP 2100+ or faster
* Memory: 512 MB RAM
* Hard drive: at least 2.1 GB free space
* Video card: 128 MB**
* DVD drive: 4 speed
* Sound Card - DirectX 9.0c compatible
* DirectX - Version 9.0c (included on disc)
* Input - Keyboard, Mouse

One of their tips to speed up performance:
* Adding RAM to your system is an efficient way to improve performance.

Yes, it is.

Anyway, I couldn't even get into this game because it was so chuggy and sluggish it drove me fucking nuts. There's nothing worse than a BUILDING sim that is constantly jerking all over the damn place when you're trying to place your buildings.