Released almost exactly a year ago, SimCity (a revamped version of the classic city-building game by Will Wright) was a study in what might have been. The game looked beautiful and had fascinating, intricate concepts behind it, but was plagued by slow server troubles from Day One.
And, worst of all, there was no way to play it unless you were online with EA's much-maligned Origin service.
Electronic Arts, owners of Maxis, the maker of SimCity, insisted that online was the only way it was possible to play. Then it relented in January and announced that an offline, single-player mode would be forthcoming. Now it's finally here: check out the details in the video above.
See also: You Will Fail at 'SimCity', and Love Every Minute of It
If you're already a SimCity player, you don't need to do anything to get the update but log on. The new single-player mode will be added automatically. The upgrade moves a lot of the game's calculations from the EA cloud to your local machine.
"We've listened to our players," Maxis General Manager Patrick Buechner said in a statement. "Player feedback has helped us deliver 10 major gameplay updates that have improved the experience with better tuning, new features and free content."
Perhaps our one remaining frustration with the game, then, is that the city grid is so small compared to previous versions. Luckily, offline single-player mode lets you build multiple cities and allow them to interoperate.
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