Sim City Societies

[Lorini]

I don't think I want to 'beat' a city builder. I'd like to progress in a city builder, and Tilted Mill did progression very well in C4 and CotN. You only progress as far as you want to go in this game. Which sounds great in principle, but actually is pretty boring. Your city gets to 2000 population. Well you can do nothing and you'll make tons of money (under the default 'Normal' difficulty). You can then add stuff to the city by looking at the requirements and working out the logistics to build that stuff. Then you can again do nothing. It just seems like it would be a great game to play drunk because it's pretty difficult to screw the game up. I did experiment with a roadless every venue the same city and it finally stopped producing money, but that's about as far as you have to go on normal difficulty to screw things up. I'm going to do 'Challenging' difficulty later today and see how it goes.

I did decide to keep the game after all because there are times when I just want to chill and play something and SCS works great for those times. Easier on the brain than Sid Meir's Railroads, which comes in a close second.

[Reldan]

Originally Posted by BobJustBob

It's always been about providing you with a system of rules and then letting you do what you want within that system.

In this case the system doesn't really do anything though. I have no idea what it's even supposed to be simulating. My gf was playing last night and then stopped while we watched some episodes of House. I glanced over to where she had left the game running and realized I could not really tell whether she had paused it or not (I eventually noticed a small || symbol in the upper right). I also realized she would have been better off leaving it running, since when she got back everything would remain exactly the same except she'd have more money to spend.

This game is about as entertaining as painting miniatures by yourself in your basement where no one will ever see them. Except without any sense of pride or accomplishment.

It's not so much a game as it is an interactive toy, except it's not really very interactive. If this game were a toy bouncy ball, it wouldn't bounce. You'd need to drop the ball, then pick it back up again and make-believe that it was bouncing.

[Quaro]

Just skimming the impressions and the way the game is supposed to work, it sounds to me a lot like Desktop Tower Defense. You drop these things onto the world and try to optimize their overlapping radii to maximize a certain kind of damage or to slow the enemies at jus the right time. But where monsters wandering by taking damage gives you instant feedback on your choices in DTD, it sounds like the feedback is harder to see in Societies.

[Lorini]

DTD has a sense of urgency (if you don't kill everything the game is over) that this game definitely is lacking, in fact that's a lot of the problem. If you played it, you would not compare it DTD, I can promise you :)

[Rod Humble]

Originally Posted by Lorini

I did decide to keep the game after all because there are times when I just want to chill and play something and SCS works great for those times. Easier on the brain than Sid Meir's Railroads, which comes in a close second.

Thanks Lorini. Just FYI we are of course reading all player comments and feedback. It really helps as we go forward with SCS to see which elements players like and which they dont.

[Reldan]

What would make this game cool would be if there was some plan for a product that worked with this one to say, render your city in <insert 3d engine here> and let you go through it on foot.

The game already feels and plays like some sort of level designer for another game. It's just missing the other game. I seem to recall SimCopter used to let you fly around in cities you made in SimCity 2000. Maybe something like that.

[DeepT]

This is good to know Rod, that you, Tilted Mill, is watching and hopefully taking notes. I have already posted a few of my key desires for games like this, I just hope that the ideas are not logistically impossible to do given your time, funding, and publisher willingness. At least for myself, the features I asked for, would make a city builder super fun.

One caveat, however, are some things that would not be 'fun' for me:

1. Random disasters. It isn't fun for me when a random tornado rips through my town, or an earth quake happens and the like. For me, that is just annoying and doesn't add to the 'game play' experience, unless it is tied to a choice I made. IE: If I choose a tropical island with a volcano on it know that the volcano is active, but the island is beautiful and I have to beat the tourists off with a stick, then that is ok. It is part of the 'bargain' of choosing that island.

2. Pointless, artificial goals. While I know this was a core mechanic of the Cesar games to some degree, the last one went a bit far. Cesar demands 50 sporks... Cesar demands 60 furniture... Cesar demands 20 spears and 16 fluffy kittens... It was one thing to start a scenario and be told that this area is wine country and Rome expect regular shipments of wine, and it is quite another to have a bunch of random shit being asked for.

3. Starting from scratch over and over. This stems from each scenario being a new city and then having to build up a new city each time before you actually begin to deal with the special challenges of the scenario. Granted, once in a while you are promoted, and move, but if there are 50 scenarios, there shouldn't be 50 cities, or at least you should start of with a fairly well built functioning city if you are going to be changing cities frequently.

[Lorini]

I thought I'd made this clear but there are no goals in this game. Unless you count the achievements but you can ignore them entirely. I seriously doubt they will add goals to the game, it would be completely out of place. They have random events, but just like Sim City, you choose the disasters. You always start over. Since you can end the game in 5 minutes if you want, why wouldn't you start over? You are supposed to be making these different types of cities, not one huge mega city like in Sim City. There also are no scenarios and therefore no challenges to them.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally Posted by Lorini

I thought I'd made this clear but there are no goals in this game. Unless you count the achievments but you can ignore them entirely. I seriously doubt they will add goals to the game, it would be completely out of place. They have random events, but just like Sim City, you choose the disasters.

Just out of curiosity, what did you feel the goals in SimCity were, that are lacking from this game?

Jon

[Reldan]

What's the goal of a Chia Pet? Most would say it is to take something barren and grow grassy "hair" on it. Not really a game so much as something interesting to do.

There are two ways to accomplish this:

The "simulation" way is to add water and watch the grass grow, springing to life like magic.

The "Sim City Societies" way is to take already grown blades of grass and then scotch tape them to the Chia Pet until A) you finish covering everything or B) you get bored.

For most people I think the first method is more fun than the second.

[Jab2565]

Imo there are 2 equally viable goals for a city builder, aesthetics and challenge. Aesthetics is about creating a city that looks good, or in a particular style. Something that you could take a screenshot of and put on a postcard and say "wish you were here". From screenshots and impressions SCS nails this goal to a tee.

Challenge is about building a city that works, traffic runs on time everyone has an education and so on. For example building an ant farm and having the entire society work and grow. Or in the case of Cotn or Caesar 4 completing goals and scenarios or even accomplishing something big. For example building a monument in Cotn while keeping your city going, or even mini achievements.

Challenge is where SCS seems to stumble, according to reviews. Your not really building a city to do or meet anything and while the idea of unlocking buildings thru achievements is great it's not enough for a challenge. Even if you just went with a Civ style of having a score attached to your city based on how well it is would have been something. It really looks like we have half a game, it meets one goal and fails the other.

[Lorini]

Originally Posted by Jon Shafer

Just out of curiosity, what did you feel the goals in SimCity were, that are lacking from this game?

Jon

I don't recall saying that SimCity had goals per se, although there is certainly a much greater sense of urgency in SimCity. I also do recall saying that SimCity is probably my least favorite city builder, preferring the scenario/goal based games like CotN and C4. OTOH, if I were to equate 'something to strive for' with 'goals' then SimCity is very specific in what you need to do to. There's a demand graph showing what the sims need, messages, advisors, etc. Not much of that is present in SimCity Societies and since the game is so easy, I don't think it would matter much if it did. For example, SimCity 4 will tell you that there is demand for the different zones and then you get a number of choices in what to do about that. If you didn't respond to the demand, something would happen in the game, to show that you weren't responding. In this game, your city's been going on for 2 hours and there's nothing, no needs, anything. The game would need to be changed significantly it seems to me for it to be close to how SimCity 4 portrays what you need to do at any given time.

If I were going to change this game, I'd like to see a lot more feedback. For example, you have no idea where your money is going or where your income is coming from. You just look at a building, see how much it makes with maximum employment, and build it. And that's it. You also aren't given any feedback about how far along you are in developing the city you want. For example, I'm developing a Capitalist city. I keep waiting for the streets to be something different than the default streets because the manual says this can happen. It's not happening. I have no idea why not. I'd also like to see a lot more transportation choices like Rush Hour did for SimCity 4.

Rod et al, thanks for listening to the feedback. I just think you guys (although I'm not sure who is representing which company) can do a lot and be the Tilted Mill/EA we know and love (well at least the Tilted Mill part :)

[Damien Neil]

SimCity had the gotta. It's time for dinner...but you've gotta get power in for that new apartment block. You should call your girlfriend...but you've gotta look over your transit infrastructure to see if you can fix that downtown gridlock. You need to finish that paper that's due tomorrow...but you've gotta beef up your police coverage. It's quarter to three and you should have been in bed hours ago...but you've gotta see what's going to happen next.

SimCity Societies has no gotta.

There's just something lacking in there. I think it might be the direct control; in SimCity, you can drop down a lovely housing zone and watch it turn into a slum. The city hasn't done what you wanted, and now you've got to go look through the various interlocking parts to see where you've gone wrong. Is it crime? Pollution? Lack of access to services? What's wrong, and can you fix it? My feeble poking at Societies hasn't turned up anything like that--I say that I want an apartment block, and boom, there's an apartment block. The city isn't fighting me.

SimCity makes me feel like a real-world mayor or urban planner. The cities I build are living things, born from my design, but independent of it. My tools can twist in my hand and produce unintended, undesired results. My small town grows, and traffic congestion suddenly eats my transit system alive. I could widen the roads...but there's no space for them. Do I bulldoze the heart of my city? I'm facing the problems that New York and San Francisco have grappled with, and I'm loving every second of it.

Societies, alas, makes me feel more like a kid with a pile of Playskool toys. "Build any city you want! We'll help you!"

[ravenight]

I'm curious if those who are finding the game boringly easy have tried playing on "challenging" difficulty. The main pushbacks in the game are the happiness of Sims and how much you can spend in a given amount of time, both of which are adjusted significantly on the harder difficulty.

[Damien Neil]

I haven't tried "challenging".

I don't think that making things harder would make me happier, however. My problem isn't just that it's easy to do things, it's that I have no motivation to do things.

SimCity surprises me. In between my beautiful vision and the outcome, there's a vast gap of unexpected consequences. Those consequences are the result of many interlocking parts--traffic, pollution, crime, population density, the power grid, and so on. Each piece ties into each other piece. Push at one part of the system and things shift elsewhere. You can spend forever trying to nudge things into your desired configuration.

Maybe I'm missing the depth in Societies--I freely admit that I haven't played enough to really critique the game. (That's the problem: I just don't feel the motivation to play.) What I've seen, however, feels less dynamic; there seems to be less room for unintended consequences, and less room for entertaining failure.

Consider another city builder: Dwarf Fortress. Think of all the ways that things can go wrong: Goblins steal the children, you run out of beer, your best metalsmith goes insane and kills half your people before being put down, tentacle demons are eating the rest, and then the entire fortress floods and everone dies. Awesome!

[Sam Jones]

Originally Posted by Damien Neil

Societies, alas, makes me feel more like a kid with a pile of Playskool toys. "Build any city you want! We'll help you!"

What you said, although I likened it to building a lego town. I put about five hours into SCS and I'm done with it. There's no discernable game in there, just painting a landscape with buildings, with few, if any, restraints or meaningful choices to be made.

I'm also a little sad that for a game titled "Societies", there is virtually no focus on that aspect at all. The Sims don't really relate to each other in any meaningful way, with no dependencies or interaction between social strata. SCS just seems to be a missed opportunity for Tilted Mill to expand and improve on the work they did with CotN, and for EA to find a compelling middle ground between the full Sim City games and The Sims.

[DeepT]

Even if they brought it up to the level of SimCity, I wouldn't be happy because I have "been there, done that", although I would get some entertainment value out of it.

I liked SimCity 4 and the only thing that really annoyed me there was the neighboring city mechanic. That was where your city couldn't grow past a point without nearby cities of a certain level. You had to jump around a lot and grow like 5 cities instead of just one. Some of it's goals, though, were those super-cool rare buildings that would spawn.

If you had simply made SC5 and added the theme and influence thing and gotten rid of the regional dependency, I would have liked it. Ill grant you it is not nearly everything I would have wanted, but it still would be worth playing for a fairly long time. In fact, does anyone know if there is a patch / mod for SC4 that removes the regional thing? If there is, I may reinstall it and play it.

[Jeff Fiske]

When attempting to make an Industrial, Cyberpunk, or Authoritarian society on challenging mode, you are forced into paying much more attention to the how's, why's and what's happening, as well as frequently being too low on Simoleons to do what you want.

Playing challenging in Romantic, Capitalist or a few other societies, is frankly not going to provide that sort of pushback.

I think part of the problem here is in the past all city building games have been about money. Once you start turning a profit, the game sort of takes off and in a way you win the moment you turn a profit. That is not true in SCS, because you can start turning a profit on day one and there is no maintenance to subtract from your treasury. To some of us so trained by previous city builders, 'the challenge' is gone very early and you can feel like 'you won' right away. But this is not a game about making money.

SCS is about what you do with your money. What you choose to build to, what city do you want to build?

Back to challenges & Goals-
When you play one of the top three societies on this post you effectively do need pay ongoing maintenance costs because you are constantly using different building actions to keep your city afloat. So far, people who have gone back and played these societies, with that difficulty, have in fact had a very different emotional reaction to the game than they had initially.

I am not saying this changes some of the fundamental aspects that some of you may be taking issue with- but you may have missed trying to play the game this way, and may find it more rewarding.

[BobJustBob]

Oh shit, this is fun. I did the tutorial and then ran out of money going for the first trophy. Once I got a little money back I built some high-income buildings, but they produced crime so I had to place some law enforcement. Then one of my buildings caught fire so I had to place a fire station to put out the fire then a civic whatever to send out a work crew to make the building livable again. When is the game supposed to turn into this unrestricted playground you guys are talking about?

Also I made a zombie, who can turn other Sims into zombies. My first goal is clear: I shall found Zombietown, USA.

[smr]

Originally Posted by DeepT

The idea is this: Instead of just starting off in the modern era, why not start off in a past age where there were no cars, plumbing, power plants, etc. Then you allow time to move forward and slowly introduce new technology. You can't really build Rome or Paris by starting off in the 20th century. You would have to start off in the days of Rome. So now you made Roman roads for roman carts and wagons, with other roman kinds of buildings. You have a pretty well planned out city, but then the industrial revolution comes. Now you need to make room for railroads, which you hadn't planned on. You need access to rivers for better commerce. Now electricity is introduced, buildings start to need power. Then cars show up. Your roads were not built for cars, your city streets are narrow, you just can't repave cobblestone roads because they are still to narrow. Etc... Etc... I think that is where the next gen city builders need to go. Everything has been frozen in time for these games. Your in ancient Egypt, Greece or Rome. You never move forward and have to deal with the challenges that new technology brings. Drive around Italy and you will see how cities were NOT designed with cars in mind. These are the 'next gen' challenges city builders should shoot for.

Just wanted to quote this and let any devs on this board know that I would play the ever-loving fuck out of this game. Hell, I miss the fact that the original SimCity had a Roman and, I think, Wild West tile set that you could switch to to really poorly simulate such an effect.

[BobJustBob]

Hm, my zombie town was a bust. Those guys expire too quickly, even the ones created from regular Sims.

Then I found the .cs files in the game directory and modified the files to make zombies unstoppable, but all my modifications were apparently ignored. I know it could read them because I first tried backing up the file in the same directory and it gave me errors on startup because of the duplicate declarations. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

[Chuck Jordan]

Originally Posted by BobJustBob

When is the game supposed to turn into this unrestricted playground you guys are talking about?

About 45 minutes into my second city, unfortunately, when I placed the fourth identical bank in my city and it awarded me the super-unique bank... which I could then just place somewhere else. And I had over 150,000 simoleons in the bank, and had already covered over fifty percent of my map with buildings and placed the same Brownstone a dozen times and the same Loft a dozen times.

But then it popped up 5 messages letting me know I'd been awarded five nearly-identical yurts I could place wherever I wanted, so there's that.

I hate to say it, but I just keep waiting for the game to start. I've never been a huge fan of all the needless infrastructure in SimCity games; laying pipes and power lines was never a big draw for me, so I like SCS's approach of building up a universal power meter and just focusing on the buildings.

But the buildings themselves don't do anything interesting. It's not a case of my not being able to set goals for myself; I can still spend hours in front of the Sims 2 setting up direct goals or making up little sub-stories and watching them play out. In SCS, I never get the feeling that anything is playing out or any behavior is emerging. I'm just plopping buildings down to make arbitrary numbers go up.

It sure is pretty, though. You can rotate the camera down at near-street level and catch a really nice shot of your city that's exactly what I'd been hoping to see since SimCity 3000. I just wish it weren't so static.

[cliffski]

I'm just getting stuck into my first proper city, and totally loving this game so far. There seems to be tons to do, lots of variety and I love the new approach. No more worrying about plumbing means its way better, and the real 3D vs the stuck camera of SC4 is an improvement. I'm not sure why so many reviewers are down on it tbh.

[DeepT]

I have a confession to make. Because I really didn't want to fork out another 50 bucks for another game I didn't think I would get much play-time out of, I warez it. My intent was that if I really liked the game, I would actually buy it.

I played it for about 6 hours, maybe a few more, its hard to tell how much actual game time got because of several crashes. Anyway, it was clear I really didn't like the game. Well that isn't quite right to say I didn't like the "game" because it is, in no way, a game. I am not sure Id call it a 'toy' either, because even toys seem to offer some kind of challenge, be it Lego's allowing you to make something really cool, or a puzzle to solve or whatever.

I am not sure what SimCity Societies is, or what it is supposed to be. The one thing it isn't, is fun, at least to me. I really tried to find fun in it. Even trying for the unlocks didn't matter because the unlocks were not interesting. I had more money then I knew what to do with despite my city being spiritually based (and avoiding all the religious structures which left nearly no spiritual buildings to place) and somewhat knowledge based.

I think everyone was ecstatic and just with the speed cranked up, I was making money faster then I could spend it. Sure I could have turned the difficulty up, which maybe would have given me some happy people or content people instead of ecstatic ones, but even then since I had so much money I would have just thrown down 50 'venues' to make them ecstatic again.

There is no 'game' in that game. I can't understand how anyone who made it would genuinely play it and see it as a fun game. I can understand things not being to one's taste. I may have zero interest in Madden 07, but I could at least see that people who liked football games might like it. It just boggles me to see a high profile game (not as high as Bioshock and whatnot, but within the genera of City Builders) being made so 'empty' and that nobody noticed.

When I worked at a game company, people would delude themselves telling each other how awesome the game we were working on was. The excuse I had was that nobody had actually made a good game before, it was a small potatoes company thinking they actually had talent. It was a bunch of people stroking each other's egos, while some of us were doing all we could to contain our bile and contempt. Tilted Mill has made good games, they comprise of people from the company that made Cesar III, Pharaoh, Zeus, etc... Even CotN which was not to my tastes, was still a solid city builder. It wasn't for me, but I could see how people would like it. Yet, how did Sim City societies happen? With all that experience and talent, what went wrong? How could the vapid game-play of SCS go completely unnoticed? Whomever the single person was, or perhaps the very small group of people that was the 'vision' (assuming it was mostly realized) behind SCS needs to get out of the game business. He/She/They have no talent in this area. Zero, zip, nada. Their calling in life is somewhere else. Not here.

Yes, I know. I am a pompous ass. Who am I to question any of this? If you have been around the forums for a while, you should know I am some kind of opinionated lunatic according to the 'group think' of QT3. You should also know that I am a gamer. I am a gamer that has been around for a long time, before games even had 'pixels' and were just text. I have played a metric fuck-ton of games, and AFAIK every city builder ever made. I am sure I must have missed some, but I sure as hell do not know of any.

I am the guy you are tying to sell your game too. I am your customer. I am the choice demographic, the 'single white male' with a lot of discretionary income and plenty of time to waste. That is why you should care what I say, because I am the one who can, if I choose to, buy your game without a second thought.

In any case, despite having 'warezed' SCS, I have decided that not only will I not buy it at ANY price (even for $5 in the bargain bin), that this game isn't even worth the disk space to have it installed. Seriously, I got like 260 gigs of FREE space and the 2gigs (or whatever) this game takes on my HDD is better reclaimed, then to even be left with SCS installed. The game has been completely purged from my system, even the ISO and torrent have been nuked. I am so glad I didn't spend $50+ on this game. I have so many games I have bought that were not worth the asking price. Right next to my computer I have a stack of games that probably cost $400, and the oldest game in that stack is only a few months old. At least all of them offered some value to me even though I didn't think they were worth the asking price.

I need to do this more often, or perhaps, as a rule. Try before you buy. Id definitely not spend nearly as much on games as I currently do, and I have no doubt that if I really did like a game, I would spend the money for it.

Despite my opinion that this game will tank (didn't I already say that in this thread, or was that in another thread about another game?), I hope that the idea behind SCS survives and that EA / TM re-think the game and end up spending most of their time putting in game-play for the sequel or whatever the next 'city' game is. You could totally keep the everything you have in SCS and add nothing but game-play for the next year without any more graphics / sound and still end up with a very good game. It wouldn't hurt to add more content, it just wouldn't help at this point. Adding 10,000 new buildings would do absolutely nothing to increase the appeal or 'fun factor' of this game.

If you feel compelled to add new buildings, I have a request. Add a whole bunch of spiritual buildings that have NOTHING to do with religion. I can see how you would confuse the two, but spirituality really has nothing to do with religion. If you pardon the snark, religious buildings really belong to the authoritarian set, not the spiritual one. You know, OBEY OBEY OBEY (Obey God, Obey the supreme leader, Obey Big Brother, etc...) fits very well in the authoritarian state.

[Allagash]

Originally Posted by DeepT

I am the guy you are tying to sell your game too. I am your customer. I am the choice demographic, the 'single white male' with a lot of discretionary income and plenty of time to waste. That is why you should care what I say, because I am the one who can, if I choose to, buy your game without a second thought.

But you didn't buy the game. You warezed it, and played it for not one, not two, not four hours, but "for about 6 hours, maybe a few more."

Tilted Mill should listen to you...why? A vague promise that maybe, possibly, you'd buy their game after you stole it? I don't think so.

[TomChick]

Originally Posted by DeepT

I have a confession to make. Because I really didn't want to fork out another 50 bucks for another game I didn't think I would get much play-time out of, I warez it.

Are you aware that the game's developer posts on this forum, as well as someone from its publisher? In other words, the people from whom you stole?

Originally Posted by DeepT

When I worked at a game company...

So not only did you steal from them, you knew full well what it was like from where they're sitting?

Originally Posted by DeepT

I am the guy you are tying to sell your game too.

Fat lot of good that did them.

Originally Posted by DeepT

I am your customer.

The fuck you are. You're no more their customer than a shoplifter is the customer of the store he rips off.

Originally Posted by DeepT

I am the choice demographic, the 'single white male' with a lot of discretionary income...

But apparently not enough to actually pay for the games you play.

Originally Posted by DeepT

I need to do this more often, or perhaps, as a rule. Try before you buy.

Have at it, jackass. But you won't be posting on my forums to crow about it.

-Tom

[jellyfish]

Okay, so that DeepT guy sinned twice. First by committing the violation and second by admitting to it. But why such a harsh response? Don't others do 'that' occasionally on this board as well? Maybe I am wrong in which case I will shut up now. Also, I think he made some interesting points about a kind of yes men mentality where a group deludes itself into thinking their product is better than it really is and so on. So what if he started his post in too provocative a fashion. There was still some other content in there worth addressing, wasn't there? Unless I am wrong in which case I will shut up now.

[gamadict]

Sure wish they'd put a demo out for this thing so I could properly bash it without resorting to piracy

[TomChick]

Originally Posted by jellyfish

But why such a harsh response? Don't others do 'that' occasionally on this board as well?

If they do, they do it with some degree of discretion and hopefully shame. They certainly don't brag about it in a thread where the publisher and developer of the stolen game have posted articulate and courteous comments.

This is a forum with lots of folks who make a living in the games industry. I don't take kindly to people who damage our industry by stealing from it.

-Tom

[cliffski]

Tom you are my new hero, I agree with you 100% and salute you for saying what you think. The fact that this guy actually worked from a games company is even worse. We all know some idiots at game companies are responsible for warez leaks. It's frankly amazing.

I admit, I had concerns about this game, due to the poor reviews, but I bought it anyway because I loved previous sim city games, and the idea of mixing mroe social concepts into it really appeals to me. Plus I wanted to check out any large scale simulation game as its my area anyway.

I am genuinely, really seriously surprised at how much i like the game. Maybe I went in with low expectations, but I'm pretty darned happy. All the crappy bits of sim city (who cares about plumbing?) are gone, and the new building styles are simply awesome. Plus, how have we missed the fact that this is the first sim city game with a full free 3D camera?

No it is not perfect. It *is* a bit too easy, even on challenging, and there is a lack of public transport options for my liking (unless they unlock later?). Personally I dislike the mechanic of unlocking being a one-shot rather than per-game deal, but It's hardly a deal breaker. The graphics are nice, but not awesome, and post-COD4 I have stupidly high standards for 3D world graphics.
But is it worth the money? Hell yeah. It's not COD 4 or Bioshock, but its is a well-made game, with zero bugs that I've encountered, and I can see me playing it for quite a while, specially if mod makers do their work.

BTW, if you play a game for 6 hours, you got 6 hours fun from it. If it sucked, you would stop after one hour. Most game demos are under 1 hour. If past an hour you are still playing, you are just bullshitting when you say its worthless, unless you value your time as worthless too.
I really WOULD advise them to have released a demo on release day. I think it would generate tons more sales. Every games company should do a 0day demo, if only to take away another excuse for the warez crowd.