http://www.gamespot.com/simcity/reviews/simcity-review-6405012

Well deserved.  They downgraded an important aspect of the game.  Even though much of the game is 'pretty' and somewhat appealing, it just doesn't make up for the size of the grids/cities. 

Having to load between those small cities is more of a pain than one can endure.  Do I dare mention the DRM mess?

The game is nice but 50% of the review is based on server availability, and the offline mode should've been there seriously... it's insulting.

I honestly don't understand why they can't both have the offline mode and online mode. Isn't this how Diablo 2 was with battle.NET ?