Customer Reviews

SimCity 4

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(37)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

Unlike some people who have the crazy idea of this being the same old thing trust me it's not. I was at the Ea exhibition in May and I was one of the lucky people who got to test the game. This game is incredible. The Graphics are very detailed and realistic. You can build more than one city on the same map. Not to mention importing your own Sims into the game. At The exhibition I saw that your city just didn't sleep like in SimCity 3000. You see your people walking about and running their daily lives, like walking their dogs, Driving to the supermarket, Driving their kids to school even going to church!

The biggest improvement that I saw in SimCity 4 were the disasters. In SimCity 3000 you had like what? 4? In SimCity 4 you get over eight disasters. The best part is that you can control and decide where your Tornado goes. You also get Volcanoes that erupt, Erathquakes that bury houses and split open the earth, Meteor showers that leave everlasting craters and
Lightning Bolts, Fires, Riots, Floods, Mudslides, Bank Robberies and even Car chases. You get to choose you terrian styles. You can ahve an African style with Rhino's and Giraffes. Sometimes they can even stampede into your city.

The other great thing about SimCity 4 is the terrian tools. You can sculpt gorges, Laggons, Cliffs, Craters, Valleys and even place galiciers. Then you have time settings. A 1900's Chicago style, A 1950'S Ne York Style, And a 2000 Houston Style. Then there is the constructions of buildings. When you build your buildings they just don't appear out of no where tou actually see your sims get into their work trucks and start to construct the building. And if the building is of no use anmore it decays and doesn't turn into a huge big purple borded up mess. Then if you want to destroy or knock down a building it just doesn't dissapear, you can actually impload or expload your building from any side you want. There are no old buildings from SimCity 3000, There are totally new realistic looking buildings in SimCity 4.

To me all this extra stuff makes this game totally anew. You won't get board if you like Simulation games.

SimCity 4 is the latest in the long-survived SimCity series of games. Much like the others, the goal of the game is to contruct a burgeoning metropolis from the ground up. There are no set goals or parameters, it is very much like a sandbox where you can dictate your own expectations and try to meet them.

As the Mayor, you lay roads and zone land for development as residential, commercial, industrial, seaport, airport, and others. You build power plants and water pumping stations. You approve and reject city ordinances, keep the city safe from crime with police stations, and entertain your people with massive stadiums. All while keeping an eye on your annual income. Make no mistake - it's complicated, filled with micromanagement, and sometimes feels more like "work" than a "game." But the rewards for your labor are pleasant to watch.

From SimCity 3000, SimCity 4 has several major deviations - for better and for worse. Here's a brief rundown of them:

- In a nod to The Sims (which you can also import into your city), SimCity 4's world is somewhat persistent. You have a large "world" to develop and any given SimCity occupies a space in this world. But, they are all interconnected. The problem here is that "neighbor deals" - a substantial source of income in previous games - suddenly cease exist. You are responsible for building your neighboring cities. It would have been much cooler if the map was already dominated by a few larger cities. On the other hand, specialization is key as the world grows. You'll find yourself building "the industrial city," the sleepy "residential city," and so forth. Another annoying side effect of the world system is that backing up your cities and work is rather strange - as you have to dig around in the game directories to figure out where the heck they stored your work.

- There is only one difficulty level, and it starts tough. In some ways, I appreciate this. Early on, you have to be a serious penny-pincher, viciously slashing funding for schools and other public services just to make ends meet and become profitable. This feels much more realistic as most modern US cities face the same troubles. On the other hand, it makes the game hostile to newcomers, and don't expect those tremendous skyscrapers to appear anytime soon. You'll be the proud Mayor of a slum for a while.

- The game makes a distinction between streets and roads. It goes insofar as to automatically place the weaker of the two when you zone land. The problem is, the automatic placement doesn't always make the best use of land, nor jive with your intentions or existing road layouts. You can't turn off this "feature" either, which is disappointing.

- On the flip side, the game has a neat implemention of day and night cycles. Perhaps the coolest aspect of the game, early in the morning you witness a mass exodus of automobiles and vehicles from the residential zones to the industrial zones. As night falls, the street lamps and headlights turn on and the exodus happens in reverse. It's really a sight to behold and a testament to some of the intricate programming that's behind the game.

However the game was, and still is, quite buggy. While recent patches have improved its stability, SimCity 4 is still quite vulnerable. There have been cases where it would crash the venerable Windows XP such that a reset was necessary. The game is also on the sluggish side, so you'll want a high-end computer for this one. This thing taxes my machine more than Unreal Tournament 2003 does!

It's for these reasons that I find SimCity 4 a difficult game to judge. While I appreciate the inspired focus and vision of the game and just how beautifully many parts came together, the performance and stability issues cannot be ignored. So, in closing, I rate this game as many gaming magazines have - giving Maxis the benefit of the doubt and an above-average rating. Hopefully they'll iron out the last of the severe bugs in future patches.

By the way, I'd like to make special note of the game's music. SimCity 4 has an absolutely fabulous soundtrack that easily ranks as one of the best I've heard in a long while, surpassing even its predecessor in my opinion. You want to listen to the included MP3s outside of the game - it's that amazing. From hurried rush hour beats to soaring atmospheric pieces, this soundtrack is breathtaking!

I've had most of the previous simcity versions.

Simcity4 is much more of a 'simulator' and less of a 'game' than the previous versions.

It will tax your ability to get a city going profitably. It requires fine tuned management of resources and attention to detail, and will take time.

The graphics are beautiful and engaging. It runs smoothly on my pentium4 system with a ge4 4200 graphics card.

The interface is logically laid out and provides all (if not more) of the information you need to manage the city.

I like the "regional" concept. You can start more than one city on the map, interconnect them, and switch back and forth to work on them. You have full capability to build your own regions and can modify the terrain in endless ways.

Maxis seems to have pitched this as a simulator, in that the amount of start up dollars is fixed, there is no 'difficulty' option, and if you overbuild your infrastructure of power, water, transportation, safety etc too early you will certainly run out of money. The tax base builds slowly and the overhead costs will far exceed that if you're not a prudent manager!

This game is built for those with an obsessive streak, but for those it is fantastic. It has a consistent and rigorous set of rules that make sense during play. For those with a predominant 'gaming' view, on the other hand, it may well be slow and boring.

This is a well designed, graphically beautiful game that can keep you "busy" for hours slaving away to build a viable city. It's focus is simulation, not amusement.

I purchased this game a few months ago and only recently started to really get playing. My first word of advice: Go to SimCity.com and check the BBS. Currently, Maxis/EA updates the board there to tell when the second patch of this game will be out. This patch is geared toward fixing some of the larger bugs in the game (for example, you can have schools and hospitals all over the city but when you look at the color coded view to see where education/health is lacking, the entire city is in red indicating poor education and health). The board is filled with many unhappy SC4 customers and longtime SC players who have refused to continue playing this game without the patch. Part of their frustration is that EA keeps posting updates that say "soon" - then "very soon" and most recently (today), "...very, very soon." Make sure this patch is out before you buy the game not because the game is currently unplayable but simply because you won't go through some of the frustration - and the price may drop.

On to the review. The graphics really are incredible. Downloading new buildings makes for a very diverse looking city, too. The cons are that you can't save your city's progress. That is frustrating. I'd like to have the same base city and then go in completely different directions with it. I can't do that wish a simple save. Also, like someone else said, it would be nice to have some campaigns.

I hate to only bring out the negative, though. There are good things about this game that will only get better with the patch. It does require some serious micro-management. The gameplay is great - make sure you have a great system running it.

Best advice: Wait for patch 2 before purchasing.

Sadly, most of the bad reviews (written by critical thinkers) that you're seeing here for SimCity 4 are accurate. I've been a SimCity fan ever since its earliest versions back in the early 90's. After mastering each version, I always look forward to what great new innovations the Maxis folks can come up with next. There are some excellent new features to SimCity 4, of course. The buildings look more futuristic and realistic, the disasters are cooler, and the ability to tie multiple cities into a regional entity is a real plus. The biggest improvement is with landscaping. In the "terraforming" mode you are able to create remarkable mountains and valleys, cliffs and canyons, resulting in eye-catching landscapes that the Sims can build upon in architecturally intriguing ways.

That's the end of the favorable portion of my review. See the other reviews here for the never-ending list of programming glitches that bog down this game. Here are some problems I've been having. The "rotate" buttons work in the wrong directions, when you are told to dispatch firemen or police to a disaster area you can't see where the disaster is, and residential units that are right next to the street say they don't have road access. One enhancement that I do not like is the automatic streets that appear when you lay down large zoning areas. These result in a messy traffic pattern with streets that may not even be connected to others, and then you have to remove zoned areas that you just spent money building. And finally there is the response time and program performance. Sure I don't have the most powerful computer in the world, but it's among the better models that regular consumers can get in the home computer market. That makes me part of the typical SimCity audience, so a game that doesn't freeze up my computer on a regular basis shouldn't be too much to ask for. Plus the installation took twenty minutes and three restarts.

Whoever made the decision at Maxis/EA to release this game in its current state made a really bad management decision. There are so many programming glitches that this product should not be in the hands of the public. Other folks here have suggested that you wait until a repaired or updated version of SimCity 4 is released. I don't disagree with them.

I have played Sim City since SC2000 and enjoyed the new versions as they hit they market. Sim City 4 is no different. Unlike a lot of other reviewers the game runs smoothly on my PC. There is an appearance that the game does runs slow, however I think it is an illusion. I am able to scroll, save, reload, zoom in and out without any problems.

What I did not like about any of the previous versions and perhaps this one too, is that the same building designs are used over and over again for the RCI zones. In real city every high school, police station, hospital, and house looks different, (...well with the exception of Kaufman and Broad homes.) However Sim City 4 does introduce a new variety of diveristy of buildings that you place in attempt to make the city not appear so copy and paste like.

This game is difficult to play. If you had a challenge with the budget in Sim City 3000 at first, this version will make you cry at times. No matter how many times you start a new city you are going into the red most of the time. The problem is you get this urge to develop your city very quickly. This version is not meant to paint the town but rather actually manage and budget. Here is an example of budget fustration. Sims pay taxes so that services can be paid for, only it seems it takes more sims than normal to get the services needed. By the time you have the budget to place your elementry school you realize that it does not cover all the areas you built up just to get the school funded. The same goes for fire, police, health not mention you are paying upkeep on all the roads, pipes, electrical power generated, garbage being haualed away and much more. This presents a different paradigm compared to other previous versions. If only we could implement a sales tax!

One of the greatest improvements to Sim City is the ability to create interdependent cities within regions. If you think the budget is a challenge then building interdependent cities will give you a run for your money too. In one game I built one city diverse with all the RCI zones. One neighboring city which purchased electricity from diverse city and had no industry zones. The sims in this city relied on the road connections to get the industrial zones in the diverse city. Next door to both of these cities was another city with industrial zones only. This city provided extra jobs for the city with only residential and commerical zones but also provided a means to haul garbage out of the diverse city. Needless to say the industrial city is running out of money very quickly since there are no sims actually living it. I'll probably have to start that city over again.

The game allows the user to shape each and every region as he or she sees fit. As you load an adjacent region the game gives you the opportunity to reconcile elevation and water with the previous adjacent region you just got finished saving. That way in region view the landscape looks smooth and consistent. The tools to mold the landscape provide good chioces, but are not fine tuned to detail but rather broad strokes.

All in all I recommend Sim City 4 and give it 4 stars. As long as the game provides me the challenge to build a sucessful city with a balanced and prospering budget, be able to experiment with a variety of ideas and shape entire regions with creativity then I'll keep playing this incarnation of Sim City for a very long time.

Let me just say that I love SIM games. I have them all. I was looking forward to SimCity4 coming out. I even pre-ordered it.

It loaded fine. I've had no crashes, etc.

Pros:
-The coolest graphics I've ever seen. Seeing the little guys actually build their houses is cute.
-The sound effects and music are wonderful. (Some of the backround music could be sold as separate CD's, it's so good.)
-The terrain building mode is enjoyable.
-The disasters are beautiful. Love those volcanos!!

Cons:
-Aside from the graphics, there is nothing really new here.
I was bored after 2 hours. I've tried playing 3 or 4 times for a few hours each time hoping for some actual entertainment, but I haven't found any. Once your city is built, then there is little control over anything. You just sit back and watch... la la la.
-There's no way to control your economy (bring in new businesses at any kind of decent rate) to generate money.
-After you create the animal habitats for your new city, they disappear. They run around for a while, then run off of the edge of the city, never to be seen again. The only place I've ever seen them is in "God" mode, never in the "Mayor" mode. What's the point of that?

Overall, I regret shelling out $.. for this game. I could've waited and gotten it for $.. in a month. My only hope is that Maxis releases some sort of expansion pack that allows for more activities the player can do in the game.

Once again, Maxis has far outdone its previous version of Sim City. Sim City 4 looks to be one of the top selling games of the year, along with The Sims Online.

The graphics for this game are absolutely incredible. You can edit the terrain almost any way that you please. You can add mountains and cliffs and lagoons and even volcanoes!

Maxis is taking full advantage of its unprecedented sucess of The Sims game by incorporating them into Sim City 4. You can import your Sims into Sim City 4 and they will talk to you and complain about how bad your city is or compliment you about what a great mayor you are. As your Sims move away or die or something, their kids will grow up and continue to live in your city so you can have multi-generation families living in your city.

This game is much more complex than even Sim City 3000. The RCI meter is replaced with a meter with about 12 different things. The programmers have updated the game with even more complex algorithms for city growth and etc.

From the looks of the amazing graphics and other things I have heard about this game, I imagine it will have pretty steep PC requirements, but I can assure you, this game will be the most amazing Sim City game to date.

Well, what can I say? Sim city 4 has to be the best Simulation game in the Sim City franchise so far. The gameplay is very similar to its prior versions, however vastly improved. Various new options include new advisors(they really help you for a change), new areas to explore and lots more.

The graphics are superb. Its not like a simulation anymore, its more of a reality. You can actually see sims move around, talking to eachother, cars overtaking and having accidents, aircraft's taking off and landing in exactly the same way they do in reality and cruising over the clouds. Its amazing. There are also night and day effects which is a swell idea. Street lamps, house lights go on at night, giving a beautiful effect to your city. You can send Police Cruisers to make sure law and order is preserved. You have new God Like powers, such as manually changng night to day and vice versa, making storms and natural disasters. Beautifully renderd landscapes such as canyons, mountains and water effects add to realism.

System requirments are pretty high. Im playing Sim City 4 on a 1.6 Ghz P4, 356MB ram and a GForce4 64MB. It tends to get a bit slow when scrolling around in dense areas. Besides that, it works perfectly!

Sim City 4 has these Pros and Cons:

Pros:
Outstanding Graphics
Landscape "God-mode"
Realistic looking terrain
Expansive world in which to create multiple cities and work them in unison.
Import "The Sims"
Stunning disasters (check out the lightning bolt!)
Best Mayor interface ever
Lots of cool features like beaches, new landmarks, and people actually build on cliffs this time.
Whenever the website is up, you'll be able to d/l scenarios.

Now for the Cons:
No Building Architect tool.
Buildings are not exchangable or customizable.
The website Simcity4.com is behind schedule.

Be forewarned:
At the release of Sim City 3000, we all jumped on it. It was great, but with the arrival of Sim City 3000 UNLIMITED, the first was rendered moot. A lot of things couldn't be done in 3000 which could in Unlimited. The website was a strong point for getting new scenarios and buildings and uploading your own.

Sim City 4's intial release seems like a step forward, but backward. I'd wait a few months and see if an Unlimited or Unleashed version comes out. Wait until the websites is ready. I'm sure there is more to it than this basic game. Sim City 4 is like 2000 & 3000 without some perks and with some gorgeous graphics. Simply, the game is fantastic, yet incomplete.

Robert Eldridge (...)