Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Review for the Military Members Apple User Group, June 25, 2006
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
When so many games these days focus on death and destruction, it's nice to have a constructive alternative that is still truly addictive. Filling that niche, as ever, is the prominent Maxis series SimCity.
The latest offering, SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, contains all the robust play offered by a completely new version of the city-building legend as well as a plethora of additional content, tools, and mini-games previously sold separately in the Rush Hour add-on pack.
Like it's predecessors, SimCity 4 is a deep and visually rich simulation. As Mayor the player gets to turn blank plots of land into complex thriving communities with the added challenge of linking them together to form a productive inter-dependent region. With that much realestate to manage, it should hold the interest of creative problem-solvers.
It's a complicated game, but not overly so, and the hierarchic interface is intuitive, which helps a lot since it takes a few hours to get a good grip on the basics of making a successful city (I highly recommend completing all the tutorials before striking out on your own). Once you can figure out how to grow while keeping a positive cash flow, the game becomes immensely rewarding.
Aside from obviously improved graphics resolution and building variety, the biggest change is that every change in the city is calculated around individual sim-citizens rather than grand formulas. Your job, more than anything else, is to keep your sims happy. If you can do that - provide them with jobs, shorten their commutes, educate them, care for their health, and keep them safe - you have what it takes to be a Mayoral Mogul!
That new perspective also means you can get much more involved with the denizens of your metropolis. You can get down to the street-level and ask them what's on their mind or even give them a hand through mini-games.
Driving many vehicles (fire trucks, speed boats, and crop-dusters to name a few) you can navigate the city you've made. While the simplistic pilotage can be clunky, change of perspective is both fun and helpful. It also splashes a little variety on a game that can get slow once in a while. Besides, what soldier can resist taking a joy ride in a tank or skimming the rooftops in an attack helicopter?
What really keeps you playing this game though is layer upon layer of replay possibilities. Since there are no criteria for winning you can set your own goals and measures of success and you can use any number of approaches pursue your ambitions.
You can play one city aiming for a large population and another for the greatest income possible. You can play the good guy or the ruthless dictator and create everything from slum-ridden industrial towns to tiny farming communities to towering pinnacles of civilization!
And of course you can blow it all up and start over...
There's no multiplayer in SimCity, but an active online user-base provides both a community aspect to the game and a wealth of new land marks, buildings, and utilities you can download to keep your virtual communities fresh.
If you own The Sims the people you've created can even interact with your SimCities. What's more, there's a little Mac-only integration in the game. Unlike Windows, you can override the default soundtrack with any playlist in your iTunes library.
While that's a nice touch, the manual refers to Windows keyboards and there are known graphical problems (especially when "drawing" roads or zones) that are unlikely to be addressed (turning on the Z buffer in the options helps). They aren't fatal, but I found my building techniques developed around minimizing the effects those glitches rather than productive gameplay.
Even with drawbacks like performance and price (when compared to the Windows version), it's a quality title and a handy long-term time-waster for creative, micro-managing, or ambitious future base commanders!
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition is a great gift and worth owning if you remember SimCity 2000 on the Mac or are looking for a constructive game that exercises your creativity. Of course the inclusion of military facilities like Army and Air Force bases and ICBM silos earns it some kudos too!
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent city and region simulator, July 20, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
This is my first Sim game, and I love it. There are three modes to play in: in God Mode, you terraform the region, adding cliffs or valleys, flattening shores, planting forests, etc; in Mayor mode, you will zone areas, add utilities and services, and receive input from dozens of informative graphs, data and advisors; in MySim mode you can create individuals and then name them, give them a place to live and a car to drive, etc.
You can run your simulation in three speeds, and there are hundreds of items and options for you to use -- bridges, stadia, landmarks, parks, schools, monorails, industry, agriculture, museums and many more.
There are also several tutorials that show you how to get started, make money, develop a big city, or use the included Rush Hour expansion pack, which lets you get in the driver's seat of buses, garbage trucks, traffic helicopters, ferry boats, --any vehicle that is operating in your city! Just be careful -- it is EASY to spend hours and hours building your city with as much complexity as you care for. Excellent game, implemented very well.
I have had no problems at all with installation or performance running the game on an iMac G4.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Does not work on OSX 10.5 (LEOPARD), May 19, 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
UPDATE (2/26/09): ASPYR HAS STILL NOT RELEASED AN UPDATE FOR THIS GAME. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU ARE RUNNING 10.4 OR 10.5. THE GAME IS SLOW AND/OR CRASHES CONSTANTLY. ASPYR, FIX THIS GAME!
This is an awesome game, but it STILL does not work on the newest operating system (OSX 10.5); it is slow and it crashes. IF you have an older mac system, this game is great. If you have a newer system, do not waste your money until they release an update for Leopard.
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