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A true disaster in game design.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 22
Date: June 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

After playing and studying SimCity4, one is left to wonder just who is this game for. Children may enjoy watching cars drive around a city (with no logical direction). They may enjoy other similar "eye candy" within in the game as well. However, SC4 is very complex as the player must manage nearly every aspect of their city. From city layout to taxes, micromanagement is what the player will be doing much more than just allowing a city to evolve. The game also can't be for more observant and aware gamers either because basic elements are "broken" within. From pollution that doesn't travel beyond the single section of city it is created in, to residents who can't seem to find a way to their workplace, SC4 is a mess. One's citizens travel in all sorts of directions rarely (if ever) taking the best and fastest route to where they are traveling. Good luck getting your residents to actually use expensive highways you carefully build. This lack of 'AI' may be amusing at first, but ends up destroying the game. When the player realizes the whole activity and management of the city revolves around this "sims" ability to think about everything around them in the entire region, SimCity becomes unplayable - congested traffic will be the LEAST of one's worries. Many strange flaws in the game leave one to wonder who didn't see them when the game was being made. Just one of many flaws is; when building a single road and connecting it to a neighboring part of the region, two entire lengths of the other "city's" border may be completely DESTROYED (equal to about 1/8th of the entire city)! Major problems like regions being deleted when "saved" are very common within SC4 as well. Even minor bugs like city services auto-changing funding (without the players knowlege) constantly blight the game.
It is both odd and sad that SC4 "fan" sites end up spending most time trying to find workarounds to the game's many flaws, or even struggle to make additional 'patches' that the game's maker Maxis didn't care enough to do.
Extra Warning! - This CD is the original version of SimCity 4 that the company stopped publishing within months because it was so bad. Buying this, they then tell you the newer updates (patches) are only for those who buy an ADDITIONAL expansion pack or the newer SC4 - 'Deluxe' that is nearly just as horrid!
Word has it that the next version of SimCity will be less "detailed in design". The makers of SimCity4 must now know the horrible mistakes they made in its creation.

SimCity is [fading]

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 30 / 42
Date: January 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've played since the original SimCity, on a Commodore 128. The last SimCity, SimCity 3000, was a letdown, and after a week of play, it seems as if the folks at EA/Maxis have lost sight of what this game is all about. You now have to chase after every little fire, there is no sandbox mode for creative play and city building, it's impossible to build a small town with a high living standard, and so on.

My impression is that EA thinks Will Wright designed SimCity to be a strategy game. He didn't. He designed it to be a TOY. Something that creative types - especially older gamers such as myself - could sculpt with. Apparently EA/Maxis believes that all gamers have the mentality of 12 year old males with water on the brain. They don't.

The second star is for the graphics. They're nice. So what. "Tropico" and "Stronghold," more modest games, are soothing compared to all this micromanagement, constriction, and inanity.

SIMULATOR=EXCELLENT

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 24 / 32
Date: January 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

As of April 1 - wait for Patch 2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: April 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

Not too shabby and not what I expected

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 20 / 27
Date: February 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

same game, better graphics

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: January 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Pros:
- the original game concept still works
- cool and very detailed graphics
- improved micromanagement (challenging!)
- cool new terrain-tools (really amazing graphics and effects)
- new region play allows metropolitan areas
- nice user-interface
- roads are placed automatically

Cons:
- despite graphics, nothing has changed much
- much smaller city-maps
- region play doesn't work properly (it is not like having one huge city)
- I cannot choose architectural styles or landscapes (Palm trees in NYC???)
- building highways is still a PITB.
- houses and roads still stick to the square/block-system
- Incredible hardware requirements
- game crashes often
- no scenarios!!!
- roads are placed automatically (good thing, bad thing)

Summary: a good game based on old qualities that impresses through its gorgeous graphics at first. However, it also leaves a somewhat bitter after-taste. Even though it is worth its bucks, more could/should have been possible...I don't think EA is good for Maxis.

Great graphics, horrible game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 19
Date: April 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Where can I begin, the ridiculously slow game engine, the decreased city size from Sim City 2000, the bland, corporate feel...

Play Sim City 2000. Remember that game came out nearly TEN years ago. Then play Sim City 4. Is this really all we can do with such a great game in a decade? No, of course it isn't. What happened? EA bought Maxis, and is driving it in to the ground like every other company they purchase.

Folks, there is simply no excuse for releasing a game of such poor quality. None at all.

Good game if you have patience.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 16 / 21
Date: April 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Sim City 4 is a fun game to play but it is so slow and takes such a long time to master that it'll drive you crazy.

I just got a new computer with a fast processor in December and this game is still incredibly slow. The new features which include placing Sims in the city, worker strikes and new disasters, and day/night views are more trouble than they are worth because they slow down the game so much. I dread worker's strikes and fires not because they hurt my city, because they lock up the screen (up to 15 minutes sometimes). The bigger your city gets, the worse it gets. My population is only up to 30,000 right now and the game is ridiculously slow. And I haven't even mentioned how long it takes to actually make money and have you city flourish. It seems even longer than Sim City 3000.

The best thing about this game when compared to Sim City 3000 is the graphics. The graphic are incredible, everything looks so realistic. When you zoom in close up and view the city, it takes so long that it is barely even worth it.

While this game is still fun to play, I definitely would not pay [much for it]...

Can't stop playing it!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I absolutely love this game, and sure the main idea is set on a specific principle, regarding that this is a computer game, yet you don't kill anyone here and you don't go to different levels, and I love my crazy games, yet this one gives ms me the satisfaction of making something while I play rather than destroying it.

Right of the bat, I must say I love the music, at times I leave the city running and growing on the slow speed, just so that I can listen to the jazzy cool tunes. I have been a fan of anything that has to do with the Sims since I was in 7th grade when I discovered Sim City 2000 on a computer in my computer class, yes in 7th grade. I'm almost 25 now and I am still crazy about the Maxis ideology behind the city games, as this grew and evolved into a marvelous game. I seriously don't know how they can improve this, because the graphics are phenomenal, you get to sculpt your land, and you can seriously choose from a whole globe of land to play on. You can plant your trees and wild animals, and then the zones, buildings, the natural disasters, the people who need you, your taxes, community programs, ordinances, and really fun decisions on where to plop your park, and this time you can choose from a huge variety of building and entertainment centers for your Sims.

I this game takes a bit to get used to and figure out how to play wile actually making money instead of spending them, and they sure give you enough at the beginning, and while you can Google for cheat codes, it's really fun to roll up my sleeves and really get my brain pumping while I manage my city. I love how many things I can be in charge of, the style of the buildings, where I want a farm with fruitful trees and orchards, what neighborhood I want the bus to stop in, what schools and museums I want resting in the shade provided by so many kinds of tress I can choose from, and so on.
I love this as it's a game you can play forever, I wonder how old I can grow my city to be and how I can sculpt it to perfection. Really fun game with gorgeous graphics, and the zoom button is amazing, you can get down to the street levels you build yourself and observe, just like watching ants on the ant hill, but 10000 times more fun!

So disappointed!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 34 / 65
Date: January 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm so disappointed! I've been a big fan of Maxis and the Sim City games, but unless you have a brand new 2,000 dollar computer, DON'T GET THIS GAME! If your computer is one or two years old, Maxis recommends turning all graphics down to the lowest setting, which means you should just save your money and buy Sim City 3000.

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