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Wow!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 19 / 58
Date: November 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

After playing SimCity 4 I was left paralized on hoe much they improved since 1999 with SC3000. You can import your sims and you ahve volcanoes and meteors. I also loved blowing up the hosues with a robot. I would highly recommend this game for Christmas. The graphics are top notch but the only thing I draed is the PC requirments. This is sure to be one of the best games of the year. For anyone interested in guns and blood don't get this game then. For me it's hard to find a good strategy game these days.

You need a top of the line computer >> no joke !

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: February 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I read other reviews and thought...'oh well, my P4 1.4 Ghz computer can handle it.....surely all the other reviewers have P2 with 400 Mhz computers'.

They were not joking !
The game is awesome, with awesome (out of this world!) detail and complexity. It is a great great jump from Simcity 3000, yet...you do need a GREAT machine to play it right. Fortunately, the game does not crash in my computer as others have mentioned, but to have a barely decent game speed you need to put the game in a low resolution mode, where you loose all the visual goodies you can get.

I have a P4 1.4 Ghz witha a 16 Mb video card and 128 in RAM.

I would suggest you have P4 with 3.1 Ghz, 64Mb video card and 512 in RAM...and maybe, just maybe the game can play right.

You won't play much

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: January 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I was excited about this game, I really was. Even if it wasn't *so* great as I was expecting, it's fun and it has good graphics. I also enjoyed that is way more difficult to play that the earlier versions. BUT, I gave up on it. It is TOO BUGGY! I couldn't play for more than 20 minutes straight. And it's not my machine or my video card. It crashes a lot, specially when you start having a big city. It's slow and... crashes again, losing all you have done in your city (wich are...virtual years ;)

So, I like the game, but this game, as some of the Sims add-ons, was released before being ready.

build and watch - that's it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: June 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

There is no strategy to SimCity 4 - I thought that SimCity 3000 had been a botched attempt by the designers, but in truth it appears the direction that they are heading with the SimCity series is simply the "Build and Watch" approach. The graphics are pretty good, although it seems to me that if they are really going to stick with this "build and watch" approach to gaming that they should expand the number of buildings - even a tiny city can easily have ten of the same "Bob's Grease Pit" ... I mean come on fellas... choose your weapon, but do it well!

I was eagerly awaiting the widely touted 'multi-region' capability (wherein multiple cities could be connected and interdependant) but this too was a fairly large dissapointment. The cities are utterly independent of each other, and the ability to create deals between two cities that you have created does not add notably to the gaming experience.

Also worth mentioning, the city map sizes are considerably smaller. Although there are some neat new highway building features, it just doesn't ever feel like there is enough space to warrant a highway in these maps. I suppose they were betting on the interdependency of the regions to give the feeling of a larger world to settle, but as I mentioned this is non-existant. Perhaps if they had given the capability for your city to actually overflow onto the next region (as opposed to starting a new city, with a new bank roll, on the neighboring region) the small map size would have been acceptable.

The Rush Hour expansion pack is supposed to let you walk individual sims from one house to the next, etc, etc... I have not even toyed with this option because I don't feel that SimCity is the right venue for this sort of activity. When playing SimCity I honestly have no interest in manipulating individual Sims, but rather would prefer to manage the "city". So for me, this feature (to which indeed an entire expansion pack was devoted) added nothing to the game.

All in all SimCity 4 plays like a loose collection of ideas. The gaming aspects are nearly completely eroded. It feels like there were 13 different developers who each had their own idea about how the game should play. The result is that it barely retains the status of being a game. The small map sizes and micro-management of sims kept yielding me to the thought "Why didn't they call this one SimTown and make a REAL SimCity sequel instead?!?". Do not expect more than 4 hours of enjoyable game time from this one. Somewhere along the way EA lost site of what constitutes a game. Although I was eagerly awaiting this sequel, I give it two thumbs down.

Amazing...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: January 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have always been an avid fan of SimCity games, and this new installment give simulation a whole new meaning. You breathe life into your city. The graphics and sound are considerably better than previous versions. I run a 1 GHZ Pentium III with 512 MB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX, and the game performs fine. SimCity 4 is also more realistic than ever. Buses pull up to the school at eight in the morning. Schools only cover a certain district. A riot may arise when you place that new nuclear power plant in town. Watch as your sims live their lives, going to work, play a round of golf in your new resort, or enjoy themselves at the fair. You can even import your characters from "The Sims" into this game, and watch the live in your city as they give you feedback! I must congratulate the Maxis team on a job well done.

Unlike Everyone Else

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: February 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Unlike everyone eslse, I have some major issues with the new SimCity4. True, the graphics are amazing and I haven't had
*any* pc problems running it on an Athlon 2500 with 256mb using Windows 2000 and a Radeon Video card with 32Mb of ram; but it's the features of the game that I have trouble with. The most disturbing change is the disasters. Instead of random disasters you now have to point and click where you want the disasters to occur and then guide the disaster across the terrain in a certain direction. If you were like me, you picked a certain house to live in (which you can do in the game) and then let the disasters roll in a random order and waited to see if your house would withstand all the turmoil. Instead of disasters in SimCity4, they should have just implemented a giant bull dozer since it's basically the same thing.

The next thing I'm upset about is the use of cheats codes. In the pervious versions you could create a city from SCRATCH placing everything where you wanted it to go even down to the type of building and grassy lot. Not in SimCity 4 or at least not in the cheat codes I've seen. You are FORCED to play their senario and build the type of city the GAME creates. You do have the choice of architectural style, but no more building a city from the ground up. Not only that, but the money cheat gives you 1000 Simoleans at a time and you have to repeatedly type in Weaknesspays 100 millions times just to get any type of positive cash flow. This is rediculous. Why even have a money cheat at all.

The most irritating thing about the new SimCity4 is that it is another example of a software company controlling their product and how it is used by the consumer. When I pay 40.00 for a video game, I want to play it the way -I- want to play it, build what -I- want to build and run it the way -I- want to run it and **NOT** the way the manufacturer tells me I have to. I hope Maxis keeps this in mind for any upcoming upgrades or expansion packs.

Wow, what a let down

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: February 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Prepare yourself for this game. It's not what you think.

I had read all the ballyhoo about it and it was perhaps my heightened expectations that ultimately let me down when I first started playing it.

First of all, it's pretty much the same game. The core values are the same, the way it works is the same; not much has changed from 3000 to SC4.

Yes it's prettier graphically ... I like to equate it to the changeover from Windows 3.1 to 95 -- but only on a visual level. The add-on functions of SC4 are pretty slim. The game playing changes unnoticeable.

One of the "changes" is the importation of your SIMS from The SIMS. Before I purchased this game I had visions of watching my imported SIMS walk into stores (like in Hot Date) in SC4 and see them go about their daily lives, but on a much bigger scale -- a whole growing city.

Be warned, this is not the case at all. You import your SIMS, they live in a neighborhood and then proceed to bug the hell out of you about various things they're thinking. Import one and he's a chatterbox. Import the six they offer and it's a veritable zoo. You know how annoying pop-up ads are on the Internet? Think that. It's about the same.

Don't even think about installing pipes in your city. They'll spring a leak every two seconds (even if you have water utilities fully funded) and destroy surrounding neighborhood housing.

Fully funded police stations are lazy. You have to direct them to the crimes and have them pick up the criminals. There's no patrolling with these boys.

Drop funding a tiny bit for the firestations and they're out protesting with picket signs. It's cute for the first five minutes.

It seems that Maxis has forgotten what was attractive about its games in the first place and is now only after a buck. This trend started with the runaway smash hit that was The Sims and followed with (what? we're up to six?) upgrade packages -- all providing extras that should have been in their initial game in the first place -- or at the very least combined into one extra service package upgrade ... six is tantamount to exploitation of its consumer's wallets.

The same goes with SC4. While it is prettier visually, it's not the blowout wunderkind game you're expecting. Get it only if you're a HUGE fan of SimCity, or if you've never played SimCity before ... otherwise, it'll likely let you down the same way it did with me.

A Real Disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I enjoyed Sim City 3000 Unlimited a great deal, and I was rather hoping its creators would use it as the jumping-off point for Sim City 4, but they've gotten rid of what I liked about that earlier game and added almost nothing I do like. Yes, the graphics are sharper and are really nice, but as one reviewer noted before, the game is now far more work than fun. I think that's a pretty fundamental complaint, really. I have a pretty powerful computer, and the game operates the way it should, but I must always restart my computer and repair the Internet functions before my system is in working order again after game play. Too, the cheat code dialogue box rarely opens as it's supposed to do, instead, hitting CTRL X turns the cursor into a smokestack. I'm going back to Sim City 3000 Unlimited. I regret my expensive purchase of Sim City 4.

Games crashes and is unplayable

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: June 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Even though my system more than meets the requirements, and even though I have downloaded and installed the patches, SimCity 4 persistantly crashes. I haven't been able to play the game for more than 5 minutes without a crash. And tech support has been slow to help.

Terrible Quality for Maxis Game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: February 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Sim City 4 is by far the worse Maxis game I have ever owned, and probly the worst game I have ever owned all together! The game is extremely slow and runs terrible on just about any system. It crashes and freezes every time I play it. My computer is not bad at all either, it fact it's quite good. I haven't heard one good thing about this game either. Go to the BBS at simcity.com and see for yourself. Not one good comment about the game, all complaints to Maxis/EA wanting patchs and other efforts to refurbish Sim City 4. NEVER again am I going to buy a Sim City game after my experience with this one. If you want a good Maxis/EA game, I would HIGHLY recomend The Sims.

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