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Yay!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 264 / 287
Date: September 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

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.

Minimum System Requirements

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 181 / 243
Date: December 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Minimum PC System Requirements:

Processor Type: Intel® Pentium® III processor, AMD Athlon™ processor

Processor Speed: 500MHz

Operating System: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me), Windows XP

System Memory: 128MB RAM

Hard Drive Space: 1GB

Video: 16MB, DirectX 7.0-compatible driver, 3D accelerated mode requires a supported 3D chipset

Sound Card: DirectX 7.0-compatible sound card

Drive Type and Speed: CD-ROM 8x, DVD-ROM 8x

Additional Requirements: Keyboard
Mouse

Maxis Does It Again!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 96 / 123
Date: September 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

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.

Better than any game I've ever played!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 65 / 102
Date: August 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've been a Sim City fan since the very first version way back years ago, before some of you wild and crazy kid gamers were born, and I've snapped up each new edition and addition, marveling at the evolution with every new version. As I say each time: This one tops them all, with bells on!

Better in every way: Everything I've wanted is finally included! Everything I've disliked is finally gone! Features I never could have dreamed of dazzle me as I discover them!

Trying to be coherent here for the benefit of normal people; fellow simians will know what I mean. More elaborate scenarios, sophisticated technical stuff (visual animations of weather, traffic, perspectives, sounds and music, etc.), more complex algorithms underlying sim city life and how to run or ruin it, refined interface, both more powerful and more intuitive, wittier (and wilier) advisors, and of course spectacular buildings rendered in tweezer-tight detail... well, I won't spill all the beans!

Argh! I'm bouncing off the walls!

Five stars with whipped cream and a cherry on top! Run, don't walk, to get this one! And then cancel all your appointments for the next three days at least, maybe even three months, because if you're a true Simaniac, you shouldn't plan on getting out much for a while!

Amazing Detail

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 54 / 81
Date: December 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

SimCity 4 is similar to SimCity 3000 in terms of gameplay. The amount of city detail is almost stunning, at least to those used to playing standard games. The amount of control you have over the creation of your city is more than I had expected, especially with respect to adjusting the terrain topography. City development can now occur on hills. Each building can be 'quieried' for current status info and renamed. There is so much going on, I'm going to need to buy the add-on guide. It looks really good. A downside is that if you want a really big city, you'll need about 512MB of RAM (more?).

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.

Wow, a great version of a classic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 36
Date: January 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've played all the previous SIMCITY versions and Maxis has done a spectacular job with this one.

Compared to SIMCITY 3000 this game has more depth, is more fun to play and is easier to get used to.

I've been playing it for about three days now and it has really been a treat. There is a lot new in terms of how lots are laid out, how transportation and traffic work and the landscaping of the city.

I highly recommend you get SIMCITY 4.

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.

The best SimCity ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: February 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

SC4 is the best in the series. A few caveats, if you have a system that is more than a year or two old and wasn't at the higher end even back then, your game play experience will be significantly affected. Don't pay attention to Maxis' minimum requirements; instead look at their recommended requirements. I have a 1.7GHz Dell w/ 64Mb Nvidia video card and even then it seems like the game runs slower than it should. The graphics are spectacular, as is the amount of detail rendered. But the game is also different in many subtle and important ways that make it more satisfying to play.

SC4 is the hardest game in the series. In SC2K and SC3K you could plop down a couple parks, a good mix of zoning and have a beautiful, successful city. Not so here. For a while I was actually very frustrated with SC4, even though I fancied myself something of a SimCity expert. My cities were spread out and not tall; they did not seem to grow past a certain point; I seemed to be losing money left and right. I highly recommend visiting fansites for help (my favorite: simtropolis.com) or getting the Prima guide. After I did that I got a better understanding of how the internal dynamics of the game worked and how to begin thinking about planning a region rather than simply planning a city. (SC4 cities are interconnected with other cities you build around them in a large region.) I currently have one central city with most of the wealthy commerce, citizens, high tech industry and a large university. To make it successful, I needed two other cities: an industrial city to the south and a bedroom community to the west. I recently started a new bedroom community to the southwest that I hope to transform into a wealthier suburb.

Within cities themselves much has changed. Educational, health, and safety buildings have a specific effect on the neighborhoods around them (think big halo around each of the buildings) and you can adjust their level of funding accordingly. Also, rich apartment buildings coexist next to low income tenements. Traffic takes on a more important meaning. The initially-buggy "My Sim" feature which allows you to move in your sims from The Sims or use SC4-supplied sims into your city is also a huge plus and adds an element of human drama into the game play. If your sim lives in a poor area, but one with good services, you could see him move from a job flipping burgers to becoming a school administrator to becoming CEO of a downtown financial services company. If bad traffic prevents a sim from getting to work, he tells you. This helps you think about how it is that people live in your cities and what kind of services and support they need from you as Mayor to live the good life.

Sims aren't real, of course. But as many SimCity Mayors have discovered for themselves, playing SimCity gives you an appreciation of the demands placed on local governments as they try to meet the needs of the people in their areas and the balancing they have to do to meet those needs. SC4 takes this all to a whole new level and initially does not make it easy--but after you get one city going it's amazing how much fun it can be to develop it and the region around it.

Beautiful scene!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: January 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is currently out in some countries(not US yet).
This game has a lot of things to "watch" such as volcano,
how fireman extinguish the fire on the building. etc.

especially when i made a mountain highway, it really looked like real.

the only problem of this game is, this is somewhat.. harder then simcity 3000 and u need fast computer and graphic card.

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