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A wonderful and much needed expansion of Sim City 4

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 40 / 44
Date: September 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I love Rush Hour!

In many ways Sim City gets a whole new feel with Rush Hour. It is not only the much talked about U-drive-it feature, a new building set, or a few more transportation options - quite a lot of smaller changes were made that tremendously add to the gameplay!

First of all, the game runs a lot faster now on my computer(Yipee!).

Then I especially like the changes to the traffic simulation engine. Now you can see how and from where sims get to a building. Not only gives this more transparency to what is actually going on, it also gives the player a lot of feedback. Plus: the traffic simulation makes more sense now (sims now use the fastest instead of the shortest route - so your highways are no longer unused if the onramp is a few blocks away). So cool: now you see trucks clog the roads in industrial areas whereas residential suburban roads are packed with vans and SUVs.

Maxis also added different difficulty levels as well as new tutorials. If you play on easy you no longer need to spend 90% of your time on super-micromanagement tasks like adjusting the number of teachers in every school.

Many people think the U-drive-it feature is purely hype. Well, it is not THAT special. However, after an a while of laying out zones and roads it is always fun to just click on a mission and drive around the city in a police car with sirens on, pushing other cars off the road.

I heard somebody say he feels that Rush Hour breathes a lot more life into his city. And I totally agree. Now you see car accidents on big crossings, you do see trains (or the fancy monorail) bring in commuters from the suburbs in morning and evening hours. In many ways the city just feels more real and alive now.

Sim City with Rush Hour must be the most complex game ever - the sheer detail of what is simulated is breathtaking. And it is also a lot of fun. Intelligent and entertaining! Let's be honest: many things like avenues should have been included in the original game already. Now, with RH, Maxis adds so much to the game that it is hard to complain. I hope we'll see many more expansions like RH.

P.S.: no, i am not paid by Maxis, I am just a happy fan ;)

Gouging or not, this expansion is packed

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 30 / 35
Date: September 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

We've all heard the talk that Maxis is gouging customers by deliberately leaving out features from Sim City 4 to put into an expansion pack. The real question is this: is the expansion pack worth the money? After just one day of looking at Rush Hour, I believe this is one of the best expansion packs I've ever seen. Unlike expansions for many games which just give you a few new buildings and often represent nothing more than bug fixes with bonus scenarios, Rush Hour is a BIG step forward for Sim City 4.

The new transportation options alone are worth the price of admission. Maxis has added double-wide avenues, which were desperately needed to handle traffic. A new ferry terminal building allows access by water, even on a regional level. Elevated rails (think Chicago) have been added, and rails can now connect to subways. Ground-level freeways and T-interchanges are also new. Speaking of interchanges, they are now MUCH easier to position than ever before. And there don't have to be any more "highways to nowhere": highways can now transition to avenues which in turn can transition to regular streets. But perhaps most important of all is a route query tool that lets you see how your sims get to and from work. With this overlay, you can *finally* create a mass transit system that works!

Still not convinced? One big new feature is the addition of road names and signs for use throughout the city. For those who found the original game too difficult, difficulty levels have been implemented and added. For those of us -- and there are many -- who wanted a return of the "make historic" option from earlier versions of Sim City, Maxis has obliged us. There are even new tilesets to make your new cities look different from the old ones. But you now also have the option to limit yourself to one single tileset, too.

The final feature that everyone is talking about is "U-drive." Players can now take control of vehicles and drive them around the city. And not just cars -- you can drive a tank, a jet, a train, even a boat! Maxis has added missions -- supposedly more than 75 of them -- to make this feature worthwhile. Complete missions to get new rewards. Early buzz on this feature is that it is surprisingly fun, although I admit that I haven't even tried it out yet myself.

I haven't listed all the new features -- there are still more. But this expansion pack has brought major improvements to Sim City 4. Sure, it would be nice if Maxis had been able to include all this stuff with the original game, but then the game would not have been released until September 2003. Maxis didn't invent the expansion pack; this phenomenon has been going on for many years now. I think Maxis is charging a fair price for a LOT of new gameplay fun... and remember, if you bought Sim City 4 and saved your receipt, you can get a $10 rebate. For that price, this expansion is almost a steal. Almost.

A Must Buy... if your conscious is flexible..

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: September 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This expansion is a must purchase. It's more than the features they describe, they've refined and improved just about everything is seems from the regular Sim City 4.

My issue however is that there are so many aspects that you get in the expansion that were missing without it (such as say, the ability to click a button to make a certain building historical, which you could do in previous Sim Cities), it really kind of left a bitter taste in my mouth buying this. The ORIGINAL Sim City 4 should have had many of the polished aspects of the expansion. This isn't just a ton of cool new features, this expansion makes the game complete.

Kinda clever.. sell an incomplete game, then make you buy the expansion to get the full product. So it's a must purchase, but I blow my nose at you so called "computer coders", you and all you're silly kinnigits... pbhhhhhtthhh....

Sincerely,

A Frustrated Gamer Who Knows He's Not Going To Be Sleeping Tonight Because of the Darn Game

(or just Graham will do)

Worth every dime, every late night spent playing...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: October 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The Rush Hour expansion pack defines the future of simulation games. No longer must we be content to sit back and watch our city grow. Now we can build vast regional networks, through new highway options and even monorail. I never realized ground highways were missing until I saw them here. There are still very challenging items to tackle. It used to be bus stops were impossible; now it's parking garages. Traffic has become a bit of a nightmare, and we now get to see every flaming car wreck. We get new feedback on our traffic with the query button. I think the best additions have been the ferries and monorail. I just used both to build a city of 80,000 in 16 years. I didn't even know that was possible! There is still room for improvement, and I look forward to the next installment in this excellent series. We still have to make our own traffic circles, and there are no community centers, Ys, or public pools. There isn't much lacking and certainly nothing that should keep a SimCity fan from purchasing the Rush Hour expansion pack today. It's addicting and wonderfully fun!

What an improvement

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 11
Date: June 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I must say this expansion has added so much to Sim City 4! Now you can drive around your city on missions, you can put in toll booths to raise some money. You can now name your streets, add avenues (which is a usefull intermediate between streets and highways) to ease traffic congestion, and view how and when your streets are used by commuters. The only down side is that, as others have stated, this requires a lot of processing memory, both RAM and video. You'd be advised not to run it with all the graphics set to maximum unless you have a very powerful computer and video card. Have fun and try to drive carefully around your streets.

The latest in the SimCity family line

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 12
Date: October 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

SimCity 4 Rush Hour makes the addictive SimCity 4 even harder to walk away from. I've been a SC junkie for nearly ten years now, and this game is truly a breath of life into my city like none other. The depth of cities has been held a little repetitive in the transportation department since SimCity 2000, and Rush Hour just expands it in ways I never thought possible. The U-Drive-It missions maintain the isometric looking-down view of The Sims while capturing the city exploration aspect of Streets of SimCity. This game is one of the best things that has ever happened to SimCity; no SC4 owner should be without it.

Great product. But get Simcity 4 deluxe

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 13
Date: October 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The best expansion pack for a game.

And my advice for your is to get Simcity 4 deluxe that includes the expantion pack for the same price.

A tremendous improvement

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: August 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have been waiting for Maxis to improve the transportation features, and finally they've done it!!! I can now control traffic more efficiently in my city by knowing what paths citizens take to and from work. This allows me to determine where I should place new roads, mass transit lines, stations, etc. The monorails allow you to have a much more futuristic city, only you can't build monorail lines over elevated freeways. The surface freeways and elevated trains also make city transportation systems much more realistic. If you have SC4 and don't have Rush Hour, I highly recommend that you buy it now. It is worth every cent.

All the bells, whistles, and sirens a city should have!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: June 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

After purchasing SimCity 4 and hearing of the Rush Hour expansion, I didn't know what to expect--after all, I just payed $40 for the stand alone version. Yet, to my surprise, RH added a tremendous ammount of gameplay and realism that wasn't available with SimCity 4. While the U-Drive it features are alright, I am extremely impressed with the tremendous addition of ground level highways, (I wanted these for a while now) Chicago-style "el" lines, monorails, and a new slew of roadway tools. Mayors should also take note of the new building sets, greatly improved gameplay performace, and more realistic play. Rush Hour is more than a simple add-on, it's a sequel to a great game.

Essential for any Sim City 4 user!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: June 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First off, the instruction book included is a lot more detailed about how to do everything and how items effect your city. That alone is a major plus.
There are more items to build, like a large elementary school and large water pump. Transportation tools are a lot better, including the road query, which gives inside info on how your sims get around, road by road, house by house.
Of course, the big selling feature is the drive around feature, which inludes missions and free drive. It is quite fun to drive around your own city! (You can use tanks, mayor's car, school bus, ice cream truck, even planes and boats)
All in all, the other reviews give good detail on what is included. It's a nice upgrade to sim city, although it was sort of disappointing to find some features lacking in the original release. For a little extra, you can get everything missing and more (see other reviews, the give a better description)

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