Rating: 
Summary: All the bells, whistles, and sirens a city should have!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Essential for any Sim City 4 user!!!
Review: 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)
Rating: 
Summary: Nice Addition to SC4
Review: For the price, this is a nice addition and update to SC4, the only computer game I play or have ever been interested in playing. The features of this expansion are easy to learn and add extra dimension to an otherwise great edition. Seeing ferries moving passengers is cool, and the Udrive feature can take some of the boring moments away. But that feature is not easy to master. I recommend it if you already have the first release of SC4
Rating:
Summary: A tremendous improvement
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful and much needed expansion of Sim City 4
Review: 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 ;)
Rating:
Summary: What an improvement
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: addictingly fun
Review: Just like Sim City 4, this is fun and addicting. I like all the improvements but some things are iffy. In the U-Drive it mode, the steering features I find hard to control the vechicles. I love the missions. I love the added transportation modes(monorails, els, etc.) I like the fact you can control your Sims more. This was a 1000% improvement. Cause in Sim City 4 the Sims were boring. They didn't go anywhere. I do still wish skyscrapers built up quicker and Sims responded better to additions in the city. This game is a definite must have for anyone with Sim City 4.
Rating:
Summary: Making SimCity 4...EXCITING
Review: Okay, to start off, i would like to say, if you liked simcity 4, you will definetly like this game.
for all of u people who thought that it was too hard to make your sims happy in the origional simcity 4. This game really helps Giving SimCity 4 the much needed improvments. THese include: Wide Avenues, making it easier and more effiecent for ur sims to cummute. Besides all the other transportation helpers (Elevated freeway etc. Elevated railway and one-way streets) The game also improves on past objects (such as the police stations) making them have more capasity for ur sims and making it much easier to expand to a metropolis.
On top of having the "make ur own sims and place them whereever u want"(which by the way they added more detail to that) they also added a "U drive it" missions. In this u get to drive, fly, boat, destroy, or chase ur way into ur sims arms. If u are able to complete this mission on time, u are rewarded higher mayor rating, or even money and prizes. But if not, you have ur rating decreased, leaving u in shame. Which now brings me to my only complant about this game. I dont know about u but the Udrive it missions seem very hard to control and/or navigate.
Over all this game is a very good expansion mostly recommended to people who r having a hard time with the reagular SIMCITY 4. But if not, still a great game 2 own. by the way, if u have a very slow CD reader or grafic card, the game is VERY slow, but its great improvments cover up 4 it.
PS: it requires a 32MB Video Card, yet i have a 16MB card and it still works......................................o well
GREAT GAME!
Rating:
Summary: Making SimCity 4...EXCITING
Review: Okay, to start off, i would like to say, if you liked simcity 4, you will definetly like this game.
for all of u people who thought that it was too hard to make your sims happy in the origional simcity 4. This game really helps Giving SimCity 4 the much needed improvments. THese include: Wide Avenues, making it easier and more effiecent for ur sims to cummute. Besides all the other transportation helpers (Elevated freeway etc. Elevated railway and one-way streets) The game also improves on past objects (such as the police stations) making them have more capasity for ur sims and making it much easier to expand to a metropolis.
On top of having the "make ur own sims and place them whereever u want"(which by the way they added more detail to that) they also added a "U drive it" missions. In this u get to drive, fly, boat, destroy, or chase ur way into ur sims arms. If u are able to complete this mission on time, u are rewarded higher mayor rating, or even money and prizes. But if not, you have ur rating decreased, leaving u in shame. Which now brings me to my only complant about this game. I dont know about u but the Udrive it missions seem very hard to control and/or navigate.
Over all this game is a very good expansion mostly recommended to people who r having a hard time with the reagular SIMCITY 4. But if not, still a great game 2 own. by the way, if u have a very slow CD reader or grafic card, the game is VERY slow, but its great improvments cover up 4 it.
PS: it requires a 32MB Video Card, yet i have a 16MB card and it still works......................................o well
GREAT GAME!
Rating:
Summary: Lot of change and lot of work
Review: Rush Hour is a really fun expansion pack for Sim City 4. Everyone who own Sim City 4 should get this expansion pack. The real downside of Rush Hour is all of your city that is orginially build in Sim City 4 have to change a lot. For example in Sim City 4 there's only street and road to build and bridge is all the same. in Rush Hour if you want to open your one way road or an avenues, then you probably need to bulldoze your old street or road or even some building for building an avenues. or if you want to build a marina and you have build your bridge before this install Rush Hour then you need to rebuild your bridge again for your ship pass throgh the bridge. Well overall it is very difficult to add on something after you have build the whole city, basicly that goes the same in real life too. For those new player I would suggest them to install both SC4 and Rush Hour before start to the game. There's actually a lot add up stuffs in this expansion pack. One of the thing I like the most is; you can drive, sail, and fly around the city. It is kind of classic game though but it was fun. There's also has different mission you can take on the game like catching theif, leave the city, catch a big fish, and more. One of the thing for those of you new at this game should know about the system requirements. This game require a real good video card than any other game I have own before. I have a P4 1.3 GHz, 80GB HD, 512MB RDRAM, and 128MB Geforce Ti4200 8x video card, but the graphic is still loading pretty slow. Especially during the mission. Unless you're running your game in lower graphic detail, but I am talking about the highest graphic detail in the game here. The system requirements requies probably for the low detail of graphic. What I am trying to say is if you want to your game have a really good detail, your computer and your video card need to be much better than its system requirements showed. Otherwise execpt your game to run in low detail of graphic. Also you will need to spend a lot of time on this game than another other you have play before. It is fun but it will has a lot of work and a lot of thing you have to take care of. Sim City 4 is unlike Sim City 3000, 2000. It needs a lot of care in order to run a good city. Plus! extra attention on your budget and monthly cost.
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