Rating: 
Summary: Fun but Challenging
Review: I was a SimCity fan since age 5, when SimCity 2000 was released. The game was challenging then, and it still is now. This game is a huge step up from SC3K, with tons of Graphics improvements. However, I oftentimes find it challenging to create a city where you aren't in debt after 30 minutes! Very fun to play, though, and it runs quickly on my eMac 1GHz running Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). I recommend it to anyone who loves the Sims and like to be in charge.
Rating:
Summary: Download the update before you play!!!
Review: I was having the same problem as other reviewers until I downloaded the performance update from the Apple website....it fixed it all! This game is absolutely facinating and I'd recommend it to anyone who was even slightly interested in it. The detail is amazing and you can zoom in and see the most random stuff going on. However, as a beginner, I'm still overwhelmed once the city gets bigger and there is more to keep track of!
Rating:
Summary: SimCity 3000 gets a facelift
Review: I've been a fan of the Sim games since the days of playing SimCity (and later, SimCity 2000) on my old 386 PC running DOS. Times have changed a lot since then, but oddly SimCity has largely stood still. SimCity 2000 was the first and only major revision to the series, and arguably was the best out of all of them. So how does SimCity 4 stack up?SimCity 4, like SC3K before it, is largely a visual upgrade. The graphics are indeed very well done, and the game has a rich lifelike feel to it. The sound effects are top knotch as well. Cars driving around, children playing at a playground, the soft whoosh of wind power generators. Sadly the music does not match up to the quality of the sound, varying wildly between very annoying and passable. Unlike previous Sim games, there are no catchy tunes to be found here. And don't expect to play this game on a slow Mac - even my Power Mac with dual 1GHz G4s tends to chug when I change zoom levels and such. The mechanics of the game are largely unchanged from the days of SimCity 2000: build a city, manage taxes and infrastructure, keep the Sims happy. SimCity 4 is more complicated in some ways (budgeting is more detailed, the model for residential/commercial/industrial demand is more complex, etc.) and this can make things very difficult. It took me a number of tries to build a city that wasn't burning thousands of simoleons every month. The game is still just as fun as ever, though. Unfortunately, a number of the changes are actually omissions. Gone are the scenarios (like Dullsville), the real world cities, and the ability to generate random terrain by adjusting a few sliders. You have to custom carve each area you build a city in, unless you load up a pre-built region. These features are sorely missed, and they take away quite a bit of what made SimCity so enjoyable in the past. What it all comes down to is this: SimCity 4 is a lot of fun to play, and Aspyr did a great job porting it. If you can forgive the missing features from previous SimCity games, and if your machine is powerful enough, I definitely recommend this game. Now if you'll excuse me, I must attend to some unhappy Sims protesting outside my mansion...
Rating: 
Summary: Poor quality ruins a great idea
Review: I've been a fan of the SimCity games since the original, but honestly, SimCity 2000 was the last decent one for the Macinosh. SimCity 3000 had a horrible true-3D, full-screen interface that was klunky and hard to use, as well as running far too slowly on most systems. SimCity 4 goes back to isometric graphics, so I had hope that this would be another one as good as SimCity 2000. But no such luck.
In concept and intent, this game looks like a great one; it has an attractive (though full-screen) UI and a lot of nice new features over older versions of the game. But the implementation is just plain poor. The serial number on my CD case didn't work, causing me to have to contact tech support (and wait for their next-weekday response) to even install the game. Then I had to download and install a patch before it would even run without immediately crashing. And even after that, it still crashes or freezes every five or ten minutes, often bringing my entire (OS X!) system down with it. And when it's not crashing, there are various obvious visual anomalies -- I had an entire industrial zone appearing as solid white, and the only way to guess what was there was to mouse over it with the ? tool.
Asypr should be ashamed of themselves for releasing a product in this state. I don't recommmend you waste your money on it; it will only bring you frustration.
Rating:
Summary: technical specs
Review: I've enjoyed previous versions of Sim City quite a lot. In fact, I would say it is my favorite computer game. One thing that would be very helpful, especially concerning software, is if full technical specs were given. It would be convenient when considering a software purchase if I knew the system (hardware and operating) specs without searching around the net for them.
Maybe I've missed it, but so far I haven't found it. Hope Amazon will remember to include this vital information when listing software. Thanks.
Rating: 
Summary: Much Fun
Review: It runs a but slow on my Dual G4 800 with 1.2 GB ram and 64 MG GeForce2 video card. Aside from speed issues, the game is great with excellent graphics and gameplay. I recommend. SC3 sucked, and I nevered played it. However, I have been playing SC4 quite a bit.
Rating:
Summary: Not that great
Review: It's huge to install (2 disks), slow on average macs and quite boring, after all.
Lots of wonderfully graphics and ideas... but I have little fun playing with it - getting the financials balanced is pretty complex, this games should be fascinating for accountants but maybe not for strategy gamers. All in all I miss Sim City 1, the good ole one...
Rating:
Summary: Neat game, but slow...
Review: On a PowerBook G4 667MHz, it works *pretty* well to start with... But as the size of the city grows, it gets slower and slower until it's a bit annoying to use. However, the graphics are great, and they've added a lot of interesting tidbits to it. If you're a Sim City fan and enjoyed the previous three versions, then you'll like this one.. However, don't bother buying it if you don't have a modern enough graphics card/computer.
Rating:
Summary: Sim City 4 - Best sim so far.
Review: Probably the best designed Sim City game yet. Extremely enjoyable and easy to learn. Make sure you have a fast computer though!
Rating:
Summary: Don't hesitate to buy SimCity 4. It's worth it!
Review: SimCity 4 has already kept me entertained for a month! I've pulled 36 hour and 48 hour days just to play this game! It's that engrossing. This is, in my opinion, the best version yet, and I've spent more time than I care to admit on all of them. I still have favorite cities saved from every version of Sim City, though I don't enjoy the early one as much anymore. This new version finally gets most things right. Now the correlations between budgets, taxes, zoning, population, land value, and so forth all seem to make much more sense than in previous versions, as if someone finally got serious and decided just how much things REALLY should cost, and how much a school or park really should affect the desirability of a plot of land. You no longer need dozens of water pumps or half-a-dozen power plants to keep things going, and roads are much easier to place; unlevel terrain is more of a problem for water pipes, though. It was harder at first to get a city off the ground, but now that I've learned the tricks, I can have a thriving city in an hour or two. Still, I'll be up all night trying to develop each new city. There is always something to do, something you wish you'd done earlier, and you never get the time to just explore the city as you may wish, for there is always an emergency to tend to. Sometimes I just ignore all that and enjoy my city.
People complain about the lack of support for BAT files for Macintosh, but if you go to the user forums, you can find ways to make them work--maybe not perfectly, but mostly. Sure, we don't get to build our own, but at least we get to see what others have built. I'm more interested in the city itself.
Region play has made SC4 more interesting by an order of magnitude. Now those neighbor deals are part of the strategy, and you're controlling both ends of the deal! You can build bustling regions this way. There are cheats built into the game, and you can easily locate them online, but honestly you do not need them to stay afloat. I used them for the first few cities as I learned the ropes; now I don't need them at all. In fact, it's more fun without them. Don't worry about the horror stories or the disappointments. Aspyr did a grand job of porting this to the Mac. Long time Mac users know that we're not ever going to see all the games and features that PC users get. It's just the economics of scale. I'm thrilled with the fact that I get to play this on my Mac at all, and I don't have to go beg time from my son to use his PC. After all, SC4 keeps me so busy that he'd never get his PC back! Rather than looking at the lack of the building/architecture tools as a deficit, look at SC4 as a bonus. It really is a bonus on a Mac, and we really do get to use almost everything the PC users get. Yeah, it's the old "glass half full" or "glass half-empty" thing, but I promise you this glass is plenty full, and you'll have a hard time drinking it all in.
No question; this is the best version yet, and it's worth every penny for both SC4 and Rush Hour expansion pack. Support development for the Mac! Sim City is one of our old classics, and SC4 upholds the tradition of raising the bar and keeping it fun.
Shooshie
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