Rating: 
Summary: COULD be a very good game...
Review: This could be a very entertaining game. Not that I know since Maxis didn't release it on Macintosh. Bastards.
Rating: 
Summary: This game is why there's no clock near my PC
Review: The improvements are apparent from the moment you start up. As a graduate of SimCity, 2000 and 3000 Unlimited, I was expecting a similar jump in gameplay and graphics for this one. SimCity 4 is a quantum leap ahead, however.The graphics are photo-realisically awesome. So much so, that they will tax anything less than a 2 year-old or older PC. The game can be played on a 800-900MHz/ 128K machine, but it will be slow at times...be warned. The scenery and buildings are very realistic. No more 20-story apartment buildings in cities of only 1500 inhabitants, either. Plus, once something's built, it tends to last for a long time, making the bulldozer tool a necessity for growth. This game is much more difficult. It's taken me several tries to get a city of 10,000 with a balanced budget, without going broke. Watch your expenses carefully and don't build schools or police until you absolutely have to. Keep your budget constantly in mind. Accounting happens monthly, so deficit spending wipes you out fast. A few quips -- the roads are less real-looking here. You almost have to establish a grid, where they seemed more natural in SC3000. Now, though, they can traverse the topography much easier. It's a trade-off. There seems to be little benefit to linking to the region unless you've developed other areas. This means you're on an island and development even to a small town of 5,000 to 7,000 can take hours and lots of money. This may not be a bad thing. Also, editing the terrain is tricky business. On the regional level, it seems almost impossible. Could we please have a God mode for the region view, instead of only at the city level? Be patient and this one will ruin your career, mariage, etc. Awesome.
Rating: 
Summary: I would wait!
Review: Like everyone else, I ran out and bought the game. I was unable to play it on my pc due to video card requirements. BE FORWARNED!
The game is a systems hog. I liked the graphics, but, it is still not complete. It lacks many of the features that SC3U had.
The game takes forever to get moving, you have no option if you want a big city or a small town.
I foresee several upgrades just like the Sims for this game.
Although, you have control and budget features like never before, you don't have the creative aspect to build the city of your dreams. You are forced to play the game as it was meant to! Now, after playing SC2000,SC3000 and SC3U, I clearly know how to play the game. At this point, I just want to be creative and build a metropolis. Don't get me wrong, it is an impressive game, but, I think it's incomplete and all the buzz around it don't quite measure up to it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Game
Review: Sim City 4 is excellent. It is missing some of the great features of the older SimCitys but they have been replaced with amazing detail and much more realistic gameplay. This game is pure strategy. It goes well and beyond the simple zoning and random placing of utilities and what not. This game takes actual thinking and strategy which makes it so much better. The game creates a real challenge and can be played in so many different ways then the previous versions. The only problem i have seen with this game is that is takes a big toll on the speed of your computer and getting your actual city on its feet is quite a task. But thats just part of having to create that perfect strategy and using your wits. Great job Maxis it keeps getting better every year.
Rating: 
Summary: could have been so much better
Review: In one aspect, there isn't enough micro-management. You merely zone a plot of land and wait and see. You put you 'sims' into your city, but I have yet to get any meaningful input from them. Also, all you can control is where they live...which can change very often. No control of where they work, the route they take to commute...you are left in the dark in these sort of things. On the flip side, there is too much micromanagement. If there is a disaster, there isn't an auto-response feature. You have to click on emergency, click on the appropriate icon and click on the disaster. And when the pipes start leaking, it's a very hassling game of 'find the leak'. And speaking of pipes, you have no ability to divert your funds to just the pipes, or just the powerlines. You have a general water and power fund, and the lack of micromanagement in this part makes the game harder and more frustrating then it should have been. The 2 things that have been vastly improved over the last installment of SimCity is the God Mode and graphics. A real visual treat of building up a city and calling down a meteor while zoomed in to the closest level. Shaping the land is a cinch, and you'll be making mountains and valleys in no time. The ability to connect one region to another is also nice. You can build a massive housing zone in one region and build a highway to another region full of industrial zone. Well, if you like SimCity, there's no reason why you shouldn't like this one. The feeling of creating a city with tall skyscrapers is a very rewarding feeling (I've only had the pleasure of having around 3 block full of skyscraper, but you know..). And hey, if you just feel like destroying stuff, load up a premade map, take control of a city and send down meteors, giant robots, lighting, and even sprout a volcano or two.
Rating:
Summary: Unacceptable..
Review: Simcity 4, in it's current state, is a disaster. My specs: P4 2 Ghz,Radeon 9700,512 MB,Soundblaster Audigy 2. The game churns. I'm sure most of the reviews seen here are either from Maxis trying to save their dwindling game, or people who have played it for five minutes. With my machine, a city with a population of 25k on the largest map will barely run. Days take 5-6 seconds to advance even on the fastest setting, and it is impossible to scroll around and place buildings because of the slow down. This programming is horrid. No current machine can run a large city without terrible lag. Simcity 4 is unstable, and with ANY ATI card, buildings are turned off when you scroll, yet I was able to fix this by changing a few lines of code.
Rating:
Summary: Sim CIty 4
Review: This is a good game, it has great graphics, but if you don't have the exact system requirements (including the video cards supported), then the game won't work on your computer.
Rating:
Summary: Maxis Recovers!
Review: After playing The Sims Online (never buy it), I thought Maxis was taking a plunge. I thought wrong, and this game proves it. This game is fun in every aspect and takes most of the tedious things away. You will find every moment enjoyable to the last drop (if there was a last drop). Nothing is more rewarding than having 1000's of fake people love/hate you, while you build them a Major League Baseball field or obliverate them with meteors. You will not regret buying this game!
Rating:
Summary: SimCity 4 Outstanding City Simulator
Review: Excellent simulator, great graphics, enthralling gameplay. Needs a high-end system for best results. My 2.2 GHz processor, 0.5 G RAM, and 32 Meg graphics card seemed barely adequate at times. New SimCity players, like me, will find themselves uncertain about how to proceed at first, but after crashing and burning a couple of cities you begin to see how to make a city work, though not necessarily how to make a city profitable! The documentation is terse and the program has no indexed reference help files as such, all help being contextual in popups and tooltips. The Mayor's tutorial is very brief as is the terraforming tutorial, but in both cases the excellent interface really makes a tutorial unnecessary. If you are new to SimCity, be aware that region play is necessary in SimCity 4 if you want a city that can turn a profit. As you build your primary city, also build other communities around it so that each city mutually benefits from the others through business deals and increased trade and commerce. Wonderful game at the time of its first release, it is hard to imagine what it will become with enhancements, add-ons, and patches ... speaking of which ... it would be nice in the first patch if the "weaknesspays" cheat were increased to something absurdly comfortable. New players will wear their fingers out trying to type "weaknesspays" Shift Enter fifty to one hundred times per game!
Rating: 
Summary: Great game, if you can get past the bugs...
Review: First off, I have to say the game it's self is great. All of the new features are great, the graphics are supurb, and the realism is unbelievable! However, one possibly fatal drawback to this game is that it's already notorious for bugs. This is easily one of the least stable games I've ever played. And check out any Sim City 4 forum, I'm definitely not alone. Even with a fast system (mine is a 2.4Ghz P4, 1024MB DDR ram, 128mb ATI video card), and even after doing all of the defrags and disk clean ups that the game recomends, the game crashes, hangs, and displays glitches constantly. Turning down shadows, cars, etc can help, but what's the fun in that?? While the game and it's graphics and features are great, this is definitely another prime example of EA releasing a game before it's ready, and your game play will suffer because of it. Maybe they'll release a patch some day...
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