Rating: 
Summary: Sim City 4
Review: I was very disappointed in this game. Several things bothered me about the new look. One was the lack of depth and color in the game. Everything had a washed out look. Also, it is impossible to re-terrain on a small scale. That was always the thing that I liked best about the Sim City series. I'm not impressed with this version at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Gets better as you learn it
Review: I've played Sim City since the 2nd iteration, and the Sims until I finally got bored (though Unleashed did add some fun with the dogs & cats).SimCity4 is NOT the old Sim City, and at first that's a terrible negative. The strategy you use to play it is different; for us bleeding-heart liberals it's tough to build a city with no schools or medical centers until you get enough people to support them, and building comes much slower than the old game. Once you learn how different this game is, and accept that they've sold out some of the playfulness of the old game for better graphics and more serious strategy, it's not bad at all. Takes a while to learn how to build a city without cheating or taking out enough loans to eventually kill your budget trying to repay them, but I've gotten there and the gameplay is enjoyable enough. It's not as addictive as the old games, though, and soon enough I will find myself battling with Age of Mythology again, trying to kill off my opponent there as therapy for the frustrations of Sim City 4.
Rating: 
Summary: Ya right.
Review: To the person who was upset when the game crashed under an 8 mb graphics card. Upgrade. I doubt you'll find any new game that works with an 8 mb graphics card - you haven't even been able to buy such a weak card for years. Thats like trying to play a CD on a record player.
Rating: 
Summary: The best SimCity ever
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Why not to buy SC4
Review: Why not to buy: Game is very slow
After playing for a while, the game actually freezes
Buggy as all get out
Took out many great features in previous games
The graphics AREN'T better! You have to turn all the graphics options DOWN COMPLETELY in order to get the game to run on your computer. MAXIS/EA bombed this one, DON'T BUY IT!!!
Rating:
Summary: Not too shabby and not what I expected
Review: I have played Sim City since SC2000 and enjoyed the new versions as they hit they market. Sim City 4 is no different. Unlike a lot of other reviewers the game runs smoothly on my PC. There is an appearance that the game does runs slow, however I think it is an illusion. I am able to scroll, save, reload, zoom in and out without any problems. What I did not like about any of the previous versions and perhaps this one too, is that the same building designs are used over and over again for the RCI zones. In real city every high school, police station, hospital, and house looks different, (...well with the exception of Kaufman and Broad homes.) However Sim City 4 does introduce a new variety of diveristy of buildings that you place in attempt to make the city not appear so copy and paste like. This game is difficult to play. If you had a challenge with the budget in Sim City 3000 at first, this version will make you cry at times. No matter how many times you start a new city you are going into the red most of the time. The problem is you get this urge to develop your city very quickly. This version is not meant to paint the town but rather actually manage and budget. Here is an example of budget fustration. Sims pay taxes so that services can be paid for, only it seems it takes more sims than normal to get the services needed. By the time you have the budget to place your elementry school you realize that it does not cover all the areas you built up just to get the school funded. The same goes for fire, police, health not mention you are paying upkeep on all the roads, pipes, electrical power generated, garbage being haualed away and much more. This presents a different paradigm compared to other previous versions. If only we could implement a sales tax! One of the greatest improvements to Sim City is the ability to create interdependent cities within regions. If you think the budget is a challenge then building interdependent cities will give you a run for your money too. In one game I built one city diverse with all the RCI zones. One neighboring city which purchased electricity from diverse city and had no industry zones. The sims in this city relied on the road connections to get the industrial zones in the diverse city. Next door to both of these cities was another city with industrial zones only. This city provided extra jobs for the city with only residential and commerical zones but also provided a means to haul garbage out of the diverse city. Needless to say the industrial city is running out of money very quickly since there are no sims actually living it. I'll probably have to start that city over again. The game allows the user to shape each and every region as he or she sees fit. As you load an adjacent region the game gives you the opportunity to reconcile elevation and water with the previous adjacent region you just got finished saving. That way in region view the landscape looks smooth and consistent. The tools to mold the landscape provide good chioces, but are not fine tuned to detail but rather broad strokes. All in all I recommend Sim City 4 and give it 4 stars. As long as the game provides me the challenge to build a sucessful city with a balanced and prospering budget, be able to experiment with a variety of ideas and shape entire regions with creativity then I'll keep playing this incarnation of Sim City for a very long time.
Rating:
Summary: Frozen on arrival
Review: I have a Pentium 4 1.8GHz, 256MB RDRAM
Video: 64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce 3 Ti 200 This game plays very slow. After playing slow for an hour, it freezes. It's annoying and unplayable. Don't bother. There's nothing new in the game that's worth the pain of watching it freeze every time you play it.
Rating:
Summary: Good progress, but lacks features
Review: I remember playing SimCity 2000 some 7 years ago and thinking about how advanced it was... Simcity 3000 then came out and that was a very cool game with huge improvements over 2000. Now SimCity 4 is out and it truly sets the mark for quality gameplay. The biggest improvement would be the graphics. They are truly STUNNING! However, you need a fast computer (i mean at least a 1.4 GHZ) to play it. Even my 1.7ghz computer gets bogged down when the cities are big. Unlike previous versions of SimCity with the ... "module" land characterisics, SimCity 4 now has very realistic terrain that moves in almost any direction up and down, and even portrays shadowing and includes night and day fucntions. The music in the game is a HUGE improvement as well, with songs you actually want to listen too! The gameplay is excellent, much funner than previous versions, but there are more limitations on what you can actually do. The usual progression of games means that they become more simple, yet more sophisticated. Unlike previous versions where you could build almost anything your imagination put forth, this one limits you with its extensive realism. You now have to make monthly payments on almost everything (hospitals, power, water, schooling, everything but zoned buildings!). This game is very smart, but you are limited with what you can actually do. Almost any services you put in your city (if small) will bring your monthly spending over your monthly income. Again, realistic, but not as fun.. Another big drawback with Simcity 4 is the lack of the "i am weak" cheat from SimCity 3000 which made everything free. Yeah, call me a cheater, but it sure was a fun little cheat code. With simcity 4, you can only increase your simoleans by increments of $1,000. So, if your idea was to just build a huge city without paying for anything, sorry, go back to SimCity 3000.... Overall, a very classy game, but too realistic for my taste. SimCity used to be a game that you could spend all night and day playing because of its endless possibilities... now you must actually build realistic cities... Good I guess for progress, but bad for that "kid in you" spirit. I would recommend this game however, because of the outstanding graphics and sound improvements, but if you do end up buying it, I recommend waiting until the price goes down.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the Effort
Review: I was sorry to see all the negative reviews on this game. Yes, it is a memory hog and does crash often. Just keep saving your game as you go along. Go to the God mode and create a whole new world. Start a new region of your own. This game has so much possibilities. Not only was I addicted to one city - but I could not wait to join it with others. I was disappointed when Maxis canceled out on "Simsville" - but they have added all the ingredients into Sim City 4. Get close, go slow and your city will grow.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat disappointed with this one.
Review: After playing Simcity 3000, which I highly enjoyed, I thought SimCity 4 would be even better. Boy, was I wrong. I really did not like SimCity 4 from the first time I played it. I found it to be harder to master than any other SimCity game. Some people might be amazing experts in the game, but for the general public, I do not recommend this game.
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