Rating: 
Summary: In this day and age....
Review: there should be no games that take several minutes to save.... there should be no games that advertise that they run on a 500Mhz PC when in fact it still runs slowly on 2.4Ghz... there should be no games released as buggy as this one... for instance when a fire happens across town it immediately puts the cursor to that area... if you were about to bulldoze one little square, you bulldoze EVERYTHING.. just like you had dragged the cursor across town. These things are unacceptable from a company such as Maxis and EA. Do not be blinded by the hype and reviews,(those same reviewers have ripped on other games that have had these issues, why not this one?) this game should not have been released yet.... and this is after the April 6 update. In principle the game is fun, with these issues it makes it unplayable.
Rating:
Summary: Fun and getting better, but was hoping for more ....
Review: I first discovered SimCity with SimCity2000 and played it religiously for a long time, I loved that game! I was a bit disappointed with SimCity3000 and had high hopes (based on previews) for this version. Unfortunately, it only realized some of those.First off, the game is beautiful. The buildings are rich in color, texture, and style. The options are many and the concept of regional play is a good one (although isn't quite as fulfilling, see below). Your sims can commute from one place to another, power lines can be strung and freeways can lead from your city out to the city with the airport. The interface is fairly clean and most things can be made to go away in case you just want to sit back and stare at what you've built. Another neat thing is the day/night mode. It seems to be mainly for visual effects (I haven't detected different sim behavior patterns or anything) but it is impressive looking. The usual fun disasters are there. That said, there were some elements that were flawed. First off, the cities that came with the game were small and paltry things. SimCity3000 came with many different types of cities, ranging from 0 to well over 1,000,000 people. Some were paradises, others ghettos, but each was unique. SimCity4 comes with 6-7 regions, two with very small cities started. It's a personal thing, but I don't really enjoy the process of taking nothing and building all the way up, sometimes I want to start with a big (and perhaps flawed) city and try and solve it's problems like crime, homelessness, decay, etc. At least they could've provided us with more variety in city types than they did. Another gripe is laying out the zones. In the old days you just painted the terrain a particular color and watched whatever was supposed to happen, happen. In SimCity4 you still do this but the computer also lays out lots. Still you have little control over which direction these lots are and often they have minimum dimensions, which aren't apparent when first placing them. Furthermore, try to zone a parcel bigger than say 5x5 tiles and the program will immediately try to add roads into the mix, even if you've already built roads to frame your zones! It doesn't even place the roads in the right places half the time, leading to wierd angles and lots that aren't buildable. Finally, there's no way to turn this thing off! It's nice when you're zoning lots of completely empty space, but a real drag when you're trying to rezone a few blocks. One gripe about the regions is that they really aren't regions. They tend to just become boroughs (but with their own budgets!) of a city. The New York region shows this as Manhattan is cut into multiple regions. You could develop one as all Residential and another as say commercial I suppose but I was hoping for true regional play where you have actual separate cities cooperating with or competeing against each other. Still, it's getting better. The game has been patched a couple of times to weed out the bugs and a new region has been posted to the main site (with a large population to start with) with more promised. Further patches will help make the game more playable and I am enjoying it more every day so who knows? If I wrote this one month from now it might've been 4 or 5 stars. One can hope.
Rating: 
Summary: This game is bad news!!!
Review: Sim City 4 was a BIG disappoint to me. I thought it would be so much better than it is. The game to much too complex. I can't figure out how to get my population above 3000. Something always goes wrong and there is no explanation in the game as to how to correct the problem. I ordered the "Prima Official Strategy Guide", however, it doesn't include the information anyone needs to figure out Sim City 4. I highly suggest no one should buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT game!
Review: First: I am not normally a gamer. A recent bout with the flu led me to purchase this game for entertainment. It is difficult at first for someone who has never played any of the Sims games, but being able to delete cities and then start over enables you to get better. Experimenting with raising taxes, different power sources, various civic buildings like schools, museums, and libraries; each of these brings different responses from your residents, and different problems. Its a game of strategy, and as your strategies become more effective it is great fun to watch your town grow. I would recommend this to anyone! Highly addictive.....
As for the problems listed in the other reviews: my sony vaio laptop runs this game great, and I have had no problems with it.
Rating:
Summary: was disappointed
Review: i loved playing sim city 3000 unlimited and couldnt wait for sim city 4 but as with the sims, ea has made it so complicated that it was not fun at all. I have played all the sim games and am trully disappointed that they have taken the fun out of the games.
Rating:
Summary: What Happened???
Review: Well, I bought the game yesterday, and let me jus tell you that I was really confused when I started playing, because, unlike in other sim city games, (2000, 3000, etc.) there weren't any model/ already built cities to play off of. So, it's all up to you. Now, this might sound good, and it might sound bad. But, I played for 4 hours WITH MONEY CHEATS and still only had 4,000 citizens. No skyscrapers, basically a big town filled with a lot of houses. Fortunately, I got some wealthy people to move in (those big houses are really beautiful.) But my point is, you want to see what's on the front of the box, a big, sprawling city, and it isn't offered in an already-built city. So, someone [messed] up. But, I like the game.... mostly. Great music!
Rating: 
Summary: To much...
Review: The graphics are stunning and the detail and more options are really nice. One problem, you may spend hours even days building the perfect city, and still it will decay and they'll kick you out (when u reach -100,000 dollars) not to mention that you'll have great health, low crime, low fire rates, high education, low pollution, and many other things that sims like, you'll still lose. Please if your a simcity fan wait tell the next simcity game. please?
Rating:
Summary: Great graphics, horrible game
Review: Where can I begin, the ridiculously slow game engine, the decreased city size from Sim City 2000, the bland, corporate feel... Play Sim City 2000. Remember that game came out nearly TEN years ago. Then play Sim City 4. Is this really all we can do with such a great game in a decade? No, of course it isn't. What happened? EA bought Maxis, and is driving it in to the ground like every other company they purchase. Folks, there is simply no excuse for releasing a game of such poor quality. None at all.
Rating:
Summary: Good game if you have patience.
Review: Sim City 4 is a fun game to play but it is so slow and takes such a long time to master that it'll drive you crazy. I just got a new computer with a fast processor in December and this game is still incredibly slow. The new features which include placing Sims in the city, worker strikes and new disasters, and day/night views are more trouble than they are worth because they slow down the game so much. I dread worker's strikes and fires not because they hurt my city, because they lock up the screen (up to 15 minutes sometimes). The bigger your city gets, the worse it gets. My population is only up to 30,000 right now and the game is ridiculously slow. And I haven't even mentioned how long it takes to actually make money and have you city flourish. It seems even longer than Sim City 3000. The best thing about this game when compared to Sim City 3000 is the graphics. The graphic are incredible, everything looks so realistic. When you zoom in close up and view the city, it takes so long that it is barely even worth it. While this game is still fun to play, I definitely would not pay [much for it]...
Rating: 
Summary: Ok but just like 3000
Review: This new version, Sim City 4 is very similar to SimCity 3000, looks like they just changed the interface. The game is also very slow even on my new computer (2ghz). I recomend you buy it when prices come down.
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