"So fun it's number one"

The first time I ever played a SimCity game was when I was 7. I saw a box with sky-scrapers on it which grabbed my attention. Although I never really understood it, I had lots of fun just doing disasters. Now I'm 13 and I recently got SimCity 4 and it's my number one game.

Graphics: 10/10

Even at 16bit they are just jaw dropping. You can see smog, waves, sims, and a ton of things. The attention to detail is amazing. You can see zombies walking in the graveyard at night, watch people commute to work during morning, and driving home at night. School Buses and kids run to school at 9 am, soldiers train at the army base, monkeys run around the medical research center, and the list goes on and on. Maxis has spent over 3 years on this and it's amazing.

Sound: 10/10

Music
Some good music and funky tunes. You can also import music, which is excellent.

Effects
Everything sounds right. Kids laugh in the playground, the BOOM when lightning strikes, people scream when there's fires, and sirens are loud and clear when the police are rushing to calm a riot.

Gameplay: 10/10

This is where the game shines. There are 3 types of modes. God, Mayor, and My Sim. God mode is where you 'edit' the land, put animals in, and spark natural disasters. You can also change what size the tool is and how intense it is, which is great help when editing details or creating mountains. You can also use disasters to make crators or volcanic mountains (don't worry, the volcano won't explode unless you force it). Mayor mode is where you do all your 'mayoring'. Manage budget, build your city, etc. My Sim mode is where you place a sim to live in your city and he, or she, will give feedback on what's happening where they live. Many people have complained about the Sims not having their personal traits of The Sims. I don't care, since your job is to build a city, not to manage their lives. Buy The Sims if you want to do that. Now let me get into detail about Mayor Mode.

In the original SimCity's you would have to have ALL the necessities in your one city, as if it were cut off from the rest of the planet. Now there is region play, which adds a new level of strategy. You can have all the dirty, polluting industry and power plants, smelly garbage, and other things that you wouldn't want in your nice little town next door which would import power, export garbage, and your sims would live there while they commuted to your industrial haven next door. That means way more personalization. Have a farm town, a mega metropolis, or Silicon Valley. How this works is when you start up Sim City 4 you see a region. In this regoin there are many squares, most of which are empty. In each one you can build one city. You can also make your custom regions, or make a picture in Adobe Photoshop and import it (go to sc4ever.com for more info on this). So you click on one. After some terra-forming in God Mode you select Mayor Mode and name your city. You build a power plant, some residential, commercial, and industrial. To make all the hassle of laying down roads easier streets will automatically be placed. In the patch you can disable this through holding SHIFT. these streets can be upgraded later to handle a greater capacity. You can also micro-manage the funding of any utility or civic building. I can't explain everything and your probably getting bored reading this.

The Bad

One of the biggest problems everyone will have is speed. This game requires mass amounts of resources. I run this on a Pentium3 1 GHRZ, 512 Megs of SDRAM, Geforce 2 MX 400 32 megs, 52X cd-drive, and it's annoying but after playing it a few days it doesn't bother me at all. The only time it goes really slow is when I set the game speed to 2nd fastest or fastest, and that's only when zooming or disasters and some of the menus take a few seconds to load. I plan on Upgrading to a Geforce 4 TI 128 megs and an AMD 2400 XP. I was going to upgrade to that anyway so it's not just for SimCity 4. I've also heard of people running this game just fine with $500 computers.

To patch your game you have to go to EAs website and go through a special browser patch, which will slow your computer to an un-usable speed. It won't freeze, but while it's patching you'll have to leave it for 10 to 20 minutes. I didn't mind since I could just read some of Prima's Official Strategy Guide to SimCity 4.

Online playability isn't up yet, and I don't think it will even by LIVE play. But rather just downloading cities.

Worth it?

Absolutely! If you got what I have or faster along with Internet Access then this is a must own. You can use BOTH of the CDs to play so you can install it on a friend's computer and yours while he holds one CD and you Hold the other. I would never do this since they all scratch 'em up. Also if you can get Prima's Official Strategy Guide for SimCity 4 then get it. It helps a TON! And don't forget to ask about the Transportation disk, which adds steam boats and military craft, along with other things to go with all the vehicles that appear during gameplay.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/08/03, Updated 02/08/03