"A fun and addictive game, that keeps you wanting to play"

Graphics (9/10):

Although they are a bit dated the graphics are pretty good for the time. There is a wide variety of graphics for buildings, and terrain, and effects. It is a huge improvement over all of the old SimCity games. It looks almost realistic, the sprites are very well done. The animation of all of the sprites is also very well done, and it is interesting / appealing as well. But one problem with this is that oftentimes in a large city the game can slow down a bit if you don't have a very fast computer because it displays and animates all of the sprites.

Sound (8/10):

The sound in the game was pretty good, although it tended to be a bit repetitive, but the sounds were very good overall. The game had sounds for almost everything, like the power plants (which is really pretty cool, as they all make different noises, try clicking them all), and the various other buildings make noise too. The music is not bad either, but is what makes the sound be pretty repetitive.

Gameplay (10/10):

This part is the shining jewel of this game, it outweighs anything else (in my humble opinion), because it is very fun and addictive. Basically what the game is like is... You start out with some money and a huge map that is all yours. You spend the money to make a whole city, you need to make power plants, roads, subways, fire stations, police stations, zones and more. You have total control over everything in your entire city. You can build almost anything you can imagine, and it's really fun and addictive because of the freedom that you have. But it is very realistic too, if you build an industrial district near all of your residential districts, then fewer people will want to live in the residential district. And the same goes for power plants, trash dumps. But other things can raise the likelihood of people settling, such as the cool rewards you can accrue by playing. Also, you need to provide services to the entire city, you need to provide a coherent system of transportation (roads,trains,subways), electricity, and water, for people to even come to the city. And you need to provide adequate police and fire coverage. And, you need to build hospitals and schools, and for schools you can build schools, colleges, libraries and more, so that your citizens learn, and the continue to learn as they age in game time. Also, you can build recreational places for your citizens, such as parks, zoos, marinas and more. Basically, you have a lot of things you need to do, but you can do it however you want to, using your own personal flair. Essentially, you can play this game as much as you want, and it will almost never get repetitive.

Replay Value (10/10):

See the Gameplay section. This game gives you so much to do, that it will take at least 100 or so hours for the average gamer to get tired with it. But one thing to note is that, once a city gets pretty old, it gets relatively boring since there isn't a lot you can do after it gets really big, so at that point you will probably end up starting a new city.

Final Rating (9/10):

One thing to note is that the final rating was not achieved by averaging all of the ratings. My overall opinion on this game is that it is very fun to play, and worth your money. You have so much freedom to do whatever you want, and you can keep playing over and over again, so chances are, if you like this genre of game, you will almost definitely like this game, so give it a try.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/04