SimCity 4

"Another over-hyped, under innovated simcity game"

I honestly do not understand why the Simcity games continue to experience such success. Filled with limitations of all kinds, Simcity 4 is jus as frustrating as its predecessors. I often want to do things in the game that I cannot do, because those features do not exist in the game, features that should have been added in earlier versions.

Graphically, Simcity 4 looks good all around. The only continuing problem is a lack of a fully 3D freely rotatable camera to replace the older style 4 camera angles, one at each compass corner (NE, NW, SE, SW). Why Maxis persists without a freely rotating 360 degree camera is beyond me, other than laziness since it would likely require more artwork on their part to capture the city at all the angles.

The sound in Simcity 4 takes place on two fronts. The noises of the city (honking horns, shouts of protesters, sirens, etc) are well done. The background music is absolutely horrid.

Of greatest concern is the gameplay. The greatest feature in Simcity 4 is the region feature. Players load a region, or generate one. From teh region map, players can see a variety of square lots of various sizes, from small to huge. Each lot can house a city, and these can be connected via roads, rail, airports, and boats. While this is a great feature, the game has many problems.

There have always been strong problems with this game that have never been addressed. As the franchise has expanded and added new features, Maxis has only created new problems and new failings, rather than solving old ones. Let's start with roads.

The road system in Simcity 4 has changed little. Even with the Rush Hour expansion, you get very few options, leaving those of us who want inventive and clever road systems with nothing to do but wish Maxis would get it together for once. Road options (including the Rush Hour expansion pack) are limited to two lane two roads and streets, 4-lane 2-way avenues, 2 lane one-way roads, and highways (elevated or ground level). You cannot create turn only lanes in any of the road selections to ease traffic back-ups. You cannot create three lane roads, or 6-lane two-ways (3 lanes in each direction). You cannot choose whether to place a streetlight or a stop sign at intersections. Not all roads can be built across all other roads. For instance a "street" cannot cross an "avenue." The "street" must be first be blacktopped to a "road" and then you can cross the "avenue" which automatically creates a stoplight at the intersection. When you want to turn a "street" into a one-way road, you must first blacktop the "street" (turn it into a "road" by dragging the "road" over the street) then you can place the one-way over top of that. Roads, streets and one-ways all have the same width (one-tile). Many other limitations include road angles (roads can run only at 90 or 45 degrees to the compass), and the problem of zoning land bordered by roads that join at a 45 degree angle. Buildings only come in squares, not triangles, and the game cannot zone a triangle, only a square.

There is also an enormous amount of traffic in this game, far more than in real life. After creating a neighborhood with fewer houses and a lower population in the game than in my own real life neighborhood, I find that traffic density in Simcity 4 is about ten times that of my own in real life. Yes, this is a game, not reality, but it is a simulator. Traffic is much heavier in this game than in reality, a problem that has persisted from game to game.

Many other problems exist in terms of roads abd transportation systems in general. Part of the problem is that sims are incredibly stupid. They will take shorter routes that are heavily trafficked, rather than longer routes without traffic. They would rather drive through a few neighborhoods, creating huge amounts of traffic and congestion, rather than go one block the other way, get on a highway, and zip across town. This means players have to forgo creating the town of their dreams, and surrender to the ineptitude of the game's AI. Another issue with the poor AI is that of commute times. It's ridiculous to see sims building homes in residential zones, only to end up unemployed because commute time is to long. If the commute was too long, then why did anyone build there in the first place? If left untended (i.e., create nearby commercial and industrial zones), these houses will become vacant.

Agricultural zones are also another error in the game. Originally, players made no money off of them. In the deluxe edition, you can collect taxes, but the water pollution problem still exists. Now for the big question: Do farms produce water pollution? The answer is "it depends." Some farms do, some don't. The Simcity 4 argument is that farms use various chemicals as fertilizers and pesticides which end up in the water table. One problem with this is the question of just how much pollution this actually creates. However, many farms today do not use these measures anymore anyway. More farmers are learning that there are other methods (such as crop rotation) to avoid pests, and that no fertilizers are needed when other methods are used. Crops are also more flavorful without the use of these chemicals. Simcity 4 oversimplifies this aspect of the game. They also oversimplify other aspects as well, too much so.

Industrial zoning is a simple matter of dragging the zone with your mouse, but shouldn't the city have a say about what gets built in the city? Yes, but other than tax controls, it is impossible to control what industries are built. For instance, say you zone some industry close to your residential zones intending them for high-tech only. There is no way to actually prevent other types of industry from moving in without raising taxes on those industries to very high levels in order to eliminate demand for them. It would be better to zone it for a type of industry to give the player some control. In real life, building of any kind requires city permission anyway, so the ability to zone for a type of industry or commercial other than "density" levels is not unrealistic.

The failings in this game are not new, which makes it at all the more frustrating. Why? Because the game has fun elements to it. What is fun about Simcity 4 is the ability to connect various cities as you wish, creating a vast network per region. Unfortunately, when generating a new region, you have two options, to make a plains or water region. The former creates a flat featureless world, the latter an open sea. There is no system that allows you to generate a region for your cities that consists of certain percentages of water, or a one with a river running through it, or a mountainous region, etc. This weakness is exacerbated by the fact that there is no way to alter your region's terrain from the region map. Players must open up each city section individually, and from there alter the terrain with mountains, water, and so forth, making terrain customization a very tedious process.

Simcity 4 is a mixed bag, a revolutionary idea in games that has never even come close to resolving its many gameplay issues. The problems I mentioned above are only a handful, and only deal with the shallow problems that plague this game. Issues of economy types are also present. The idea that you have to have public schools in order to educate your sims is questionable. The idea that you have to have public parks rather than letting sims create private parks that accomplish the same thing as public parks, is also a problem. The Socialistic style of economy in the game is another unnecessary limitation, one that can be overcome with a little imagination adn by shedding a little bit of laziness. It seems to me that ever since the first Simcity, Maxis has been riding the wave of their success a little too much. The few innovations they have added over the years are nice, but there are still so many problems with this game that demand attention, problems that should have been resolved by now. In the end, the first Simcity and the latest Simcity 4, play about the same.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/20/04