You don't need to spend all of your time pouring over graphs while playing
SimCity 4. You can get a lot of feedback just by looking at your city.
More than ever before, the cities in SimCity 4 are living, breathing
metropolises. In previous games in the series you could tell when a part
of your city was in trouble when the buildings there became dilapidated.
That still happens in SimCity 4, but now you can see subtler hints that your
neighborhoods are doing well or poorly. Are people mowing their lawns,
putting in pools, and are children playing in the streets? Or are they
letting the paint peel and neglecting to replace broken windows? There's an
amazing amount of visual feedback as to your city's health.
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| The Kremlin by day and by night. |
Playing the game at its maximum zoom level is not necessarily practical, but
it reveals the incredible amount of detail in the game. The game is simply
packed with little things that make your cities as much fun to watch as they are
to build. People walk the sidewalks, an amazing variety of cars drive down
the streets and highways, people play in the parks ... you'll notice something
new almost every time you play the game. You can even enable a day/night
cycle and watch your city transition to night as streetlights come
on, cars turn on their headlights, and buildings light up for the night.
The cycle is not tied to the game's clock and it is very difficult to work on
your city at night, but that's OK since it is so mesmerizing to watch your city
at night.
All of this comes at a heavy price in terms of processing power, though.
The game experiences minute but noticeable stutters when scrolling around large
cities while running on a 2.0 GHz+ processor, so expect a fair amount of redraw
"hiccups" if your machine is at or near the minimum requirements.
If you own The Sims, you're in for a
treat. SimCity 4 allows you to import your sims from that game and move
them into your city. If you have The
Sims Deluxe, you can use that game's sim creation tool to add yourself to
your cities populace. So you won't feel left out if you don't own those
games, SimCity 4 will allow you to create a sim from within the game. You
won't have as many options as you do when creating a sim in The Sims, but you'll
still be able to move a sim into your city. Once a sim has been created or
imported, you can then move him or her into a house in your city. He or she will
then find a place to work and will report to you on the details of his or her
life. You won't really learn much about your city that you could find out
elsewhere, but it is a fun little feature for those into all things simlish.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
90%. The amount of detail, information, and control in SimCity 4 is
nothing short of amazing - wannabe city planners and mayors will be in city
management nirvana. However, if you're not into micromanagement you might
find the going tough and a bit frustrating.
System Requirements: Pentium III 500; 128 MB RAM; 16 MB
Video RAM; 8x CD-ROM; 1 GB Hard Drive
Space; Mouse.
« Not for the faint of heart
