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Review: SimCity 4
Jan. 25th, 2003 12:59 pmIt should shock NONE of you who read this journal on a semi-regular basis that once I got my l33t new computer, I also went out and bought SimCity 4. I've been playing SimCity 4 for a while now and I'm ready to go on and on about it.
Visually, the game is absolutely stunning. I mean, it's truly beautiful. You can zoom from waaaay up in the air and see your city from way up (possibly the way you'd see it from a plane) or zoom way down and watch individual sims walk along the street, play in their pools or even watch individual crimes happen (it's funny to watch the flasher walk along opening his trenchcoat at random people. Actually, it's fun to watch what ALL The sims are up to, whether it's playing in the basketball court you just plopped down or playing in the elementary school playground or randomly flashing people.)
Anyways, visually it's stunning. Watching the sims, watching the road crews and the construction crews. It's great.
The soundtrack is pretty decent too, though I must admit after playing for as many hours as I do, I'm slightly bored of it.
On the other hand, if I like, I can put my own mp3s in and listen to them instead.
TMBG while platying SimCity... I should try it :D
Strategywise.. the game's much harder than SimCity 3000 was. Keeping your budget in the black is difficult especially with people screaming at you for fire protection, hospitals/clinics, schools, police stations etc.
The region play is unique. You can now play an entire region instead of just one unconnected city. As such, you can specialize your cities. For example, I'm playing (at the moment) two cities... Golan Heights and Fairview... Golan Heights WILL Be my main city with all the industrial buildings and a commercial center. (Eventually, I want commercial TOWERS and some high-tech industry in Golan Heights, making it a beautiful downtown area) and Fairview is mostly residential with a LITTLE commercial. (No towers in Fairview, just small offices and services.) I eventually plan to have a series of interconnected cities all leading to Golan Heights (bedroom communities) and I'd like to connect them to some farming communities.
I dunno. My problem is I'm a perfectionist and I keep starting from scratch :)
But I'll be happy eventually, I hope... or get bored of SimCity4 and move on to other things.
Anyways, in review, I'll give SimCity4 4 stars out of 5.
I won't give it 5 because while the game IS great, it's not perfect. Perhaps with some expansion packs and some time to fix a few of the problems (like... you can build REALLY big mountains, but you don't get snow on them. Stupid, maybe.. but a game deserving of five would have snow on the peaks of those mountains and other such details as that. :) )
Visually, the game is absolutely stunning. I mean, it's truly beautiful. You can zoom from waaaay up in the air and see your city from way up (possibly the way you'd see it from a plane) or zoom way down and watch individual sims walk along the street, play in their pools or even watch individual crimes happen (it's funny to watch the flasher walk along opening his trenchcoat at random people. Actually, it's fun to watch what ALL The sims are up to, whether it's playing in the basketball court you just plopped down or playing in the elementary school playground or randomly flashing people.)
Anyways, visually it's stunning. Watching the sims, watching the road crews and the construction crews. It's great.
The soundtrack is pretty decent too, though I must admit after playing for as many hours as I do, I'm slightly bored of it.
On the other hand, if I like, I can put my own mp3s in and listen to them instead.
TMBG while platying SimCity... I should try it :D
Strategywise.. the game's much harder than SimCity 3000 was. Keeping your budget in the black is difficult especially with people screaming at you for fire protection, hospitals/clinics, schools, police stations etc.
The region play is unique. You can now play an entire region instead of just one unconnected city. As such, you can specialize your cities. For example, I'm playing (at the moment) two cities... Golan Heights and Fairview... Golan Heights WILL Be my main city with all the industrial buildings and a commercial center. (Eventually, I want commercial TOWERS and some high-tech industry in Golan Heights, making it a beautiful downtown area) and Fairview is mostly residential with a LITTLE commercial. (No towers in Fairview, just small offices and services.) I eventually plan to have a series of interconnected cities all leading to Golan Heights (bedroom communities) and I'd like to connect them to some farming communities.
I dunno. My problem is I'm a perfectionist and I keep starting from scratch :)
But I'll be happy eventually, I hope... or get bored of SimCity4 and move on to other things.
Anyways, in review, I'll give SimCity4 4 stars out of 5.
I won't give it 5 because while the game IS great, it's not perfect. Perhaps with some expansion packs and some time to fix a few of the problems (like... you can build REALLY big mountains, but you don't get snow on them. Stupid, maybe.. but a game deserving of five would have snow on the peaks of those mountains and other such details as that. :) )
