The latest installment of the extremely successful Sim City series has hit PCs, and it’s an impressive one. Maxis once again puts you in control of building a city from the ground up. From terra forming to transportation, you make all the decisions.
Those familiar with the series will find themselves immediately comfortable, and those new to the game will find the tutorials easy and effective. The simulation engine is considerably more complex than previous installments, but Maxis has made a fantastic effort in simplifying the user interface. The result is smoother game play and a more enjoyable experience.
There are an impressive number of empty regions you can choose to build your city in. The cities you build can also be connected to each other, allowing them to share resources, and even provide your population with additional access to jobs. The game also comes with some pre-designed landscapes modeled after existing cities, like San Francisco, and more can be downloaded from EA’s website.
The construction tools are easy to use, and most of the work is done by zoning the city into different areas, such as industrial and residential. Once zoned and provided with sufficient utilities, construction within these zones begins automatically. Buildings and structures in each of these zones are constantly changing as demand and population changes. For example, small shops may eventually give way to larger shopping centers, and slums may appear in poorly managed neighborhoods. Overall, the construction tools are very well designed, though the new auto-road feature can be frustrating, often creating unneeded roads, which must be demolished.
As your city develops it will be necessary to make changes to the city budget, and the management tools make it easy with well laid out and easy to understand controls. In addition, there are several city advisors who give you advice on every aspect of your city, from utilities to emergency services. Advancing from low-density zones to more desirable high-density zones can prove to be a challenge, but with patience and practice your population will be bulging in no time.
Visually, Sim City 4 is absolutely stunning. There are an astounding number of different buildings, structures, and landscape, each highly detailed. There are 4 different levels of zoom, which you can observe your city. The maximum view allows you to keep an eye on the entire city, or you can zoom in close enough to observe traffic or activities of individual neighborhoods. If you’ve under-funded education for example, you may find yourself with a strike on your hands. At the maximum view you might see picketers with signs, blocking entrance to schools.
You’ll also hear them. The sounds of Sim City 4 are just as impressive as the graphics. At each zoom setting, you get a different level of immersion. At the medium zoom level, for example, the traffic may be the dominant sound, while at the closest zoom level you may hear dogs barking or even gunshots. The music is what you’d expect from Maxis, an ensemble of clear, jazzy pieces.
There are only a few areas where the game doesn’t shine. The first and most significant is in performance. As your population grows past 10,000, things start slowing down. Interaction, such as placing utilities, zoning, and road construction become frustrating with increased delays. Just scrolling around the city can be a painfully slow process. We played the game on a 1.4 MHZ machine with 192M of memory, and experienced consistent and significant slow down at populations over 10,000. The recommendations on the box seem to be the bare minimum to play this game with any level of enjoyment.
The other weakness is in Maxis’ decision to exclude scenarios from the game. In previous Sim City installments, players could choose to play pre-built cities, with specific goals, like reducing the crime rate or balancing the budget. These scenarios added an additional level of challenge to the game, and improved the game’s longevity. Without these scenarios, some players may find themselves somewhat bored after a week of intense play.
Performance problems aside, Sim City 4 is an outstanding, enjoyable, and well-designed addition to a groundbreaking series. The game is highly addictive, and you can expect to spend many hours perfecting your role as mayor. We give it a 4 out of 5, and recommend it as a “GOOD BUY.” Future patches by Maxis to correct performance issues and add scenarios could easily make this a "MUST BUY" and push Sim City 4 into our top-5 list of personal favorites.
