Welcome to SimNation! (Review on Deluxe edition) (Sim City 4 (PC))

Member Name: jord121290

Product:	Sim City 4 (PC)
Date:	01/10/05 (2660 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Always something to do, great driving missions, much improved graphics

Disadvantages: Some of the Rush Hour features can be a bit clumsy.

This review is based on the Deluxe Edition of the game.

Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition is the latest release in the increasingly popular Sim City series of games.
The Deluxe Edition combines the original Sim City 4 with the Rush Hour expansion pack, which aims to add a lot more fun to traffic management in your city.

Sim City 4 is published by EA Games and developed by Maxis (perhaps more well known for their Sims games, even though the Sim City series started a long time before the Sims began.)

For those who have played previous Sim City games, Sim City 4 feels and plays like a more complex and better designed game to previous games in the series, incorporating tons of new features and options for your city.
One major change is visible right from the start, instead of building one city in Simnation and been surrounded by other cities with fictional mayors, as in previous games, you now control a whole region where you can build tens of cities and link them up. This has many features, including improved control over neighbour deals and the ability to build completely industrial, residential or commercial cities which still grow well and prosperously.

Once you have chosen a plot of land where you would like to start your city, you get the option to use the new God mode terraforming tools which allow you to change the shape of the land to what you want. Bear in mind though that this will have an effect on what you can do with your city, because you can't build on a lake but can pump water from it, and it's difficult to build properly on a cliff, yet gives wind power farms maximun effect.
There is also the option to add animals to your city and plant trees.

Once your satisfied with what you have created in God mode, you go into Mayor mode where you can start building your city into a metropolis.
In mayor mode you control everything about your city.
The first thing you need is a power station, without power nothing will get done in your city. Civic buildings will not function and zones will fail to grow. There is a massive array of power stations to choose from, all without different levels of power production and pollution. They also cost different amounts to run each month.

Once you've got power sorted out you'll then have to build some residential areas for your Sims to live, to do this you zone out a residential area, which can be either dense, medium or light. The lighter the cheaper, but the less people who can live there. You'll need a certain population before certain densities begin to properly develop, heavy densities also need a good supply of water to grow properly.(which you'll have to build up using underground mode to lay pipes and build pumping stations, water towers, treatment plants etc.)
After residential areas you'll need to build industrial and commercial areas for your Sims to go and work. These areas work exactly the same as residential areas, you click and drag to show the area you want to zone.
Just because you zone it, it doens't mean anything will get built there though, there are many factors that affect growth of zones including transport, pollution, land value, safety, health and eductation.

Once you've got all your zones working satisfactorally, you have to think about factors like eductaion, health, policing and fire protection.
There is a massive amount of buildings to do these jobs, all with different pros and cons, and different levels of coverage. For example, a large fire station is very expensive to build and run, yet just one can provide fire coverage for a whole small city.

Parks and other enjoyment facilities will have to built in your city to keep your Sims happy and increase aura in your city. These places can also attract big businesses like high wealth commercial offices and high tech industries. But these, like everything else on Sim City 4 cost money to build and run, which leads me on to the budget side of Sim City.

If you want your city to grow well, the most important thing is to keep out of the red. With Sim City 4, you have far more control on budget than in previous Sim City games.
Everything in your city has an adjustable budget, which if you lower will cut costs yet reduce effeciency, or if you make it higher will raise costs yet improve effeciency.
There are also advanced controls on income from taxes and neighbour deals.

Once your city has got going, you'll have some time to check out the Rush Hour expansion pack features in the game.
As the name suggests, Rush Hour adds a lot more emphasis into controlling the transportation system in your city.
One of the features you notice straight away is the ability to get into a car and complete missions or just take a free drive around your city. This works pretty seamlessly and adds an additional fun factor to Sim City, all of the missions allow you to earn money or have an effect on your Mayor Rating. More vehciles become available in your city as you build new buildings (e.g Build a new hospital with an helipad and you'll soon be able to complete helicopter missions).
One of the problems with Rush Hour is that it adds annoying little tags which pop up all over your city to allow you to complete driving missions, which is ok if you want to do a mission, but gets annoying if you are just trying to build your city. I do belive there is a way to turn these tags off, but then you can't do the missions! So you end up constantly going back and forth to menus turning the tags on and off.
Rush Hour also adds a lot more options to the transportation system including advanced controls over transport and new forms of transportation. It also allows you to get a more in depth look at transport problems in your city with the addition of the Transport Query tool, which allows you to see the routes Sims take to and from a certain building.

As with all other Sim City games, disasters are a vital element of the game, as they add an element of danger and possible failiure to even the most well developing cities.
Sim City 4 features loads of new options for disasters plus a lot more control over them, through God Mode you can select exactly where in your city disasters will hit and then contol them once they've hit. (e.g Steer a meteorite as it soars straight towards your city).
Unfortunately, they're are also random disasters which happen in you city which can't be turned off and can happen anywhere. Which is really annoying when you're brand new International Airport that you've been saving up for for a week gets wiped out by a sudden volcano.

As well as many gameplay elements been improved in Sim City 4, so have the graphics. Buildings now have immaculate detail even at the closest zoom level and Sim City has, for the first time, incorporated a new day/night mode, it can be really impressive to see your new Big Ben landmark lit up at night!
Unfortunately for those with not so good computers, the advance in graphics can mean frequent freeze ups and a really annoying ripple effect as the graphics for buidlings are gradually loaded from the center outwards. I'd make sure your computer is some way past the minimun system requirements or else your experience of the game will almost certainly be runined by performance issues.

There is a massive Sim City 4 online community where you can download new landmarks for your city which people have designed. You can also download the Building Architect Tool from Simcity.com to make your own landmarks, but this is a very tricky peice of software to use as it is based on gMax which is very powerful but very complicated! You'll need some professional expertise in computer graphics to get the most out of the Building Architect Tool.

All in all Sim City 4 is a great game with loads of great features, but it is somewhat let down by a few minor issues which could easily have been solved. Patches are constantly been released however which tidy up some of these issues.

Summary: A great game, just let down by a few minor issues.