Sim City 4 PC Review

Maxis, the mighty “King of the Sims”, have created many games, starting with Sim City, they moved into more obscure games like Sim Life and Sim Earth, then they went quiet. For about three or four years they lay there, like a time bomb waiting to go off. They lay like a dormant volcano, filling up with lava that will burst out. They didn’t move a muscle for a long time, until Electronic Arts found the Maxis volcano and removed the rocks blocking it’s vents, and let the lava out. Maxis burst back with Sim City 3000, the brilliantly polished sim, then came the worlds number one best selling game EVER, The Sims, that set Maxis’ future in stone, to become the grand master of the sim. Now they come back again with Sim City 4.

Scrapping the thousand system, they go to single digits. Updating the game totally with a new 3D landscape. You can create your landscape from scratch and then add trees in, but these trees are no ordinary trees – oak trees populate the moist grassy areas, palm trees populate the beach areas, and you get the picture. Now you can add a nice new feature into your landscape… volcanoes! Now your little simlings can live in terror at the base of your own St. Helens. Also you can aim your own lightning at unsuspecting cars and people – let’s hope you can direct your own tornado!

The game play is a bit different from the simplicity of 3000, this time you have to walk along a fine line between keeping your simlings happy and making them bang on your door and overthrow you. You have to keep the taxes down and the people happy. But where you have to keep things cheap, surely there is somewhere where you can milk them for all they’ve got. After playing this game, by 5 o’clock everyone may want to rip your guts out, unless you have a natural flair for pleasing people then maybe, just maybe, they will like you. Anyway – you’ll never get the hang of this game the first time you play it.

All in all, it’s a spruced up SC3000, updated game play, new features and better graphics. Also a little gem is that you can import your sims from The Sims and see how they get on in the big city. A game not for the people who get bored easily, but for those that can see light in the future and can endure long times of bankruptcy.

Summary:

Graphics
streetlights, cars, sims, lightning, tornadoes, water, ships, planes… what else could you want? Oh yeah – buildings.

Gameplay
Deep. Very deep.

Sound
Nice. That’s all I can say about it. Nice.

Lifespan
Different every time.

Overall
A classic game that shall go down in history as THE SIM of all time.

9 out of 10