SimCity 4 (Deluxe Edition) (PC, 2003)

Recently aquired this game.
Never have i had so much fun playing a simulation game. This game is a total upgrade over its predecesor Simcity 3000 which was also a very good game.

City building has been slightly simplified but became more complex whit everything else such as being able to individually fund each city owned buildings like police stations, schools and hospitals and whit the inclusion of social classes in the citizenship one can truly see the growth and prosperity of the city.
And whit the god mode one can finally have fun creating an impresive and unique map that one likes whitout the hassle of needing tons of time and money.

One quirk whit this game however is whit the transportation system. Roads quickly become overcrowded if one is not carefull whit its city planning.

As with previous versions of SimCity, this version allows you to create a city in your own design. Perhaps to see what your current town would look like if a few things were changed, or maybe to create a huge metropolis just to have aliens come and level the city!

It's all up to you, since you are the mayor and architect of your city. This version allows you to also drive various vehicles in your own city to earn or lose mayoral points. Or maybe just to see how much of a pain it is to drive anywhere in your city. This version also allows you to place various types of roads from neighborhood side streets to major interstates and everything in-between. Also the AI is intelligent enough to know if it should build a bridge, tunnel, overpass with or without access ramps, etc.

You can still micromanage the day to day like tweak the budget, lay water mains, and yes, you can cause natural disasters, all with the click of a button.

So if you loved the previous versions of the game franchise, then you will simply be overjoyed at this version of the game!

People crying about the graphics, please don't this game is from '03 and still the graphics are better then some games released in '06.
The game can be challenging but there are many plug ins for everyone. From Lots (buildings) to money and demand (sit back and enjoy)

Plug-Ins:
-This game is really friendly for modders. With experience in 3d modeling you can make anything you want! A skyscraper to a small little house!
-The game has lots of buildings but at some point you WILL have to use plug-ins.
-Plug-ins modify the game in great way. Transit, landscape, growth, etc. The roads in game might be kind of low capacity but with the NAM you will have real highways and you can choose how much capacity your streets have!
-Landscaping in Simcity 4 is little complicated but with a slope mod your mountains will look smoother or rougher, depends on how you want them!
-If you just want to sit back and watch the city grow just download the Demand mod, zone the city and sit back and enjoy your future metropolis.

Gameplay:
-Challenging therefore you really shouldn't want to start with this game. Play SC3000 or 2000 before this one

Graphics:
-The game used 3d engine but it's not 3d like SCSocieties because the view here is birds eye

What else? Oh, sounds, they are really good. You move the camera to a park and you can listen to birds and children playing and then move to a business center and the sounds smoothly change into loud people and cars.


PROBLEMS:
-You need a medium good computer or else you will have to move your graphics to low and you won't enjoy the game as much
-It's challenging therefore start with sc3000 or sc2000 (don't play societies because that game is a whole different concept)
-Crash to Desktop: This is an unknown error, the game stops and instantly takes you to desktop. No error message, nothing, so save your game every, 10 or 15 minutes, in middle of big projects and after big projects

Like all the sim games it is easy to get excited at first when you start your city, but once the challenges start piling up it can get frusterating, you just can't seem to turn the corner at some point. This is where the game seperates you from either a determined player or one that simply loses interest.
It just depends on how you react. Either way it is very rewarding and chalenging. The replay value is extremly high, since you can just start over when ever you want, or just keep building towns if you get bored with the one your working on. The feature I like the best was how the towns can work togethor. You can have one collect all the garbage from the other, or one be the industrial or commercial city, while another as maybe a suburb.
The only issue I had and maybe it was just my lack of city designing knowledge, but I alays ended up with huge traffic conjestion problems. This was very frusterating and I could never seem to avoid the problem or fix it entirely. Also the feature that allows you to pick citizins to track is on one hand very helpful and a great idea, but most of what they say is useless and they try to lay a guilt trip on you for not catering to there every need.
But the game is huge and you can spend days working on it, it is very addicting! Alot of micromanaging though, so if that is not your bag you will get bored pretty quick. Sometimes it felt like they just made the game too big, they couldn't get every little thing too work perfect, but over all it runs smooth enough.

This a great game, doesn"t work with vista or windows 7.
Create an entire region of cities; weave together a tapestry of cities and watch them share and compete for resources that are linked by a fully integrated transportation network; wield God-like powers; sculpt the landscape to create a world based on your imagination then summon volcanoes tornadoes meteors,and lightning; be a responsive mayor; build a world class city with stadiums airports universities and real world landmarks deploy emergency vehicles and join in the action as they battle blazes mobs and more; get Insight from your sims; read the rhythm of the city from commuter hell to mellow cruising noontime crowds to nighttime calm.