Simcity 4

[tycho102]

I played a tremendous amount of Simcity 1, and still have very fond memories of it. Played a bit of Simcity 2 -- didn't really get into it. Recently gave Simcity 3 a shot, and enjoyed it when it wasn't crashing on my machine. So I picked up Simcity 4, figuring that it would be at least as good as Simcity 3 without the Win95 crashing-all-the-bloody-time hassle.

I was half correct.

It doesn't crash. In fact, it is extra-ordinarily stable. I can alt-tab out of the game and do all kinds of stuff with my KVM, and that thing will just chug along for hours. However, zoning is the absolute worst god damn nightmare that I have experienced since Tribes 2. When Tribes 2 formatted your system drive after attempting to patch, it was doing you a favor in comparison to Simcity 4.

Zoning in Simcity 4 is terrible.

The developers attempted to "do you a favor" by having the zones include streets. However, in their game-balance wisdom, they modeled traffic flow from those zones. And the streets (in comparison to "one-way streets", "avenues", and "highways") are utterly worthless. You end up having to spend money bulldozing the streets, and laying avenues instead.

My entire kingdom (or at least a chainmail shirt of mithril [a.k.a "True Silver"]) for the ability to zone without streets, as you could do in Simcity 3.

Other than zoning, it's a pretty decent game. Water pipes lay across channels without any problems. Highways are still a complete bastardization, but they were in the last game, so just avoid them entirely (by using avenues and subway/rail) like you did in the last game. I miss the scenarios, not to even mention the pre-laid cities. The graphics are wonderful and you can see the "influence" that each police and fire station will cover as you place them in the city -- no more checking a seperate city layout and attempting to figure out about where you need a fire station.

There are also a couple of upgrades: Education "influence" from high schools and elementary school, as well as the ability to play "mini-games" inside a sim-car or sim-helicopter.

Overall, it's a step up and a step back. The zoning is terrible. If I had the ability to zone without streets, I would rate this game the absolute best of the series -- even without scenarios.