Cheap SimCity 4 (Mac) (Software) (Macintosh, Mac OS X) Price
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$49.99
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SimCity 4 functions much like its predecessors. You've got the power to zone land as residential (green), commercial (blue), and industrial (yellow). You control the budget. You decide where to place crucial services like police, fire, medical, and even utilities like power and water. You place schools, parks, roads, water towers, and scenery as you accede to the many demands of your Sim citizens. Do a good job and your city will grow and the money will flow into your coffers. Do a bad job and the people will pack up and move away, leaving your city treasury in horrific debt and landing you what the game cheekily considers to be a far easier job: senator. The game requires a balancing act that takes both planning and a persnickety nature. There are charts to read, reports to watch, and, above all, needs to juggle. It's rewarding when it all comes together, and frustrating when you fail, once again, to build anything worthwhile.
That's why I wish the game came with a better manual. The included book glosses over most major information and then neglects important aspects, such as the RCI indicator (which explains zoning needs) and parts of the budget. At the very least, the manual should include tips on handling debt. There are two tutorials which cover the basics, but again, they won't help you get out of trouble once you get in too deep. You can find this information in the strategy guide, which is sold separately, but you really shouldn't have to go that route.
The graphics are amazing, showing a vibrant metropolis with scurrying traffic, wandering Sims, smoking chimneys, and sparkling lights when night falls. Fireworks reward each year of service. And wait until you see the cool disasters you can unleash if the mood strikes you--fire, lightning, tornado, volcano, and giant robot. Oddly, there's a significant performance hit even on fast systems. Thankfully, the stuttery scrolling and slow-to-respond zoom don't hurt the game too much since you can pause it at will or fast forward if you need to wait for your cash reserves to build. The most significant flaw is that the game only offers one save slot, which discourages experimentation.
Despite minor imperfections SimCity 4 is an awesome game. You can build several cities next to each other on the map and make them dependant on each other. (You can build the greater L.A. area, in other words.) You can even import your Sims from The Sims to live in your city. Such familiar characters can tell you a lot about what your city needs. Put simply, city planning has never been this fun, this challenging, or this deep. --Andrew S. Bub
Pros:
- Beautiful graphics and animation
- Deeper and more realistic than ever before
Cons:
- Runs slowly on most systems
- Inadequate manual
| PLATFORM: | Macintosh, Mac OS X |
| CATEGORY: | Software |
| MANUFACTURER: | Aspyr Media |
| ESRB RATING: | Everyone |
| FEATURES: | Create and control the most life-like metropolis you can imagine, Take your Sims from "The Sims" into your SimCity, Dispatch police cruisers to fight crime, send out the Mayor's limo to quell a rioting mob, or cap an erupting volcano threatening your citizens, Form mountains, carve valleys, plant forests, raise oceans, and more, From mellow traffic flow to commuter hell, noontime crowds to nighttime calm, partygoers to troublemakers, the movement in your city is ever-changing and unpredictable |
| TYPE: | Computer Games, Macintosh (Machintosh), Mac, Apple, Simulations (Simulation, Simulate), Strategy (Strategic) |
| MEDIA: | CD-ROM |
| MPN: | 10350 |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 618870103501 |
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Customer Reviews of SimCity 4 (Mac)
SimCity 3000 gets a facelift I've been a fan of the Sim games since the days of playing SimCity (and later, SimCity 2000) on my old 386 PC running DOS. Times have changed a lot since then, but oddly SimCity has largely stood still. SimCity 2000 was the first and only major revision to the series, and arguably was the best out of all of them. So how does SimCity 4 stack up?
SimCity 4, like SC3K before it, is largely a visual upgrade. The graphics are indeed very well done, and the game has a rich lifelike feel to it. The sound effects are top knotch as well. Cars driving around, children playing at a playground, the soft whoosh of wind power generators. Sadly the music does not match up to the quality of the sound, varying wildly between very annoying and passable. Unlike previous Sim games, there are no catchy tunes to be found here. And don't expect to play this game on a slow Mac - even my Power Mac with dual 1GHz G4s tends to chug when I change zoom levels and such.
The mechanics of the game are largely unchanged from the days of SimCity 2000: build a city, manage taxes and infrastructure, keep the Sims happy. SimCity 4 is more complicated in some ways (budgeting is more detailed, the model for residential/commercial/industrial demand is more complex, etc.) and this can make things very difficult. It took me a number of tries to build a city that wasn't burning thousands of simoleons every month. The game is still just as fun as ever, though.
Unfortunately, a number of the changes are actually omissions. Gone are the scenarios (like Dullsville), the real world cities, and the ability to generate random terrain by adjusting a few sliders. You have to custom carve each area you build a city in, unless you load up a pre-built region. These features are sorely missed, and they take away quite a bit of what made SimCity so enjoyable in the past.
What it all comes down to is this: SimCity 4 is a lot of fun to play, and Aspyr did a great job porting it. If you can forgive the missing features from previous SimCity games, and if your machine is powerful enough, I definitely recommend this game. Now if you'll excuse me, I must attend to some unhappy Sims protesting outside my mansion...
Neat game, but slow...
On a PowerBook G4 667MHz, it works *pretty* well to start with... But as the size of the city grows, it gets slower and slower until it's a bit annoying to use. However, the graphics are great, and they've added a lot of interesting tidbits to it.
If you're a Sim City fan and enjoyed the previous three versions, then you'll like this one.. However, don't bother buying it if you don't have a modern enough graphics card/computer.
SimCity 4 - the best SimCity game ever
I own this game since from August 2004 and when I played it, I totally loved it. I mean, this game has much more opportunities and control for me to take the power with, comparing with the SimCity 2000. In SimCity 2000, you can only manage the region-wide controls as the fire department, police stations, and hospital's budgets and so on. Also, you get few rewards in that game. But now, it's SimCity 4, you get the ability to control more than ONE cities, and you can finally make neighboring cities to exhange some deals and so on. You can even design your own map of the cities, like the quote from SimCity 4's game trailer, "Build the city of your dreams." This is the best game and if you're looking for the total power and control of the cities and building them from your own mind, SimCity 4 is the best game to own!