| SimCity 4 | 
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| From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $39.99
Buy Used: $6.25
You Save: $33.74 (84%)
New (5) Used (19) from $6.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  221 reviews
Sales Rank: 7809
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Xp
ESRB: Everyone
Media: CD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.3 x 1.4
MPN: 4745513
UPC: 014633145731
EAN: 0014633145731
ASIN: B00006F7S8
Release Date: January 14, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: ** NO MANUAL ** (CD in jewel case w/ rear insert). * FREE * Upgrade to 1st class shipping on all single-disc games. Fully tested and 100% guaranteed to work or your money back. Thanks for looking - have a great day!
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Product Description
In SimCity 4, byou don't just build your city, you breathe life into it./b With god-like powers, you be able to sculpt mountains, gouge riverbeds, and seed forests to lay the groundwork for your creation!
Amazon.com Review
It's hard to believe that creator Will Wright had trouble selling his original ISimCity/I concept to publishers. That first game went on to fame, notoriety, and great praise--from critics, gamers, and even educators--and spawned countless imitators, not the least of which include Wright's own smaller-scale IThe Sims/I, which went on to become a phenomenon in its own right. Now on its fourth edition, ISimCity/I returns to our hard drives, and would-be city planners everywhere will be busy for a long, long time.p ISimCity 4/I 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.p 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.p 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.p Despite minor imperfections ISimCity 4/I 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 IThe Sims/I 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. I--Andrew S. Bub/Ip BPros:/B ul liBeautiful graphics and animation liDeeper and more realistic than ever before /ulp BCons:/B ul liRuns slowly on most systems liInadequate manual/ul
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| Customer Reviews: Read 216 more reviews...
 Simcity 4 May 12, 2007
the Simcity series has always been fun and challenging.
br /SimCity 4 is the best yet.
br /the graphics are awesome and the new ways to interact with your city and it's inhabitants are SOooo totaly cool!
br /the maps you create Can be used with "The Sims 2 (PC)" as new nieghborhoods.
 Sim City 4 Review November 1, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I recently bought Sim City 4. I had desperately wanted the game. It does not take a while to get used to , as I play it virtually every time I sit on the computer!
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br /I found that it was exciting to watch your city develop, but when the population reaches approximately 10,000, you run out of money and your Sims start flocking out of your city. Also, when I build a city, there is a 'No Road Connection' sign appear on vacant blocks of land, although I have already made a Road Connection to the vacant blocks of land. Also, when I run out of money, the Advisors keep annoyingly whingeing and complaining about Taxes and my Expenditure.
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br /The Terraforming tools are fabulous, as you can make Cliffs, Mesas, Mountains, Seed Forests, and Gouge Valleys.
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br /I only occasionaly place Sims in my city, as they often Whinge about things like lack of Power Plants, but really, there are the more efficient, cleaner and safer Wind Farms. Sometimes my advisor pops up saying there is a Core Meltdown at the Power Plant when I don't even have a Nuclear Power Plant in my City. Another problem is, you cannot manage your Finance and Budget properly. The Advisors seem to take more control of your City than you do. I even take out $2,000,000 loans if I have to. Also, the annoying 'No Job' sign on Residential Units are very annoying, as I already have Commercial and Industrial areas. Also, I have to place Five Elementary Schools in the one City, that is why some things are a waste of time or money.
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br /A lot of people who I have heard of, seem to complain that the game runs extremely slow, even on State-of-the-Art Computers, and the system requirements. That is probably because their computer is jam-packed with Programs and Software. I was hanging out to purchase this, and I sure done myself good. I also have The Sims, not as good as Sim City though!
Sim City 4 is awsome! July 12, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It took me a long time to figure out how to make a city but after about a month I was making cities with hundreds of thousands of people. Its fun watching your city develope!
good, not exceptional July 6, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I bought this game in a special offer with two other games that I did want, I had never heard of this game before so had no idea what it would be like. I was very pleasently surprised.
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br /First I will start with the positive points:
br / - The graphic believability is very good, that includes the landscaping tools and the buildings.
br / - The regions are interactive to a degree, it is just a pity you have to start again for a bordering town instead of carrying on with the same one when the map is full.
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br /Now the negative points:
br / - Once you get freely use to the feel of the game and can navigate easily around the controls, you get tired of seeing the same buildings over again, it is all very well having five police stations in a large city but it would be better if there was more variety of buildings
br / - When the cities are large, you have to be very careful with things like taxes and expenditures, taxes are basically the only way to make decent money, and you have to figure how to spend the moeny to utilities with making the city go bankrupt.
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br /I also found that after a while the game gets boring and maybe even frustrating, it is extrmely difficult to rear up a city that looks like the one on the cover
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br /This game should appeal to creative minds that don't mind just working on things without too much of a point to the game.
 build and watch - that's it June 10, 2006
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
There is no strategy to SimCity 4 - I thought that SimCity 3000 had been a botched attempt by the designers, but in truth it appears the direction that they are heading with the SimCity series is simply the "Build and Watch" approach. The graphics are pretty good, although it seems to me that if they are really going to stick with this "build and watch" approach to gaming that they should expand the number of buildings - even a tiny city can easily have ten of the same "Bob's Grease Pit" ... I mean come on fellas... choose your weapon, but do it well!
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br /I was eagerly awaiting the widely touted 'multi-region' capability (wherein multiple cities could be connected and interdependant) but this too was a fairly large dissapointment. The cities are utterly independent of each other, and the ability to create deals between two cities that you have created does not add notably to the gaming experience.
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br /Also worth mentioning, the city map sizes are considerably smaller. Although there are some neat new highway building features, it just doesn't ever feel like there is enough space to warrant a highway in these maps. I suppose they were betting on the interdependency of the regions to give the feeling of a larger world to settle, but as I mentioned this is non-existant. Perhaps if they had given the capability for your city to actually overflow onto the next region (as opposed to starting a new city, with a new bank roll, on the neighboring region) the small map size would have been acceptable.
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br /The Rush Hour expansion pack is supposed to let you walk individual sims from one house to the next, etc, etc... I have not even toyed with this option because I don't feel that SimCity is the right venue for this sort of activity. When playing SimCity I honestly have no interest in manipulating individual Sims, but rather would prefer to manage the "city". So for me, this feature (to which indeed an entire expansion pack was devoted) added nothing to the game.
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br /All in all SimCity 4 plays like a loose collection of ideas. The gaming aspects are nearly completely eroded. It feels like there were 13 different developers who each had their own idea about how the game should play. The result is that it barely retains the status of being a game. The small map sizes and micro-management of sims kept yielding me to the thought "Why didn't they call this one SimTown and make a REAL SimCity sequel instead?!?". Do not expect more than 4 hours of enjoyable game time from this one. Somewhere along the way EA lost site of what constitutes a game. Although I was eagerly awaiting this sequel, I give it two thumbs down.
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