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SimCity 4
Released On: Jan 12, 2003
84
8.6
All Platforms
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
84
81% Positive
29 Reviews
29 Reviews
19% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
84
81% Positive
29 Reviews
29 Reviews
19% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The new features, refined interface, and (above all) near-perfect sense of balance make this old dog feel vital and new.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 354 User Ratings
8.6
84% Positive
297 Ratings
297 Ratings
13% Mixed
47 Ratings
47 Ratings
3% Negative
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 354 User Ratings
8.6
84% Positive
297 Ratings
297 Ratings
13% Mixed
47 Ratings
47 Ratings
3% Negative
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
Classic city builder still unrivalled in terms of customization and size. Pretty polished although can be a resource hog with larger maps but with all maps joining the possibilities are endless. With the network addon mod you can do curved roads, many real life road designs and even see which one is best implemented in your town. Will you make an off grid eco town or an industrial nuclear powerhouse for neighbouring cities
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PC
Just reinstalled this game on my computer via Origin and it's an absolute blast to play. SimCity 4 is a fantastic city building game! The game is addictive and has a sense of challenge. Playing and managing new cities is incredibly fun and all the features this game offers is mind blowing. Also this game allows you to connect cities with other cities to create regions which is just amazing. Even though I had this game on Origin uninstalled for years, I have been enjoyed it ever since I installed it to my computer. Also, I'm surprised that the Deluxe Edition on Origin runs well on modern computers. SimCity 4 is very addictive and the game is an absolute blast to play!
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PC
One thing that is really great about SimCity 4 is the fact that EVERYTHING is under your control.
Technical sim junkies will have a lot to build, destroy, and monitor, but newbies might want to run for shelter.
Unlike past SimCities that dealt in generalities, this one takes a more hands-on approach.
SimCity 4’s biggest flaw is that it’s not a SimCity. It’s some third-party interpretation of what SimCity should be like, with some grand new features. The new features are implemented but the designers totally missed what makes a SimCity.
Because the game adheres so much to real-world city-building, it's harder and harder to build the city of your dreams. [Apr 2003, p.76]
Simcity 4 is an outstanding game. I have grown up all my life with Simcity, and by far, this is the best game in the series. My first experience of Simcity came from Simcity Ds when I was about 8 years old, and have been playing ever since. Compared to Simcity 3000, this game is a huge step up.
Clearly aimed at experienced, PC gaming, simulator loving gamers, Simcity can satisfy all of the requirements that are needed to make a great city simulator, and does so much more to interest the player.
The game is orientated around grittier city building, or large gleaming metropolises, which, to a long term player, is a great change from the previous installments - where the design choices and city genres seemed somewhat limited.
With so many buildings to choose from, you may expect a steep difficulty curve, which indeed is apparent as you play the game. However, there is a certain satisfaction as your first high-rises begin to develop!
In my opinion, an important factor in gaming, is the music, as it creates most of the atmosphere. Simcity 4 does impress; it impresses a lot. The ambient music in the regional view, combined with the gritty, hard jazz in the mayor view, combine to create an incredible atmosphere, incomparable to previous entries in the series, despite the impressive jazz tracks in Simcity 3000. My favorite track in the game, known as ‘Zone System’ is an example of the perfection of ambient, gritty, depressing, but most of all, interesting, city-sounding music. It sets the atmosphere of the game perfectly, and captures the player’s and the sim’s emotions as you expand your corrupt city into a gleaming paradise.
One of Simcity 4’s main selling points, is the region view. This is a grid of differently sized square plots, all connected together. Compared to Simcity 5, this set up is perfect. It allows players to create a huge metropolis, which would not have been possible in a single city, with a total plot size that would be impossible otherwise to run on a computer today, let alone back in 2003.
Each individual cell, either 256x256, 128x128 or 64x64 tiles, can be landscaped by the player before creating their city. This could involve creating mountains, valleys, rivers, oceans or really any land form that the player could dream of.
Alternatively, the player has the possibility to import maps off of Simtropolis, and though difficult to install, adds an extra element to the game – I’m currently working on a city in a region shaped as the UK, with the landscape shaped from a high detailed height map.
Another selling point of the game is the implementation of features from The Sims. While these features are not necessary, they add a certain charm to the game. They allow the player to drive cars, fly planes, ride boats, control trains, or even drive a tank whilst destroying buildings with missiles.
An important part of gaming is certainly the graphics and aesthetics, and Simcity 4 does not disappoint. The graphics, while pixelated once zoomed in, are amazing. Loads of buildings have interesting features, even with customized gardens or small details such as cars. The view of the game is isometric, and the player can rotate the view by 90 degrees, in order to see parts of the map that may be hidden. This is an important feature, especially when working around hills. What I would have liked though is a feature where the player could view the map from birds-eye-view, but I can understand there may have been hardware limitations back in 2003 that may have made this impossible.
Simcity 4 gives the player access to many natural disasters and scenarios. Meteorites, tornadoes and earthquakes can be summoned by the player at any time, along with many other disasters. An example of an interesting scenario is if a nuclear power plant explodes, causing a lot of radiation to be expelled into the city. This can be interesting if the player wants a challenge, or just fun to destroy a huge metropolis!
Simcity 4 does have a few problems however, though not major if you know how to overcome them. The most prominent problem is the commute time being too difficult to manage.
Another issue is the constant industrial demand, where the player would need to build huge cities dedicated only towards industrial. This can be rather boring, as industrial development is limited, but can be improved by adding a mod that quarters the industrial demand.
Overall, Simcity 4 is a steal on Origin! For such an amazing game as this, with so many customization options, and such amazing music and game play, it is definitely worth the low price, despite being 15 years old. I would rate Simcity 4 a 10/10 simply for the enjoyment of the playing the game, but I would recommend that new players start with an easier game, Simcity 3000 or Simcity Ds, in order to introduce themselves to the basic fundamental ideas of how to play and manage a city.
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PC
It's a good city builder game, with beautiful graphics and plenty of options... But it is less complete than cities skylines and less fun than simcity 3
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PC
As far as I know, the only city builder game worth playing. There are prettier games out there, but this actually attempts to be a city SIMULATION, not a city painter. It doesn't do an amazing job. The economics are wonky, everything is kind of janky, its easy to break and cheat this game. But its the best thing out there in this genre.
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PC
I wrote a scathing review before, but I have to say the game isn't quite that bad. Sure, it has a quite a few crash bugs and falls flat in some places, but altogether the regional map is nice and the development of the city is fun to watch and manipulate. There are some annoying things, like terrain pathing for building placements (like, a lot of the time housing built on a hill will just make a garage spring up). But more than that isn't to be expected from a 10 year old game, which was just getting a grip on its technology.
Still, here's some points from that old review that I still think are worthy of consideration:
"SimCity 4 loses much in the way of atmosphere from the previous title. The great caricatures from SimCity 3000 are replaced with sprites from The Sims (classic) when Sims 2 was already out. What? There's still the uptown jazz, but some of it is annoying and repetitive. Graphically, its only a marginal improvement over SimCity 3000 and doesn't fully utilize hardware available at the time.
As to mechanics, there's not much to do but zoning and planning. One of the reasons why SimCity (2013) revolutionizes the series is because it gives you something more to do than just lay down streets, pipes, and zones. Once you get everything layed out, you'll find there's nothing to do but build a new city.
There's also some arbitrary things like power lines, which have no real purpose except making islands a little harder to play. Not really, because you can just lay down one wind turbine and its all good."
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PC
Bought this years late. The resolution stays at 4:3 making it hard to play on a laptop monitor and there is no detail at zoom levels with a broad enough view.
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PC
Summary PLAY GOD - Sculpt mountains, gouge valleys, seed forests, and bring forth animals to create a world imagined only by you. Summon volcanoes, release tornadoes, and call down meteors and ligthening. PLAY MAYOR - Connect a massive region of SimCities, each sharing and competing for resources. Deploy emergency vehicles and join in the action...
Rated E
for Everyone
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Jan 12, 2003
Developer:
- Maxis
Publisher: EA Games
Genres: