SimCity 4. First impressions...

I bought the game yesterday, $60 CAD plus tax. The screenshots blew me away graphically, but it wasn't until I played the game until I realized how unimpressive the graphics (and so far the game) really are...

Still the same 5 zoom levels. You can't even smooth-pan zoom. I have no idea why.

The cars and Sims drive for a short distance and then vanish, just like SimCity 3000.

The cities seem less nice than SC3000 to look at. Light residential areas look brownish, and it's hard to make things out. Perhaps a tad more realistic, but heck, the game is miles away from realism anyway. I don't like building towns just to look at a slurry of browns and greys.

They still don't have newspapers, and they took the lame SC3000 ticker and made it worse. Even less funny jokes. "Cat drives bus for four blocks. Seemed competent but left furball." or something like that. Har de-har har. That's brutal.

Plus, the menus are all in some kind of bluish white monochrome. I have to strain my eyes to tell the little icons representing power, water etc apart...

Oh, and you get to see most of the awards and special facilities greyed out before they actually become available. That's like being told in November everything I'm getting for Christmas.

Oh, and of course, the music is terrible. I mean, serene beach soothing type atmospheric music is all of the sudden interrupted by loud thrashing drum loops and extremely bad guitar riffs and sax solos. The music is almost completely without melody, or harmony, and is therefore boring and colorless.

I tell you, they'd better freaking come out with a driving/rescue/3D type addon for this game, or else...

Or else what? You won't purchase a second copy?

simcity 2000 is the pinnacle, everything created by maxis since is a long descent into darkness (including the sims)

It appears you've been had in a big way Andrew :(

after seeing the commercial on tv, I was trying to figure out what the hell was new to the game..

and I still am wondering..

I too find the graphics very disappointing. Especially after reading reviews. Almost every review gave at least a B+ for the graphics, but I must say they look like Simcity 3000 in pretty much every way. That goes for the game itself aswell. Heck, the disasters are always fun.

As long as it still has llama refrences...

KoRn said:

after seeing the commercial on tv, I was trying to figure out what the hell was new to the game..

Perhaps the more complex education/health care/wealth system, local funding, much more detailed taxation, new kinds of zones (this time useful agricultural zones too), the region system, some kind of online play which I did not try yet, kickass graphics -- you need to have something better than a Voodoo 2 to notice that -- and the overall feeling of your city being fairly realistic (at least it feels more like it), unlike SC3000.

AndrewB said:

The cars and Sims drive for a short distance and then vanish, just like SimCity 3000.

Maybe the developers wanted to spare your computer the fate of melting down in flames when it tries following thousands of cars and even more sims in your city at once, or perhaps sims finish their trips and get off the streets? Here comes my only complaint, the game's being quite a resource hog.

AndrewB said:

I don't like building towns just to look at a slurry of browns and greys.

That means your zones suck, learn to play the game first.
Edit: No offense.

I think Sim City game suck big time... The sims online looks pretty cool though

Deviant Force said:

I think Sim City game suck big time... The sims online looks pretty cool though

You better not be talking about simcity 2000.

Blah, Simcity can kiss my ass. As far as I'm concerned, all those sims games suck; why do I want to control everything everyone does? It just gets mindless and stupid. Ive played all the maxis games - everysingle one bores me to sleep...

Black Void said:

Blah, Simcity can kiss my ass. As far as I'm concerned, all those sims games suck; why do I want to control everything everyone does? It just gets mindless and stupid. Ive played all the maxis games - everysingle one bores me to sleep...

You have an extremely short attention span, it seems.

I agree with Arioch. Sim City 2000 was superb, 3000 was just boring. In fact, it even put me off 2000 :(

If there's a demo of 4000, I'll probably give it a go. If not, I don't think I'll bother.

Congratulations, you fail spending your money wisely!

I like SimCity 4 :(

i have seen it. dont like sim games, so i dont care. none of them have impressed me and this one looks just like the rest.

I think that SimCopter was really the best and most polished of all the games. The play control of the copter was mind-blowingly good. Extremely easy to manuever the copter, yet still amazingly realistic with motion and acceleration and wind resistance. And the music was top freaking notch.

I just hope that they expand on SimCity 4 by making a game much like SimCopter, although not necessarily a copter game. Like I said, a driving-based game with rescue missions would be ideal. It should also have pauses in the action where you can just sit parked, listening to the music and witty commercials on the radio (dang those SimCopter radio ads were excellent), or explore your city.

That would be ideal, but I'll darn myself if I ever see Electronic ___ come out with an artful, original and fun game.

heh, imagine sim city, and GTA mixed together....

Notably stupid idea, since GTA has been done 4 times already.

Like streets of simcity?

Yeah. Streets wasn't that great, but it still offered some form of exploration. What's the point in building an amazing city if you can't really, really try it out? Only look at it?

AndrewB said:

Notably stupid idea, since GTA has been done 4 times already.

not for the sake of a new GTA, just more of a better version of "streets of sim city". And a method of making your own maps for the game..

a flying game probably would not be made for stupid reasons because media would be over it saying it would teach people how to fly into buildings

Right. So they should make such a game, but without the mafia theme and senseless violence. Same search and rescue theme as SimCopter, but made better. SimCopter did leave a lot of things to be desired.

AndrewB said:

Right. So they should make such a game, but without the mafia theme and senseless violence. Same search and rescue theme as SimCopter, but made better. SimCopter did leave a lot of things to be desired.

It should have some sort of 'destruction' mode. Streets of SimCity was fun, but ugly as hell.