Sim City 4

[ringmastery]

Has anyone played the game? Is it worth buying?

[Cat Atomic]

1. It's a solid game.

It's got some more detailed information and easier city management than 3K did. You can build cities in different regions, and they affect one another in terms of trade, polution, etc. For instance, you can build a slum with horrible housing and a huge landfill right in the middle of town, then hook that city up to a clean city, and the clean city can sign a contract for waste disposal with the slum city. Ship your trash off to the landfill.

I think it's a worthwhile step forward, though I'm still waiting for the Sim City series to do something really groundbreaking.

[Enraged_Ape]

2. Aren't these games veering more and more into micromanagement?

I can't believe people find that fun. Don't we get enough of that in daily life?

I enjoyed the first Sim City enormously. I tried the second one and was bored to tears. I can't imagine that's improved.

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

3. Requires a Pentium 4, IIRC.

[ProudGerman]

4. It requires a pretty beefy system

It's not the graphics, but the simulations going on in the background, that are quite beastly. Only near topline machines will be able to run the game with a huge metropolis without grinding to a halt, it's processor and RAM intensive.

Though, it does have something that is devilishly fun. Meteors that are somewhat steerable. I admit, I've chucked a few towards the white house.

[Forkboy]

5. Good game but a real system hog

I can't play it on my old PC but I tried it for awile at a friend's house when it came out.He had a top of the line AlienWare PC and it still was bogged down at times (like the volcano erupting :) ).

Still,if you can run it you'll enjoy it.