Psycho Economist

SimCity 4 was pre-ordered for me as a Christmas present, and I got it while I was out of town this week.

I uninstalled SC3k (saving the cities and buildings and stuff for use on the laptop), and went right to work. I've been playing it to the exclusion of everything else since Wednesday night (even sleep on Wednesday). I think it's cool. The cities look much more realistic than in any previous game.

My only disappointment is that the largest "cities", maybe burroughs, are only 4.1 km by 4.1, according to the Prima strategy guide (got that today). On the other hand, the cities within a region are very interdependent, so it may pan out in the end.

I already have some ideosynchrasies to my play: I name the streets in my head, and I assign addresses to MySim houses and my public buildings... that's the big one.

What are your impressions? Any tips? Gripes? Funny thoughts / incidents?

Kinross

I was looking forward to it, but it doesn't look like I will be buying it.

From impressions at other boards it was rushed out the door. It states multiplayer on the box but that part isn't functioning yet. It looks like its a resource hog and crashes alot.

So basicly its an incomplete minor update to SC3U.

Psycho Economist

Well, I'll vouch that it's a resource hog, but I haven't had it crash on me yet. I am surprised to hear about the whole multiplayer / not implemented thing, though... hadn't tried it yet.

ajm51987

Ya, its alot of fun. The only thing that caught me off guard was "the house of worship". I knew that all me people couldent be good little atheists ( ) but still I thought: here it is a little brick chappel, mabey with a cross on top. However I was pleased to see it was really a mixture of alot of diffrent religious houses. There are some graphic problems, but it's still realllly good! Look out for killer robots!!!

crab juice

I have been Maxis' bitch since the first SimCity came out, I have all the Sims and their expansion packs, but I will not buy another one of their products. I have SimCity 4 and it would be a great game if it didn't crash all the time. I hear they are working on a patch for it, I hope it will come soon because it's crashed 5 times on me today. The Sims crashes all the time, I've actually learned a lot about navigating my computer trying to get it to run. SO ADDICTIVE though. I think about my cities at work . I just want it released right the first time.

Syphor

Great game; hasn't crashed yet but I hope a patch is released very soon to ease the insane resource dependency. As soon as my city hits 15k - 20k the game�s as slow as molasses and literally takes minutes to zoom in and out. My computer isn't a slouch either, although I'll be upping its memory from 256 to 512.

Psycho Economist

I had the same thought myself. I've given them funny names: first was "The Agnostic Church". I also have the "Al Penumbra Mosque".

Haven't tried to summon up any disasters.

I also saw the commercial a couple times over the weekend. I almost went to the store to buy a copy... until I remembered I was playing it.

Wyz_sub10

It's definitely a resource hog, and even on my P4 1.7 with a Nvidia GeForce3 the scrolling can be logey.

I'm finding it hard to get my town up and going, and I'm not convinced that the 'auto-roads' feature is a good one.

But it's a fun diversion, and there are enough new little additions to make it fun and worth the upgrade.

Psycho Economist

I rarely use auto-roads myself. Heck, I get picky about lot lines.

You'll get as far with a one-city region as you would playing on the only sim in a neighborhood. They've made it really hard to grow your city without connections to other towns.

Wyz_sub10

Thanks for the advice. My wife really liked The Sims, but couldn't understand why her gal was crying and lonely all the time. (She was smitten with my guy, but he only liked her "as a friend". )

I'll create a coupld of other little towns and see what happens. As with all games these days (it seems), I'll wait for the user community to start putting out some neat stuff.