[thechat] disappointed with SimCity4

[Erik Mattheis]

I get one video game or less per year as I recognize my weakness. 
SimCity3000 ate up a lot of my time in late 1999, loved it ... it was 
after that that I made my "one a year" rule. I did my best to get 
SimCity4 ASAP, which involved canceling a (delayed) amazon.com order 
and buying it at the Apple Store (my 1998 Windows box works great for 
what I need it for - playing games is not one of them)

I'm so far very disappointed in SC4: it does not seem significantly 
different than I remember SimCity3000 except:

pluses:
- the messages you get while a city is being loaded into RAM are great 
(favorite I've seen so far: "initializing election fixing matrix")
- I like the ability to create disasters
- being able to play your own music (I assume this works on the Mac 
version but haven't tried it)

minuses:
- once the city starts getting mid-sized buildings, the game CRAWLS 
when zooming in or out or scrolling across city. This makes it plain 
old frustrating to play
- new "feature" of getting free streets when zoning. A meticulous Mayor 
like me wants to decide where streets go and should not be penalized 
for diligence.
- all in all, the greater difficulty in getting large buildings does 
not outweigh the greater realism of managing a city. After playing a 
game for several days with consistently high approval and managing the 
budget well, I think I deserve to see some big buildings.

unimpressed with:
- ability to place Sims in city

It seems that the consensus is that SimCity4 isn't worthy of attention 
as I can't find a single good SimCity4 fan site ... have been wondering 
if reading tips from other players would make the game more engaging, 
but have not seen a single tip that was news to me. So I assume it's 
just slower paced and harder, which is not an astounding advance from 
SimCity3000.

Anybody else here a fan of SimCity300 and also played SimCity4? What's 
your take? Do I forget about it and pretend it wasn't actually my "one 
game" this year? That is kinda what I'd like to do at this point.

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-/erik/

612 377 2272
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