This game is so time consuming, but its so awesome you won't care.

User Rating: 9 | SimCity 4 PC
This game is by far the most addicting game made by Maxis. You can spend hours filling up your little imaginary world, landscaping the environments, being mayor, and being GOD.

This game also seems to take what worked in SimCity 2000 and 3000, and amplified it. The tiers of what kind of cities you can make are much deeper than previous installments, and it can take a lot of time a discipline before reaching those skyscraper buildings everyone wants. This game is not for everyone.

For newcomers, simcity is a city simulation game where you have to lay zones of development space to grow your city. Adding the right services (police, education, etc), allow your city to grow properly. Once your swimming in dough, you can really start adding character to your city, or you can let it become a dump and unleashed disasters on it. There is no losing, you set your own goals.

The depth in this installment is much larger than before. There are 2 different things to consider when developing residential area, density and wealth. It is a good idea when developing a high wealth town to focus on wealth later on so you can earn money for the better stuff. The game also teaches you how to handle a budget.

Connecting cities in this game is one of the newer additions that really give new life to the series. Connecting your cities not only fills up the map, but can also open new economy deals, and increase demand in commercial and industrial areas. Thats why you might want to make one of your cities 'not so wealthy'. That way it stimulates your economy. If you want to clean up the city later, when there is better demand from other cities, you can do that. There was a lot of thought that went into designing this Simcity.

In the rush hour expansion, included in the deluxe version, you also have little missions driving through your city to earn mayor points and money. Its a little something to keep the game from becoming monotonous. Its also a good opportunity to observe the traffic in your city, and gaze at the city itself.

Overall, this game offers a lot of bang for the buck and is really addicting. It also can take a load of time to really get into it, so it might not be for everyone. Overall, Simcity fans, Sim fans, or even people who love those really complexed games, should give this a try.

Note: this game does have a habbit of crashing on some PCs. It helps to get the patch for it, but you should really save constantly. An auto save feature wouldve been kick ass.