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All right, thanks. My PC is only slightly older than yours (Althlon 1800, the rest is similar), so I should be fine.
Now we want impressions of the actual game! What would you say are the most important improvements over Simcity (since it's the only one you played)? How steep is the learning curve?
I just wrote a HUGE post of impressions. And lost it all. I'm not in the mood to do it again. Damn it!
Ok, I'm going to try this again. I'll try and make it shorter, so I'm not sitting here typing for 20 minutes (they were really good impressions though). Ask if you have any more questions!
Fundamentally this is the same game of years past, but it's much more polished and is graphicly beautiful. First, the graphics are terrific, with hundreds of buildings that can be built over time...the better your city, the better the buildings get. There are even landmarks that you can put down. Have an extra 70,000 Simoleons? Put the White House downtown! The details are really amazing. You can watch the buildings being constructed, see people playing in their pools, walking around, getting mugged, children playing in open fire hydrants...the day and night cycles add even more visual splendor. Now you can actually see what the graphs and charts indicate, it's not just a red spot on the overlay map. If the chart says crime is bad on the west side, just scroll over and see the dilapidated houses. Wealthy areas have much nicer homes and cars, complete with swing sets, pools, patios. The details are everywhere.
The sound is equally impressive. Everything has a unique sound, the music is great (mp3 format) and I think you can even play your own tunes. Players with subwoofers are going to get a real treat when you set off an earthquake, tornado or volcano eruption. The eyes and ears are pleased with SimCity 4.
Now as I've said before, this game is hard. There is quite a bit of a learning curve...your first city is going to suck and your going to destroy it and start anew a few times. But with each city, you'll get better through experience by learning how to carefully balance everything. There is a constant battle to stay in the black. It costs a lot of money to keep everything funded. Your main source of income is taxes, which is broken up into three tiers. Low (income), medium and high which goes to Residential, Commercial and Industrial zoning. You can change the tax rate for each bracket as you see fit to make the most money. Trust me, your going to need every bit of it to keep afloat as your budget can get out of hand if you're not careful. Each civic division (transportation, utilities, maintanance etc.) has it's own budget and can be changed according to the needs of your city. Power plant making more power than is needed? Cut back the budget to conserve money. Another example is schools, which has a main budget (designates how many teachers and students will attend) and a bussing budget which shrinks or expands the distance the kids will be bussed from. If your budget is high (few kids, lots of teachers) you can cut it back, but if it's too low the teachers may strike (and you can see them picket outside of the school). Also, there is a main slider for education which will divide the money out to each section of schooling (elemtary, high school, univercity, musems, librarys...). You have a ton of options and balancing issues at your finger tips.
With all of these options to go through, thankfully the interface is up to the task. It's all extremly well organized and understandable, withing 15 minutes you'll have a grasp on what does what and where to go to get the information you need to expand.
A big addition to SC4 is that your city isn't isolated any more. When you first start the game, you are shown a big area of land that is broken up into regions, a city can be built on each one. These cities can then be linked up by road and rail to expand even further. For example, you could have one region devoted to just residential zoning and then link it up with an adjacent region that has the commercial and industrial zones. The sims actually commute to work (you can see the morning and night rush hour) so you need to have your roads planned out for them, and expand/upgrade when necessary. So you can actually build one huge city broken up into different regions, much like New York City. But it will take a lot of time and planing to get your city to those kind of heights.
You can also put your Sims from "The Sims" game into your city, and they will give you feedback on your handywork. They may grow or flounder in your city, if they don't like it, they will move! You can also make a Sim with this game if you don't have any of the other "Sim" games.
Another feature is "god mode". After you choose a region to build in, you can form the land just the way you want using the "god" tool set. Make mountains, valleys, hills, lakes, rivers, canyons, forests easily using the tool set. Again, the interface shines here again, everything is easy to find and use. Once your happy with the way your land is, you start to build your city. But once you do that, you can't use the terrain tools again unless you start that region over again. This set of tools is also where the disasters that you can unleash are kept (there are three tool sets, god, mayor-holds all the city building stuff and the info panel-which holds all the charts, graphs and advisors).
There is also an online feature that lets you build a city cooperativly with others. I'm not sure how many other people you work with as it's not up and running yet. You can also send your cities to friends so they can plop them down into their regions. see how well your cities link up with your friends!
So far I'm having a lot of fun with it, and the challenge is welcome as the more I play the better I get at it. It's a resource hog, but I have everything on max, I may turn down a few things to make it run smoother. I give it a hardy recommendation for this one!
*bump*
Come on fellow Mayors, where are ya?
Sweet impressions, Rumpy.
I'm getting it tomorrow.
Thanks for the impressions Rumpy.
I'm not sure it seems like such an improvement that I need to replace my SC 3000 just yet, though.
Wow, that sounds very cool. Thanks for the wonderful impressions, Rumpy. I'll buy the game this Saturday, so I might have to ask you for a few tips. :sneak:
The more I play, the more I learn. I'll do my best to help you out if you have questions.
One thing I mentioned in the impressions: I think I'm wrong in being able to send your cities to friends. Still no word on the online portion either.
Your impressions have made me definitely want to buy the game.
When's release?
It came out this week. A lot of places started selling it a few days early as a matter of fact (it's believed Best Buy broke the street date so everyone followed BB's lead.)