Review of Sim City 4 Deluxe (Mac)

When so many games these days focus on death and destruction, it's nice to have a constructive alternative that is still truly addictive. Filling that niche, as ever, is the prominent Maxis series SimCity.

The latest offering, SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, contains all the robust play offered by a completely new version of the city-building legend as well as a plethora of additional content, tools, and mini-games previously sold separately in the Rush Hour add-on pack.

Like it's predecessors, SimCity 4 is a deep and visually rich simulation. As Mayor the player gets to turn blank plots of land into complex thriving communities with the added challenge of linking them together to form a productive inter-dependent region. With that much realestate to manage, it should hold the interest of creative problem-solvers.

It's a complicated game, but not overly so, and the hierarchic interface is intuitive, which helps a lot since it takes a few hours to get a good grip on the basics of making a successful city (I highly recommend completing all the tutorials before striking out on your own). Once you can figure out how to grow while keeping a positive cash flow, the game becomes immensely rewarding.

Aside from obviously improved graphics resolution and building variety, the biggest change is that every change in the city is calculated around individual sim-citizens rather than grand formulas. Your job, more than anything else, is to keep your sims happy. If you can do that - provide them with jobs, shorten their commutes, educate them, care for their health, and keep them safe - you have what it takes to be a Mayoral Mogul!

That new perspective also means you can get much more involved with the denizens of your metropolis. You can get down to the street-level and ask them what's on their mind or even give them a hand through mini-games.

Driving many vehicles (fire trucks, speed boats, and crop-dusters to name a few) you can navigate the city you've made. While the simplistic pilotage can be clunky, change of perspective is both fun and helpful. It also splashes a little variety on a game that can get slow once in a while. Besides, what soldier can resist taking a joy ride in a tank or skimming the rooftops in an attack helicopter?

What really keeps you playing this game though is layer upon layer of replay possibilities. Since there are no criteria for winning you can set your own goals and measures of success and you can use any number of approaches pursue your ambitions.

You can play one city aiming for a large population and another for the greatest income possible. You can play the good guy or the ruthless dictator and create everything from slum-ridden industrial towns to tiny farming communities to towering pinnacles of civilization!

And of course you can blow it all up and start over...

There's no multiplayer in SimCity, but an active online user-base provides both a community aspect to the game and a wealth of new land marks, buildings, and utilities you can download to keep your virtual communities fresh.

If you own The Sims the people you've created can even interact with your SimCities. What's more, there's a little Mac-only integration in the game. Unlike Windows, you can override the default soundtrack with any playlist in your iTunes library.

While that's a nice touch, the manual refers to Windows keyboards and there are known graphical problems (especially when "drawing" roads or zones) that are unlikely to be addressed (turning on the Z buffer in the options helps). They aren't fatal, but I found my building techniques developed around minimizing the effects those glitches rather than productive gameplay.

Even with drawbacks like performance and price (when compared to the Windows version), it's a quality title and a handy long-term time-waster for creative, micro-managing, or ambitious future base commanders!

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition is a great gift and worth owning if you remember SimCity 2000 on the Mac or are looking for a constructive game that exercises your creativity. Of course the inclusion of military facilities like Army and Air Force bases and ICBM silos earns it some kudos too!



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