User Reviews (1 - 11 of 22)

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Do NOT buy this game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 33
Date: December 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Perfomance is so awful that the game is unplayable, even on a brand new iMac that _vastly_ exceeds the minimum system requirements. Further, Aspyr doesn't really have any support. Go to their support pages and browse their knowledgebase. There's hardly anything there.

The game is a complete and utter waste of my money. I'll never spend another penny on Aspry software. The phrase "consumer fraud" comes to mind. They may have well sold a blank CD for the value I got.

BORING

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 29
Date: December 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought the first Sim City several years ago and I loved it. I have been buying later versions, but have been getting more and more dissatified. The problem is that I never liked Sim City in the manner it was always inteneded. When I a kid, I loved construction toys. That is how I used the original Sim City. I used a cheat which gave me all the $$$ I needed and turned off disasters. I just wanted to build cities. I had no interest in it as a game being mayor. The best sim city 4 cheat I found so far is for an extra $1000.0. Doesn't really do it for me. As a game it is just boring.

doesn't work on Mac OS 10.4+

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: July 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I loved this game; completely engrossing... That is until my Tiger system was updated to 10.4. It hasn't worked since. It is now so slow as to be unplayable. It takes ages for even a small stretch of a 2 lane road to render. I've written both Apple and Aspyr about the problem but it was never resolved. Aspyr said something to the effect that "Oh well, this has been a problem with OS10.4s." I hold on to it in hopes that someday someone will fix the bug. If your OS is 10.4 or above, don't buy it!

This Game is Awful on Mac Platform

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: April 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I was ripped off when I purchased this game. IT WILL NOT WORK properly on a standard iMac Pro OS X platform. I contacted customer service at Aspyr and they said, "The game was designed for the Power PC processor and doesn't get along with the Intel processor very well. It's an older title. Sorry."

Save your money. Do not buy this game!

fun, but unplayable

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: May 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game was a blast at first, and being a big fan of the previous Sim City games I was really impressed with the content. And then my city grew and the game got slower. And slower. By the time I hit 150,000 citizens I had to turn down all of the graphics to the bare minimum just to get the game to do anything. And then I had to turn the sound off because it was irritating to hear the helicopters over the city batting away endlessly (I think it's an unfixed glitch.) And as I neared 200,000 citizens I gave up. The game had bogged down to a freeze-frame that changes every ten seconds. Yay!
Now I'm on a brand new iMac (intel-based) and didn't think it'd have trouble like this, but something must have gone wrong in the crossover from PC to Mac to Intel-Mac, because this game is pretty much worthless to me at this point. And that makes me sad, because it was fun for a few hours. Even after searching and digging for patches (which are not easy to find and the game's website/help is not set up well either) it still stinks.

I'll give it two stars for potential, but if you're on a new iMac don't bother with this one.

Does not work on OSX 10.5 (LEOPARD)

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: May 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is an awesome game, but it STILL does not work on the newest operating system (OSX 10.5); it is slow and it crashes. IF you have an older mac system, this game is great. If you have a newer system, do not waste your money until they release an update for Leopard.

Not For MacBook

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 31, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Sim City 4 is an awesome game, I've been playing it for years on my pc and would play for hours. Recently I got a mac and found out that there was also a mac version, so I bought, installed it, and was EXTREMELY disappointed. There are tons of bugs in the game, some graphics flicker a lot and there is a huge delay time between when you click a button in the game and it actually does what you want it to do...it's very frustrating, even with all the visual effects on their lowest performance possible, the game still runs unbelievably slow and is not worth 60 dollars AT ALL. The game still runs slow even with the patch released. I'll be playing this game on my pc and returning the mac version.

decent

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 22
Date: November 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I started playing this game in February and played for about 2 weeks when I no longer could keep my patience with the atrocious lack of performance. This game should not have been released or the requirements for your system should have been higher. The recommended 256 mb RAM and 32 mb on the graphics card are not sufficient to build a region of interconnected cities, which is the major new feature of this game compared to previous versions.

Yes, the graphics are better, the interface is somewhat improved, but the poor performance and some tragic changes for the worse makes this game a big disappointment.

Review for the Military Members Apple User Group

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 23 / 25
Date: June 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

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!

Way Overpriced For What You Get, Unless You Are Paying For Frustration

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 20
Date: May 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Computing power makes little difference with this game; performance is poor! Some processes in the game are very slow, such as trying to select subway stations, subway tubes, and water mains. There is also an issue with city boundaries becoming misaligned with neighboring cities, of their own accord, it seems. If you choose to correct this, be prepared to loose any development(s) along those boundaries.

If you choose to accept any of the driving missions or helicopter missions, be prepared to lose mayor approval points because the performance while trying to control either of them is ABYSMAL and Infuriating! The hospital helicopter mission is the only mission I will even bother to try because it requires the least amount of precision. The police copter mission cheated me on 2 of my 3 attempts when the criminal I was supposed to spotlight left the city limits in under 10 seconds after the mission began.

Another issue I encountered involves the planting of trees to try to improve my environmental rating; trees will not necessarily survive between gaming sessions. That is a nice way to waste time and money in the game. Also, some options do not save.

Aspyr does not seem to offer any support or patches. There is no "booklet" with the Mac version. This purchase has left me feeling as if I wasted a lot of hard earned money! If it worked correctly, the game would be fun instead of an exercise in frustration.

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