SimCity 4 (Maxis, PC G)

By PETER ELEY

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

It's almost 14 years since a little known company called Maxis unveiled Sim City, turning the dismal science of town planning into one of the most compelling PC games of all time.

It evolved into SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000, and rather than leap an unlikely further millennium into the future, Maxis (now an Electronic Arts subsidiary) have simply labelled the latest version SimCity4.

And of course the SimCity games gave birth to The Sims, a game based on those minute collections of pixels that peopled the early SimCity games.

The Sims and its spin-offs let you play an alternate life on screen and has been even more popular than its parent.

The graphics in SimCity 4 are much better thanks to advanced technology. And there are lots of gameplay enhancements which make it worth buying.

The most significant is that you choose a section of
SimNation at the start. You can build cities on other sections and link them geographically and economically.

The core of the game is to create a city and manage its economy from small town to megapolis. This isn't easy and there has to be a trade-off between what the citizens want, and what they are prepared to pay for.

And just when things get tough, in comes the offer of a loan, or cash to let the military build a missile base.

We had a few problems with the game slowing down but solved them by tinkering with the graphics settings.