• Publisher: EA Games
  • Release Date: Jan 12, 2003
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 36 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 137 Ratings

  • Summary: PLAY GOD - Sculpt mountains, gouge valleys, seed forests, and bring forth animals to create a world imagined only by you. Summon volcanoes, release tornadoes, and call down meteors and ligthening. PLAY MAYOR - Connect a massive region of SimCities, each sharing and competing for resources. Deploy emergency vehicles and join in the action as they battle blazes, mobs, and more. PLAY WITH YOUR SIMS - Place your Sims in your city to get the inside scoop on what life's really like around town. Feel the rhythm of the city: mellow cruising and commuter hell, noontime crowds and nighttime calm. [Electronic Arts] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 29 out of 36
  2. Negative: 0 out of 36
  1. 100
    The new features, refined interface, and (above all) near-perfect sense of balance make this old dog feel vital and new.
  2. By providing an impressive level of detail in a game where detail is essential, and by including intuitive enhancements to the player experience, this is one title that should easily land on the “must have” list for any gamer.
  3. Yes, you are able to import your sims, and yes you can observe their daily routine as they work their way up from the inner-city slums into a high-level corporate position, but then you have to ask yourself why you would want to do that to begin with.
  4. SimCity 4’s biggest flaw is that it’s not a SimCity. It’s some third-party interpretation of what SimCity should be like, with some grand new features. The new features are implemented but the designers totally missed what makes a SimCity.

See all 36 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 33 out of 37
  2. Negative: 2 out of 37
  1. GuilhemC
    10
    This is the best game I have ever played in my intire life! one of the best parts of the game is destroying the city with the ufo, robots, meteors and so on..... BUY IT! Expand
  2. KevinG.
    8
    It took me three goes to get it right but eventually I got my city off the ground. But the budgeting is ridiculous in this game, you should have more sources of income to counterbalance the seemingly enourmous drains of utilities, services etc. But other wise a great game maybe too hard for someone not used to the previous titles. Expand
  3. BennettM.
    7
    SimCity as it was meant to be. Beautiful and well done, this game will delight any SimCity fan. However, finances are ludicrously impossible, and the game is merely a perfection of the previous games, and is really nothing new. Expand
  4. MattD.
    3
    While the mechanics of the game have been improved yet again (saving this from the possibility of a 2 or lower), making it much more realistic, the designers seem to have forgotten one thing: when there are a lot more things to drain your money, you should start with MORE MONEY. In short, an "easy" game here is the rough equivalent of the hardest levels on SC2K and SC3K, and a "hard" game... *gag* don't even make me talk about it. The ridiculously high difficulty has kept me from playing this game enjoyably and has put me back into the mood to design a competitor to this game... all the ability to micromanage your city, but with a much nicer learning curve. Expand

See all 37 User Reviews

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