Game Title: Sim City 4
Game Rating: Good
Recommended: No

While SC4 is better on every point than it's predecessors, I must say that it doesn't make the real cut. I been quite disapointed by the "The Sims" feel in this game... Am I the only one to think that Maxis always reuse the same tunes in all of their games? Anyways...

Thecnically speaking, SC4 is a success. It manage to take a very old concept and to meld it with modern gaming. However, that's the "modern gaming" thing that I can't really take. Once again, the same question; who cares about beautiful graphics or if you're even able to see mens working on the roads when you build them if you need a 2+ gigahertz machine to make it (barely) work with all the options set to medium?????

I don't think I need to talk much about gameplay since the subject alrready been covered in previous posts of this thread. Let's just say that the gameplay is greatly extended and it was in some way the logical step in the serie.

Bottom line: I'll probably keep playing this game for some time, and will enjoy it for the same reasons that I enjoyed playing it's predecessors... But, like almost all the games getting out recently, having half those graphics out and half more gameplay in would not hurt at all.

Last comment on MoO3: I heard there been a new patch some time ago. I reinstalled MoO3 again to test it, but was so bored by the game that I quit without noticing anything new. Bottom line? Don't even bother...

Game Title: Conquest: Frontier Wars
Game Rating: Excellent
Recommended: Absolutly

Conquest: Frontier Wars is a mix of 4X and RTS, and is quite succesful about it.

The first direct comparison is easily sent toward Starcraft, and in fact the creators of this game must have played it a long time while developing it.

Having played only the 40mb demo, I can't really tell about the whole game all by itself, but I can tell you about the experience that the nice demo can give. Indeed, instead of showing us some bits of the fun you can have, the demo allow you to play "Quick Battles" against computer opponents, all participants only being able to play as "Terrans" out of the 3 available races.

You start up as a level 1 civilization (scientific term meaning the civilization started to explore the universe) with the knowledge of the utilization of wormgates, which allow almost intant travel from one star system to another. You need to build your own system (usually consisting of 3 or 4 planets) by building external modules which allow you to get up in the tech tree. So far so good.

What is really interesting in this game tough is the balance between the ships used in the game. Thru the complete game, from the beginning to start, you'll always use all your ships, even the first one you can build. If indeed it is fast but weak and pretty useless against any capital ships, it is still essential that you keep some of them around just in case you encounter a fighter wave happy fleet which would tear down your big capital ships, since they have a lot of problem aiming at those tiny vessels. The game centered around this kind of strategy, and is very well balanced to counter the "build only ond kind of unit and win easily" thing that plague most of the RTS around.

Another nice underused concept added to this game is the support ships. Did you ever played a RTS game and thought at one time or another "do they ever recharge their guns?" Well, they sure do in Conquest: Frontier Wars. A big fleet will surely ravage any opposition for a short while, but if they are attacked in their way back for supplies, they won't do much more damage (if ever any, most of the time they don't have the chance to come back again ).

Bottom line: A good game, flawless in term of bugs, at least in the demo. Any RTS fan need this one. I would probably buy it anytime if I would see it at the store.

There are some very big changes in Sim City 4. NetDanzr is right about the financial side of things - you need to watch and amend every service as cities grow otherwise your up shit creek.

Probably the biggest differance is you no longer play a city in isolation, you play a region made up of a theoretically limitless number of cities. My PC(AMD800, 512MB, GeForce 4MX) can handle a region of around 1024 1K*1K cities(or similar permutations eg. 64 4K*4K cities).

After a while you get sort-of a regional economy, for example you have...

1 city made of only residential/water system
1 city made only of commercial
1 city made only of ind/power/landfill

...then the residential sells water to the other two cities, the res and com send their garbage to the industrial city, and the industrial city sells power to the res and commercial. Also the residents will travel across cities to get to work, so if you wanted, you can have cities lined up like this(X means undeveloped city except for a through-road/railtrack)......

RXXX
XCXX
XXXX
XXXI

....and the residents from the top city would travel right accross the region to work in the industrial city.

The game is generally much more complex. Every residential building has a specific number of apartments - and the occupancy is constantly tracked. Every ind/com building has a specific number of jobs, you now have three differant wealth of resident, 5 differant wealth of commercial proprty, 5 or 6 differant levels of school, 3 differant kinds of hospital, 3 differant levels of airport, 2 differant fire stations, roads and sidestreets.

Schools have 'local bus funding' determining the radius the school covers, hospitals have 'local ambulance funding' determining the readius.


Personally I was a bit dissapointed with SC3K because while the graphics had improved a lot since SC2K the gameplay/engine itself did not seem any more complex, SC4 is a differant beast altogether.

Edited by fretz at 22:42 on June, 03rd 2003

In this case, the mail-in rebate is also handled by Amazon. So I'm sending all my information over to Amazon, which already has that information .

Amazon probably wants too much money for that data

Mr Creosote: No idea. And considering that Amazon already has all my personal information (including my name, address, credit card information, checking account number, telephone, shopping preferences and more), I see no reason why they do it at all.

Tuss: From what I rerad, it's really tough to make money in SC4. Supposedly, you will need to constantly adjust the budgets for all sectors (for example, sliding the budget for education down to 20% when your schools are only at 20% of their capacity) in order to scrape enough money to survive. I personally was really disappointed with SC 3000, so I haven't bothered to pick up SC4.

I just got a 52x24x52 CD-RW drive for free that way. And a router.

I'd like to ask, is there any BIG changes in SC4? Because the previous 3, once you start making money (which isn't too hard) you just build a R sector... wait for money, build an I sector... wait for money, build a C sector... and over and over until one gets bored.

Why don't they just offer money for your personal information directly?

That means that you pay $20, but then you send a copy of your bill, a copy of the UPC code and a filled out application to the merchant, who will send you $20 back. So essentially it's free.

What the merchant gets out of that he holds your money for some time (earns interest) and gets your mailing address for marketing purposes. It is quite a common practice in the US; I would say that 50% of savings are handled this way.

What does that mean?

Anyway, I finally got MoO3 last week. Amazon.com offered it for $20 with a $20 mail-in rebate, and I would be stupid to miss that opportunity. Didn't install it yet (I'll be waiting for the patch), but I found it ironic that the box contained an advertisment for Galactic Civilizations.

I bought Sim City 4 on Thursday evening. Todays the first chance ive had to get a good few hours playing it undisturbed.

I found getting started more difficult than previous versions, it seems harder to make money, harder to build a population quickly. Getting used to the regions is hard work at first as well but theres lots of potential in the game.

If you like the previous efforts i'd recommend it.

Game Title: Sim City 3000 (SC3K)
Game Rating: Good
Recommended: Yes

Comments:
If you scroll up, you'll be able to read that I am considering in a short future to buy and try Sim City 4. When one of my friends told me that he got the hand on a copy of Sim City 3000 and that he prefered to play Sim City 2000 instead, I thought I had to give it a try so I can make my mind on either I would take the chance to waste my money again... I'm not really happy with my last experience as you could tell.

The result is very good. I am a fan of Sim City and played the first 2 games before trying this one. The improvements are more than adequate; they rock. One would think that such a basic game would only suffer in originality as sequels rolls on, but the truth is really far from that.
I love the improvements they made to the game, as well as the new features and events that pop up from time to time. The concellors are pretty well made and helps a beginniner Mayor (or an ever unsuccesfull one like me) an awesome deal.

The graphics are also incredibly well done in comparison to Sim City 2000. Of course, you have the basic layout and the basic sprites of the buildings like in the precedent games, but some nice touches been added for more realism and help to shape the city. The best example I could give is the road traffic. Not only it's real time, but it really allows you to understand with a good precision what part of the road system is crowded and need ameliorations. A real improvement on the old graphics which would only make you understand that so and so road have "light", "medium" or "heavy" traffics. Looking at the busses or the trash trucks running around on the system as you add structures for them is a pretty sight. The same example goes for the walkers on the streets.

Bottom line:
Fans should upgrade this one over Sim City 2000 anytime. No mistake.

True. Some people think that anybody who has sex is perverted, which is entirely stupid. Anybody who is living (and therefore was created out of sex, be it artificial insemination [the sperm still meets the egg] or whatever) should not have that belief.

That is the eternal question...

Aha, okay, I thought it was also used in a more 'general' way to say that you shouldn't do things that have been done already, or something. Never mind.

Besides, who's to say what's perverted anyway?

Only to all kinds of 'perverted' sexuality

So what does it apply to then? Only everything else?

So what? It doesn't apply to itself

Funny, that's the second time you're saying that!