No Colonization comments, eh? Well, now we are strating to move through franchses famous and important. Final Fantasy was two spots ago. Now its time for another major franchise, one that has had numerous entries. Unlike the Final Fantasy franchise, when I felt the first was ultimately the best, with this franchise, I feel that the most recent is the best:
18. SimCity 4
Maxis
PC
2003
GameSpot Review - 8.1 (8.3 after addition of expansion)
Simulation - City Management
SimCity™ 4 Deluxe Edition on Steam
The city building genre owes its lifeblood to the SimCity franchise. Someone once said that Civilization and SimCity are the two great strategy games of all time, two giant pillars that stand astride the PC world, tall above everything else.
I almost put the SNES version of SimCity here, because I think that version reached more players that wouldn't normally play SimCity on the PC than anyone else. However, I ultimately decided that, for me, this is the greatest iteration because I have played it more than all other versions combined.
As I am sure most of you already know, SimCity is a game without end. You just build a city using various tools. You zone areas of the city, and people start opening businesses and moving in.
You build the infrastructure like water pumps, pipes, purfying stations, windmills, nuclear plants, coal plants, hydro plants, oil plants, trash to power plants, landfills, power lines, roads, rail, subways, bus stations, ferries, naval ports, airports, interstate networks, hospitals and clinics, libraries, schools, museums, operas, police stations, fire stations, jails, recycling centers, and probably another 50 things I can't remember.
Here is a Water Puriciation Plant beside some landfill:
The point is simple. The sheer scale of things to build and do in Sim City is staggering, yet it all works together. Your advisors wil tell you when the city needs something - like a Water Purification Plant. You can also look at a map of the city and see it by water pollution - telling you if you need a plant or not.
Therefore, you can tell when you need to build something, merely by these maps or your own advisors.
The transporation networks are complex on their own. Roads, streets, one way streets, avenues, elevated highways, highways, and intersections plus bridges make for an interesting road network.
Here are some bridges across a river. You can also see power lines and industry on the left bank.
The beauty SimCity 4 is that there were several additions to the franchise. You could load up your characters from The Sims and place them in your city. Then, you could follow them around and hear what they thought about your city. If you didn't have or didn't want to have The Sims added, you could just make some Sims. This was valuable to do because it gave you information from the ground, often providing an early warning indicator to see if there are problems in a neighborhood. For example, the Sim would complain about travel time to and from work before people starting moving out, so you could address the problem early.
Another thing that was added were quests. You could do quests like fly a helicopter to little Suzy's house and pick her up and return to the hospital in a hort period of time. Succeed with these, and your mayor rating would rise, you'd get a little cash, and you could unlock various bonuses. This was really useful because some bonus buildings could be unlocked way earlier than normal, and they were worth it too.
This was especially good for the Casino. The Casino was one of seveal "bonuses" that provided your city directly with cash but were negative for your Sims. Others included a Nuclear Waste Dump and a Missile Silo. You only unlocked these when you went into debt. However, if you never went into debt, then you never unlocked these "bonuses." However, the Casino was actually a debt building with a plus and a minus, besides the cash you got from it. Commerical buildings were upped by a nearby Casino, and it increased crime. You just build a Police Station beside it (which the profit more than covers and you are set. You can unlock a Casino with a quest, instead of going deep into debt.
You could also build famous landmarks for serious cash. You could build the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Bank of China, the Space Needle, the Sphinx, the Hollywood Sign, The Hadj Sophia, and much much more. This added a great amount of top level significance to the city.
The game also added region economics. Your city was part of a region, and you could buld two cities side by side. One city could buy power from the other instead of building its own plant. Water, trash, and more could also be bought and sold.
The interaction of citizens with the economy, housing, commercial ares, transportation, each other and industry was all complex. People would even cross through the region to other cities to work or shop. One farm city would feed several other cities nearby. One garbage city could take the trash from several adjacent cities, build several Trash to Power Stations, and then sell the power back to those cities and make a killing (You get paid to take trash and you get paid to provide power). That killing would need to be spent on some parks and whatnot, because Trash to Power is a very nasty pollution high power supply, but you get the idea. Local cities could do without trash removal or power of their own, just buying it from a local city. And your sims would be happy to cross over and work in their dirty industries and then come home to a nice clean city. A regional economy was a great idea.
The game was great at telling you when something was amiss. Just in case you didn't get the message from your advisors or maps, here is a section of the city that has been abandoned:
Can you tell by looking at this map which buidling have been abandoned?
If the demand for cheap housing outstripped your ability to provide it, lower level citizens would take over a more expensive place. You'd sometimes see mansions get overwhelmed by lower level cits, and more of them can fit into a mansio that high level cits could, so it would sometimes put a lot of pressure on your transportation network.
The whole game was an amazing simulation of city life, living, and politics. You could issue edicts like youth basketball programs or free clincs. These cost money, except for legalized gambling which brought in money and was necessary to build a Casino.
Other bonuses included a Convention Center, Disease Research Clinic, University, Major League Baseball Stadium, TV Station, County Fair, City Zoo and tons more. This gave your city a real nice, organic look to it.
SimCity is one of the classic franchises in all strategy games. SimCity 4 was a great version, and I still play it from time to time. Long live the City!
-Anxiety