The installation for this game is somewhat unique. Instead of running an installer from the DVD, you copy the game folder from the DVD to your hard drive. Then, on the first launch, you will see a progress bar while the installation completes.

In Sim City 4 Deluxe, you are more than just a mayor of a single city, you are the governor of a collection of cities (called a region). Each region is divided up into nearly 80 separate cities that can be independent of each other, or work together to create a mega-metropolis. Every city in the region will take on it's own challenges and personality.

All cities start out the same way. You can terra-form the land to reate mountains, lakes, islands, forests, plains, and valleys. After the layout of the land is just how you want it, you enter into mayor mode where the real action begins.

From the moment you are inaugurated, every decision you make will influence how your city turns out. Will you place a heavy polluting power plant in the middle of the city, or will you power the homes with clean wind plants? What kinds of transportation will you provide your citizens with? Are you going to zone for agriculture or manufacturing? What kind of entertainment will your Sims be able to partake in? As you can imagine, the possibilities are endless. As the city continues to grow, it will become very difficult to manage everything. Only the best mayors will be able to oversee a large city while continuing to keep the city funds in check.

Besides the normal houses, business, police stations, schools, etc. there are also reward buildings and landmarks. The landmarks are available as soon as you create your city, but don't become very useful (other than providing something cool to look at) until your city starts attracting big money businesses. Rewards, on the other hand, are available when your city reaches certain plateaus. Unlike other Sim City games, the rewards have such a large variety of requirements, that no single city can hold every one. The way you manage your city will dictate what kinds of rewards you receive.

In fact, some of the rewards depend on the cities within your region to interact with each other. Cities can interact in multiple ways. They can provide power/water/garbage collection for a price, citizens can live in one city while working in another, and large cities with cool attractions will even bring in tourists from other cities. One of my favorite techniques is to use a central city as a power generation station/landfill. This will keep the pollution down in your other cities, and allow you to purchase utilities on an as needed basis. Unfortunately, the money paid by one city to another will not transfer over. It would be nice if this were the case, as it would allow you to more easily upgrade power plants to handle the larger city's needs.

There is a way to activate some of the rewards without meeting the set requirements. The Rush Hour expansion pack adds the U-Drive It mode, where you take to the streets, sea, and air to complete missions. Make sure kids get to school, catch the bank robber, write a love message in the sky, put out a raging fire, take a whale watching tour, and so much more. Many of the missions have an alternative "evil" version, which will help turn your city into a hotbed of crime (and enable certain rewards that go along with such a lifestyle).

Another feature of Sim City 4 Deluxe is the ability to import Sims into your neighborhood. If you have The Sims version 1.x installed, you can choose your actual Sims to move into your new city, although The Sims is not required to use this feature. Once you import a Sim, you can move them into a specific house, get feedback about their lives, follow them around town, and even complete U-Drive It missions from their point of view.

If you have played The Sims, you will instantly recognize the interface of Sim City 4. In the region view, there is a menu structure at the top of the screen, which will allow you to create, delete, and open cities. Once in the city view, the controls move to the bottom of the screen. There is a mini map down there to help you navigate your city, buttons to open up building/mission/management panels, and a scrolling status box to alert you of the going-ons in your city. Some of the button icons aren't obvious, so it does take some getting used to. But don't worry, you'll likely become so engaged with this game, that soon the controls will become second nature.

Two of the most important panels (besides the budget, of course) are the data and graph views. Using these views, you can get a current and historic look at various aspects of your city. Keep track of the education level of your citizens, their average household income, how much air/water pollution is in your city, what types of zones are currently in demand, traffic congestion levels, crime rates, etc. All of this information is extremely helpful with determining what your city needs most, and what kinds of trends your city is falling into.

Now that we have a good handle on the game play, let's take a look at some of the other features, good and bad, of Sim City 4 Deluxe. One cool feature is the ability to replace the built in songs with those from your iTunes library. Simply select the "Use iTunes for Music" option in the preferences, and you will start hearing your favorite melodies. Sure, you could just start up iTunes in the background, but you really need every ounce of performance you can get (see below).

Something that's not so great is how demanding the game is on your computer's resources (CPU, RAM, Video Card). On a Dual 2 GHz G5 with 1 GB RAM and a 128 MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, I saw slowdowns even in moderately sized cities. With big cities, expect the scrolling and interface to be slow. Also, once your city population reaches about 100,000, every time you save you might as well get a cup of coffee, as I have seen it take up to 5 minutes to complete a save. One of the biggest downsides to this behavior is it makes driving vehicles, especially airplanes and helicopters, very difficult. Movement can be laggy and sometimes the FPS will drop to around 3-4.

One solution to the slowdowns would be to turn down the graphics quality level. However, this is not a great solution, as the graphics don't even look that great at the highest settings. Some things like vehicles and smoke look pretty good, but buildings, roads, trees, and almost everything else doesn't. This is especially true when you zoom in all the way, where everything looks pixelated, as if this game came out in the 1990's.

One more disappointing aspect to Sim City 4 Deluxe is trying to build various stuff over/on sloped terrain. I found it very difficult to accurately place bridges, because the game kept telling me I couldn't build where I want to. There is a similar problem with placing highways. It's extremely difficult to place highways where you want, including adding on ramps and intersections. Highways are so difficult to get a handle on, that I rarely try to place them.

Enough with the characteristics that I don't like, let's get to a couple things that make the game more enjoyable. For one, the manual is very informative and entertaining. I suggest reading through it before getting too deeply involved with the game, and keeping it by your side when playing. There are a variety of handy hints and tips dispersed throughout the manual to make the game more manageable.

Finally, what would a Sim City game be without disasters (and of course, the ability to enact disasters at will). Sim City 4 Deluxe contains the run of the mill fires, tornados, earthquakes, and UFO attacks. But the real fun comes from lightning strikes, meteor showers, volcanos, robot attacks, and Autosaurus wrecking machines gone wild. When you get fed up with your citizens complaining about their long commutes, send a couple disasters at them and watch them scream!

There were a couple times when the game would crash when starting up a U-Drive It mission. I haven't found a solution for this yet, so I just save early and save often.

After about 10-15 minutes of playing, the game's audio gets messed up. This is especially apparent in the U-Drive It missions where the vehicle sounds are extremely choppy. The only fix thus far it to restart the game. Since it's more of an annoyance than anything, I normally just ignore it for as long as I can.

Sim City 4 will definitely make you completely lose track of time and your personal hygiene. Even with its issues, the game is still very addicting, as there is always something to do to your city. I'll finish this conclusion right after I zone that area, add this building, lay some rail...

Pros	Cons
Incredible flexibility in town building Very life-like citizen needs A large array of buildings and transportation methods available Cities in a region really interact with each other Rewards and monumental buildings give your city a distinct personality U-Drive It allows you to drive the streets, boat the rivers, and fly the skies of your cities Missions allow to to unlock buildings and steer your city towards good or evil Import Sims from The Sims 1.x to live in your cities Increasing difficulty as the city grows Very good manual that's worth reading	Pixelated graphics, especially while zoomed in A few audio issues Very demanding on the computer resources Sometimes it is hard to build around terrain Somewhat difficult to control vehicles
7.5/10 stars