Sim City 4 - Rush Hour Expansion Pack PC review

Sim City 4 - Rush Hour Expansion Pack
PC game - Sim City 4 - Rush Hour Expansion Pack review

Sim City 4 - Rush Hour Expansion Pack PC review

Is it time to become Mayor?

Do you posses the empire building skills to develop a soaring metropolis or on the other hand do you have the feng shui sensibilities needed to construct yourself a city of overwhelming beauty.

Sim City 4 which was released back in January did a lot to further enhance the 15 year old PC classic. For the first time you was able to link your various cities together and view your creations in much enhanced graphical detail. Sim City 4 Rush Hour is NOT the next installment of Sim City but simply an expansion pack. For those of you who missed out on the considerable patches released earlier in the year (available as download) that fixed a lot of the stability and performance issues. Rush Hour contains them and a hand full of other tweaks and features.

Traffic, these days, is becoming the big issue in all major cities around the world and it is also a major issue in Rush Hour (hence the name). There are new tools available for diagnosing traffic problems plus you can talk with the Sims in your city to get feedback on the situation from the commuters themselves. Another major new facility is the ability to control vehicles. So you can find yourself bombing around in one of many Sims land,

 
PC game - Sim City 4 - Rush Hour Expansion Pack review
PC game - Sim City 4 - Rush Hour Expansion Pack review

air and sea vehicles. You can choose to free roam around the city or take on one of the missions to gain a reward building such as a space station or even an Alien examination hanger "Area 5.1".

In previous versions of Sim City it has seemed almost pointless to spend lots of time refining your road layout as the only feedback you got was on the traffic overlay. But now that you have a route tool you can click on any building or road to find out detail of how many commuters are going to & from & through that point. You also get arrows popping up to show there exact routes. The info is colour coded and split up into individual modes of transport - walking included. The effect this tool changes the game-play is quite significant and is only further enhanced by the microphone tool - this is how you speak to your Sims simply click on an individual car or Sim to get speech bubbles containing there views on the features of your city. You can also import your own Sims and communicate with them too.

If you get bored with the constant improvement of your city and your Sims are getting on your nerves, you can use disaster mode to take out all your pent up anger on the hapless Sims. The new disasters are Autosaurus wrecks - send evil monster trucks careering through your streets maiming and killing as they go. UFO disaster - click on your Sims map to select the destination for your mother ship and once in place the mother ship starts spawning baby ships to create even more havoc. You can take control of the UFO's but they are very hard to steer.

If you are already a huge Sim City fan then this expansion pack is the natural progression, coming in at a very agreeable price it will have you dusting off Sim City 4 and should rekindle your love for a classic game. If you are be to Sim City then you have been missing out, this expansion pack is available as a new bundle with Sim City 4 called Sim City 4: Deluxe Edition. Go and buy Sim City 4: Deluxe Edition and let the fun begin.


9.0
out of 10


View Sim City 4 Rush Hour Expansion Pack Screenshots

 

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