Sim City is a legend amongst games, one of the first all conquering simulation games ever and now even better still. The King of games is dead, long live the King of games.

When the original Sim City first came to a computer near you, it was a breath of fresh air; it gave us all the power to be mayors in our own lunchtime, on our home computers at least. It gave us powers and abilities to move mountains, form oceans and more importantly build amazing cities... only to smash them down in an act of God when the mood suited us and boy did the mood suit us. Since those early days, there have been many evolutions of the game itself and its large, ever growing family of brothers, distant cousins and clones. Each built upon the foundations of the Sim City series, which became the benchmark for all simulation games.

I remember my first encounter with Sim City on my Commodore Amiga. It took me by surprise and, much like Tetris, it captured my imagination and never let go. Saying it is addictive is an understatement; Sim City is a religious calling. It brought everything any gamer could wish for and more. Everything else that followed was a mere copy of that original winning formula.

What the Sim City series gives us is the ability to play out our greatest fantasies all in the confines of a computer's memory. Here we are able to create a living city from the ground up and all of our own design. If something isn't quite right, at the click of a button it can be demolished and replaced with something more suitable. I think one of the winning elements of Sim City is that it appeals male and female gamers of all ages - in short, everyone.

For those few of you (if any) that have never played a Sim game, you play the Mayor of a City: your city. From picking a tract of land to clearing the first few trees and breaking the first clod of earth, this game gives you the power to completely create and manipulate a simulated city. The game is pretty simple; click on an icon and select another icon from the sub menu and then using the cursor to mark out or set down items that you've chosen. What you do is up to you, with the only limitation being your budget. Having said that, the budget really doesn't govern your actions that much, unless you really want it to. When you first play it's a case of go for broke and borrow like there's no tomorrow! This way you can learn the fundamentals of the game play and it's great fun too.

Sim City 4 does come with a tutorial, which strangely enough teaches you how to use elements of the game rather than play it; that's really left up to you and finding the winning formula is the goal. It's one thing building a huge urban sprawl but another to generate enough money from it to maintain it. The game is very user friendly, anything and everything that you can click or touch has its own description, so absolutely anyone can play. If you can move a mouse and click a button then you'll be fine! There's no need to read long manuals or go through extensive training and although both are useful, they're just not necessary. Sim City 4 allows you to instantly start playing from the first click of the mouse.

Creating your first suburb is extremely easy, just choose an area of the map and click on the bulldozer icon then click it on a tree to remove it. As you click this small block a nearby highlighted figure tells you exactly how much you just spent in completing that action. To remove larger groups of trees en masse, just click and drag to mark out a large area. Once you've cleared a neat little spot for your council estate, click the build icon then select the housing zone icon from the sub menu and finally choose what type of housing you want. Using the same old click and drag trick, mark out the area you want to build houses on. The same cost figure appears next to your cursor, allowing you to keep an eye on your money at all times.

The budding estate will have some of its own roads, but these will lead to nowhere and so you will have to add some. Select the transport icon and then select a simple road, click and drag a road around the edge of your estate so that all the minor roads are now connected, sort of like a ring road around your estate. The next step is to add power and water; these are simply selected and placed from the icon menus. Note that the estate, although not built on yet, has subdivided itself into building plots, some of which will be demanding power or roads. Add to that water, police, fire, healthcare and schools and they'll soon be building their cute little houses. Repeat this for the industrial and commercial sectors and you'll soon have a thriving metropolis. Add a ton more features and tweaks and you're well on your way to running up your first metropolitan debts.

Sim City 4 has some really neat touches - the God/disaster menu is cool and everything has been updated. I really love the thunderbolt, both graphically and sound wise it's brilliant; shame you can't actually "ZOT" any of the public, but all the same it's still pretty cool fired off in quick succession, especially in the middle of a protest or strike. That's another pretty cool thing about Sim City 4, when things go bad the people hit the streets and let you know about it. Open a missile base and you'll find citizens parading up and down the streets, armed with placards and shouting their protests. Likewise, cut spending on police or fire services and they will go on strike. This time zoom in to their respective places of work to see the guys hanging out rather than being on duty. I found this rather funny and after trying to get them back to work by increasing spending, I later gave up and just reduced it to cause citywide unrest. Well, it was more fun!

That's the great thing about Sim City, you can try to play it or let it play you, either way somewhere along the line you can forget both and just have fun. The God menu is what having fun is really all about though. Let your city go to ruin, let spending spiral out of control, let them all complain and protest as much as they like, let pollution blot out the sun, but at the end of the day show them who's really the boss. Anything from thunderstorms to volcanoes and earthquakes to giant robots - it's fun, fun, fun all at their expense!

Sim City 4 has moved forward in many ways from the previous incarnations and has added regions, which means that now each city can share and trade resources with nearby neighbours. This also makes for a much bigger picture, instead of just controlling one isolated city, surrounded by many other isolated cities, you are now in control of sharing, living, interacting cities. You can create a series of cities each connected to each other, each sharing anything from power to water, transport to people, all in one huge state.

Graphics wise the game is a gem, the detail is unbelievable, zoom right in and you can see washing on lines, trees growing and people going about their daily business. Zoom out and you could easily be fooled that you're looking at a satellite image. The detail levels are user set and you can have as much or as little magic as you wish. Personally, I run it full throttle with all the eye candy sprinkles. Sim City 4 has come a long, long way since the original and all I can say is wow. Actually make that super wow!

Sound wise, the game comes with all the realism and sound of a thriving city. On top of that add the various sound FX for other in game specials such as the hand of God menu niceties. Then add a long list of cool in game music and you're left spoilt for choice with what to praise.

Sim City 4 is just totally amazing and if you buy just one game this year, make it this one. It will keep you and your family happy for hours, it's like a giant ant farm/sea monkey tank all contained in your PC and a whole lot more. It's a super addictive game that will keep you coming back for more and there's even a bit of educational value in how to build a city (but don't let that put you off!) Just unleash your imagination and let the building commence. Anyway, I've got to go, I've got a meteor storm pencilled in for later, followed by a couple of earthquakes and a tornado to finish things off...

Reviewed by AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).