Streets of SimCity

The Good
About the only good thing about the game was the original purpose -- to be able to drive around cities you create yourself.

The Bad
Graphics -- compared to other games of the time, the graphics in SoS were bland and low quality.

AI -- Enemy vehicles (in modes with them) were of the "drive and fire" or "drive and crash" school of combat, without any guile or intelligence seen in other games.

The Bottom Line
Unless it's in a bargain bin for $5 or less, it's not worth buying.

The Good
The fact that you can cruise around a Simcity 2000 city, or there's that powerful tool called Simcity Urban Renewal Kit (SCURK). The gameplay is simple, if not like a mindless shooter. Cruise around and kill and blow up buildings, hunters, cops, and stuff. Weapons and MODS range from Machine Guns, to Airfoils. Those airfoils can inspire one to build a deathmach arena where there's those roads that goes uphill to a dead end at the mountaintop where you turn on the Airfoil, and Hopper, if you have one. Arieal deathmatches over a vast body of water. That's awesome. I even have a home in a sub-city called Shyg Co. that I built. There's a couple of industrial zones, and little skiscraper zone. I built my HQ at the mountaintop. The city is just right for Streets. This game is fun and addictive. I like the music.

The Bad
It's buggy. When you turn the viewing distance to max, buildings in the distance can be crappy models, but textures shou up when you get closer to them, there's no clouds, no rain, no snow, no sun, just a clear, fine weather. The explosions look like crap, but that's not a problem, there's clipping problems, you go through power lines, trees, windmills, and gas stations. Besides, that's what would you expect for Maxis's first racing game, isn't it? I think EA could've developed the gameplay, and stuff. I hope they will do that in Streets of Simcity 2, when ever is there one. I want a sequel where it lets you cruise around Simcity 3000 and Simcity 4 cities. That is the worst part of the game, no sequel!!! Waaaaaa!!! I want a sequel!!! I highly doubt they will make one. They won't make a patch to this game.

The Bottom Line
For Simcity fans, this could be quite fun. For you other losers who likes those those crappy car sims where you drive not-fun-to-drive cars, and (Cut off, because you wouldn't understand how good Streets is).

The Good
The concept is executed decently. That's pretty much all.

The Bad
Where the devil do I even start? The graphics are atrocious in DirectDraw mode. If you use 3DFX, it doesn't look any better. The people in the last game that shared the same engine (Simcopter), people were a mix of flat shaded polygons for the body and 2D for their heads. But here, they're sprites compressed in Smacker video format. The cars are just vehicles made around the 1960's and 70's, if you compare it to Interstate '76, which was their competitor at the time of release. The scenarios are really awful with no set time of day or weather. It's just daylight (or nighttime) in clear weather all the time you start a scenario. The gameplay is just 'shoot, take package, deliever it, kill more cars', repeat. The AI just drives around, tries to shoot, and on some occasions on hi-end systems, they just use the Hopper due to the engine not allowing you to handle the frame-rate on a new PC. The voice acting in the scenarios is just awfully made. While it's a K-A rated game, expect a bit of mild language here and there. The music is repetitve, five or six songs per station, and that's it. However, there is a mix function that plays songs in order, and a option to play only music, DJ announcer toggle on/off and adverts between songs on/off. The sounds are just some sound effects recycled from Simcopter, along with a sound effect shamelessly taken from the film The Junkman. However, the sounds are awful to hear. The glitches are the worst thing that kills this game. The physics are broken, the turning is wrong, and braking is as if you let go off the gas pedal. The clipping is really terrible, you go through gas stations, trees and power lines. If something goes wrong with the game, it goes into an "unrecoverable error" and the game quits. Has someone playtested the game? Nobody.

The Bottom Line
There's nothing I could describe it. It's a mess that some people bought it when it came out, and no sequel to either Simcopter and Streets of Simcity was done. If you see it on a store, and online, don't buy it.