SimCity 2000

The Good
The follow-up to the seminal SimCity, an unputdownable game. The sequal carried on in this fashion and added isometric graphics which no doubt added to the game.

The Bad
What makes the original better for me is the lack of waterpipes and the lack of complication. Too many new buildings added more complication. I prefered the simplicity and pure addictiveness of the original.

The Bottom Line
Briliant game, be sure to check out the original though, although it is dated.

The Good
This game is and was enormously fun to play - that is the bottom line. There are plenty of variables and factors to manipulate, and oodles of cool tweaks and things to do. The possibilities are endless - from designing your own map to buying the add-ons, like the urban renewal kit. You can also build Llama domes.

The Bad
After a little while, it does get a bit repetitive, as your city crawls across the map like a multiplying body of bacteria. You're basically building the same stuff over and over until you run out of space. However, there is an ultimate goal behind it all, when you build launch arcos and they explode (launch into space).

The Bottom Line
It is a City Simulator. You are the mayor of a brand new city, and you determine (with dictatorial control) the appearance and fate of the city. You do the actual building, and you manipulate the behind-the-scenes factors that determine how the city will grow (such as tax rates, zoning rules, and ordinances). The game is hilarious, with very strange and funny newspaper articles to announce how your city is doing and oddball disasters that come to destroy your city. It's a wee microcosm of life. Nothing lasts forever, and at any moment, a twister can come and wipe your stuff out. In truth, it is one of the most addictive, purely stimulating games I have ever played.

The Good
I don't exactly know why it is that I dislike this game and most other people don't, but it must have something to do with it being a lot less addictive than the original SimCity was.

The only really good thing about this game is its great eye-candy, especially when considering the year it came out. However, this is also a minus. Read on.

The Bad
The graphics are excellent, but the engine is horribly slow; the game simply crawled on my old 386 and didn't do a hell of a lot better on my 486. It was horribly jumpy and completely unplayable. The game is unnecessarily complex and makes use of a badly designed interface (a lot less intuitive than the trusty interface of the first game). The gameplay is inconsistant and unexpectable - you may find yourself doing almost the exact same thing on two different games, win one and lose the other. Does that make a lot of sense? Not really. In addition, the natural calamities should have been more developed (i.e. behave less eratically), and the mouse controls should be improved a whole lot - they tend to lose mark every now and then and are not very precise either.

The Bottom Line
In short, just not a very good game, but since most people seem to like it you may find it to your own liking.