One of the hardest elements of this game is keeping your Sims happy or you'll soon find yourself bankrupt. You will need to build schools, hospitals, police stations, parks and the likes to keep them in check. All of these have a monthly cost and even though you can adjust the funding to increase or decrease their effectiveness, it's still a very costly experience. Fortunately you can always raise taxes or place toll booths on roads to generate more income. Of course, these options don't come without their consequences.
But even though this game is a difficult game (especially with your utilities adviser constantly nagging at you about power, water and garbage issues), I guess the best part is building a monorail system and seeing my Sims use it. Makes my city look more modern.
Oh and let's not forget the U-Drive-It mode. Available only if you purchase the Rush Hour expansion pack or the deluxe edition, you get to jump into several different vehicles and complete missions or just drive around your city admiring the view. It's really too bad physics aren't implemented in this game or it would be pretty awesome driving off a cliff. Nevertheless, it's still awesome to bomb your city with a jet fighter or drive a tank and shoot everything on sight.
I did mention that this game is a bit buggy and some of these bugs are quite a nuisance. At random intervals, the game might crash on its own with no warning at all. Although it does get annoying very quickly, you'll soon teach yourself to save often. You'll thank yourself for it too as it carries over to other games and based on personal experience, not every game out there is made to not crash at all. Or what about blackouts? Exactly my point. Another important bug I thought I should mention is the fact that your Sims seem to choose the shortest routes to work and not the fastest. If you have a street and a highway placed with the street being the shortest route, you'll soon find yourself with a traffic jam and the highway completely unused. That's when you have to start blocking off routes and force your Sims to use the highway. This way, you can easily put toll booths and force them to pay. Cha-ching!
I would post a picture of my city but it looks really ugly at the moment so maybe later. I would recommend this game to anyone out there who enjoys a bit of light gaming with some thinking involved. Although the new SimCity is coming out in 2013 so I'm waiting for that one as well.
