SimCity 4

SimCity 4 took the classic city-building simulation from studio Maxis to the most detailed form the series has offered to date. The player doesn't just found a single city, but manages an entire region made up of neighboring plots of land, between which residents flow for work, along with traffic and pollution, so decisions in one city also affect its neighbors. The foundation remains the system of RCI zones (residential, commercial, industrial), whose demand the player tracks on graphs and regulates through taxes, infrastructure, and public services, from firefighters to schools to power plants.

Compared to previous entries, a layer of micromanagement as well as a macro view of the region was added, along with an elaborate simulation engine that takes into account terrain, the slope of the terrain for road building, or noise from an airport. The game remains visually stylized, with an overhead isometric camera, and even years later it's prized above all for the depth of its economic and traffic simulation, which later commercial attempts in the genre long failed to surpass.

The community around the game also still maintains mods and tools that expand the building content and fix simulation behavior on modern hardware, so despite its age the game is still playable and in many respects unsurpassed. That's precisely why SimCity 4 remains a reference point for many fans of the genre, one that newer entries are still measured against.

Why play it: Ideal for fans of deep economic simulations who don't mind the older look and appreciate the elaborate regional city management that later entries in the series and the competition failed to offer for a long time.