The SimCity world starts out like a blank page before you dig into it. Players can start out at a practice city to grasp the basics of SimCity 4. Here you’ll learn what you need to build where and how the basics are managed. Now, the word “basic” needs to be emphasized because the tutorial city tells you the bare minimum on how to run a city optimally. You’ll have to dig deep into the game yourself to learn the most about SimCity.

Game veterans will have a big pool of resources to dig from. As God you’ll be able to raise and lower terrain as you see fit, carve rivers, plant trees, or just demolish everything in sight. Did you ever want to send a tornado or a giant robot to a city? SimCity 4 lets you do that as well. Last but not least, if you don’t want it to be night time, just click the sun button and that hot ball in the sky lights back up.

You’ll spend the most time playing as Mayor. There are a ton of customization tools at your disposal, from planting trees for parks to building an entire seaport. There are three zones to choose from – residential, commercial, and industrial. Strike a good balance between the three and you’ll be off to a good start. To see what residents want more of there’s an easy access graph to show what zones are more desirable than others.

As mayor you’ll have to cater to every resident’s whim – mainly the environment, health, safety, traffic, education, and land value. To do that players have access to tons of data resources – city opinion polls, advisors, monthly budget statement, data views, and graphs. You can also check the funding of individual services to see if you should allocate more or less.

New to SimCity 4 is the ability to link cities together to create an entire sim region. All you need to do is link up both cities with some kind of transportation. You can move a Sim character into the city and monitor their feelings about the place.

SimCity 4 can be difficult. At times you’ll have no idea why certain aspects of the city are lowering, and your panel of advisors won’t have anything to say about it. You can try out different things but it can wind up making the city worse. For good measure, save often before you try anything new.

There is a lot of stuff to deal with in SimCity 4. So it’s good to know that the interface is clean or organized. Icons and menu tabs let you build and monitor things quickly without getting in the way of the city view. Some icons could have better pictures to represent what they stand for, and the descriptor tabs take a second to load, but those are minor quips.

Don't mind gazing at a city because the view is gorgeous. The SimCity 4 engine pumps out the most detailed and fluid graphics seen in a sim title. Residents walk about in city parks, cars race by on streets, windmill power plants cast shadows on the ground – everything looks great. The music is a mixed bag with jazz and some new age tossed in.

SimCity 4 is a virtual builder's dream. There are tons of customizing options and lots of technical data to take from. If you’re a new or average sim player, you might be lost as to how to create the best city. But if you’ve built a city before, the latest installment is the best canvas to work on.