Sim City 4 Deluxe

Long before game designer Will Wright created the best-selling computer game of all time, The Sims, he created SimCity, an innovative game with a clear, compelling premise: You're the mayor, and your goal is to plan a city from the ground up (and from a godlike vantage point) and then nurture it, eventually turning what starts as a sleepy little town into a bustling metropolis. SimCity was challenging and plausibly realistic and even had a surprising amount of humor, especially for a game with a seemingly mundane subject. About 15 years have passed since the original SimCity was first released, and while the classic SimCity series is still well known among PC gamers, it has only reached its fourth full installment. And SimCity 4 for the most part isn't a huge departure from its predecessors, either, not that it really needs to be. The game does have a number of new features and a few additional layers of depth on top of the preceding SimCity 3000, and its visuals have been impressively overhauled. However, due to the presence of some stability and performance issues, as well as a few noticeably lacking features, SimCity 4 doesn't seem as polished as it could have been. On the other hand, it's still a complex and detailed strategy game that can entertain you for hours on end and even teach you a thing or two.