This game is very similar to every other fragfest shooter that you may have seen, in the terms of gameplay and longevity. But there is one thing that sets this game above the rest and that is unlike all the other multiplayer shooters like ‘UT2003’ and ‘Quake3’, this game introduces a new element into it that until now only ‘Halo’ on Xbox has, and that is the ability to drive vehicles. Now you ask yourself how can this make the game better, the answer is we don’t really know, it just does. All jokes aside, there is a feeling among quite a few gamers, that just running around and shooting players is fun but it lacks something, and with most of the new ‘mods’ (game modifications; such as new missions, weapons etc…) gearing towards more realistic war based fighting (Tactical Ops, Counter Strike, etc…), these gamers wanted it to be that bit more realistic. And that is where ‘Rage’ has come into to aid us, they have given you quite accurately modelled vehicles for you to not only drive around and run you opponents over with but to also sit in the passenger seat and shoot your opponents while a teammate drives.

Yes that’s right, a teammate can drive while you fire out of the passenger window, but this doesn’t just stop at human controlled teammates. Also computer controlled ‘bots’ can also drive, they can also do a pretty good job at providing cover fire in the passenger seat while you are driving.

This just adds a new little touch that makes it more enjoyable, unfortunately it doesn’t distract you long enough to not notice the major faults that the game has. It seems that this game was rushed out into the shops before the game developers actually had a chance to properly test it, which is a shame because this game could have been a UT2003 beater if these faults weren’t there.

The first major fault is that due to the lack of interest in this game ‘Rage’ seem to have dropped any and all support, so don’t expect any bonus packs with new maps to come out. The second has to be that the publishers didn’t really hype this game at all, this could be the reason that there isn’t any interest in it.

Other niggles with this game are the graphics, they say that they have created this game with the ‘Unreal Warfare’ engine, and as some of you gaming buffs will know this is the engine that powers UT2003, but unfortunately the graphics are not as clean and sharp as UT’s graphics are. This makes me think that this game was created using a first generation of the ‘Unreal Warfare’ engine. Although saying this the graphics are far from terrible, the character models are nicely created and animated, also the vehicles are also well created and ‘skinned’. The levels are a real plus side to this game, they are large enough to equip 8 or more vehicles driving around as well as people on foot. They seem to have two parts to each level; one part is for driving and is generally open, the other is interconnected at various sections, and that is where you get your ‘foot’ soldiers doing their part. Unfortunately the weapons are a real let down, not only do they not look quite right (to be quite honest they look butt-ugly especially the sniper rifle and rocket launcher, well the M16 rifle does look ok and so does the knife and pistol), but they also handle really bad. You could fire a rocket at someone, get them dead on to only find when the smoke clears that they are still alive, also ‘splash’ damage seems to be hit and miss here. You could hit a wall just behind someone with a rocket and they won’t die but do it again somewhere else and they will, now to me this seems really pointless because a rocket is designed so if you don’t hit them the splash damage will damage or kill them, but in this case you have to use a rocket launcher like a sniper rifle and be dead on in accuracy.

Also there seem to be quite a few issues with the A.I of the bots, sometimes they will just stand and do nothing no matter how many times you order them to do something, also they get in the way of the vehicles while you are driving. Now that’s ok if it’s an opponent bot but it is quite annoying to hear a fellow teammate bot say "hey! Same squad" over and over because he is stuck on the front of the vehicle.

Now to the good parts, although they’re small in comparison there are some. The vehicles are excellent to drive and you don’t have to be Michael Schumacher to drive these vehicles, come to think of it I don’t think being a great driver like Schumacher will really help. As the vehicles you get to drive are from a selection of four; a small, weak armoured buggy, a tough humvee, a truck and a APC (armoured personnel carrier).

Although there are quite a few problems with this game, one good thing is that due to it using the unreal engine, it also uses the same editing package, so if you have the knowledge and skill to edit the game you can. Apart from these problems this is still a fun game to play and the vehicles add that touch of something extra that we have been waiting for. And as it is now £5 on budget it is worth buying just for a laugh; just set up a LAN game, invite some friends over and then watch as the road kill carnage begins. It’s all in good fun really, hmm think I’ll go off and play that now then and cause some vehicular mayhem.

Note: If anyone has edited this game or has downloaded some edits, let us know because we here are looking to actually address some of these issues with the game and possibly allow an edited version to be released in download form.

- Reviewer Dean Shepherd (in-house reviewer, Editor)

Being by far the best known and most influential game of the management sim genre, and one of the longest running series of all time (over 13 years and counting), SimCity 4 is perhaps a little overdue. You've almost certainly played one or more of these games in the past -- hey, some of you may even have played one at school, as they were being used to teach planning and management skills to kids -- so we'll gloss over the basics and get right down to the specifics.

The game has players taking the role of a city mayor, with an area of green fields, mountains and forests to turn into bustling city streets. Most of this is done by laying down "zones," or areas set aside for residential, industrial or commercial development, and building the infrastructure needed for them to thrive. Only public buildings like schools, hospitals and fire stations are actually placed by the mayor - most development is done by the inhabitants of your city. Make it a pleasant place to live, and they'll arrive by the thousand; fail, and all you'll have is a few square miles of empty tower blocks. There's no particular goals or objective to the game, and it doesn't really finish at any point.

The major enhancement in the fourth incarnation of the series is the new "region' concept. Rather than your cities having imaginary neighbours (as in previous games), each city is placed on a tile in a larger region of land, which can contain up to perhaps 15-20 other cities. This, although sounding pretty simple, actually opens up all kinds of new options.

By running road, rail, power or water connections to the edge of your city's tile, you can share resources with the neighbouring city. You can buy and sell excess water, electricity or landfill capacity, but that's just the start. Your Sims will commute to work in other cities in the right circumstances, so if you can provide sufficiently good transport links, you can zone high pollution industry in an adjacent city to your residential areas. You could even create satellite towns for a larger metropolis - high-income residential districts for city executives, for example. It's hardly a revolutionary change, but the focus switch is novel and interesting.

Balancing your city's budget is rather more involved than before. Once you get a handle on the new considerations, it's possible to make profit-making cities easily, but until then you could well have some frustrations. Now it's possible to micromanage the budgets of your facilities (power plants, schools, hospitals, police stations and so on) on an individual basis. So when you're starting a new city with a coal power plant, for example, you can cut the plant's funding right back at first. This drastically reduces its output, but if all you have are two farms, three squares of residential district and a water tower, you don't need it running at full blast anyway.

The same relationship between funding and capacity applies to most of the other public service buildings. Managing them closely is crucial to avoid huge deficits early in the game, before the tax dollars (or "Simoleons") start rolling in as your population rises. That's the idea, anyway. Great care is needed when expanding your city, as it's easy to "design in" endemic problems that will dog you permanently; SimCity 4 (like its predecessors) rewards visionary leadership.

Guiding your management decisions is, as always, your team of advisors. They offer help on a variety of topics, and if something really pressing comes up, like, say, a fire, or a hundred-foot robot smashing golf courses at random, your public safety advisor will interrupt you, and indicate the problem. Ah, those disasters. Most of them are pretty much fluff, but they're fun once or twice, or until the novelty of sending meteors down on unsuspecting suburbs wears off. The volcano is particularly entertaining, bringing back happy memories of Populous.

In terms of graphics, a brief glance over the screenshots should convince you that SimCity 4 is a big step forwards. It's excellent, in fact. Five zoom levels are available, from an overview of your entire city to one close enough to see children playing in the back yards of suburbia. It's possible to spend quite some time just looking around, as there's lots of detail to see in the closest zoom levels. You'll get plenty of feedback about the state of your city doing this - cars stack up in high traffic areas, litter-strewn streets plague cities with inadequate disposal facilities, and if you have poorly funded police stations you might even spot a prison break in progress. The detail level is outstanding, and it's a great looking game. Maybe the move to 3D is overdue, but to be honest it's hard to see how Maxis could have made the game look better, and the music is equally first class.

If you really want to get up close and personal, and you also happen to play Maxis' cash-cow The Sims, you can place your Sims into your residential districts, and track them as they go about their mundane lives. They'll keep you updated on their feelings about the city. Never fear - if you don't play The Sims, the game comes with a selection of characters ready for you to use. But after you've played with them a bit, you'll realise they don't give you any information you can't get elsewhere, and really just serve to flood the news ticker with pointless nonsense. It probably looks great on the back of the box, though.

The manual weighs in at a disappointing 40 pages, and suffers from an all-too-familiar lack of detail in a number of key areas. The message is pretty clear - if you're not prepared to scour websites for information, you'd better be prepared to shell out for the strategy guide. Surely not!

Performance is likely to be an issue too, unless you have a very up-to-date machine. On our testbed XP 2000+ (with 512Mb and a Geforce 4,) pronounced slowdown was evident in larger cities. It's not as big as a problem as it might sound, as this certainly isn't a framerate dependent game, but nevertheless it's worth noting. The stability's another issue, unfortunately, and there's not many foolproof solutions until a patch arrives... we hope.

Another rather surprising problem is the scope for customising your experience. There's no difficulty level, for example, so you can't increase the challenge by starting with a lower budget (or even a bank loan). More irritatingly, there are no goal-based scenarios at all, which is a curious omission. You'd have to be a real sceptic to suggest that Maxis are deliberately holding that back to give them something compelling to put in the inevitable expansion, wouldn't you? While we're complaining about omissions, where oh where is that undo button?

But gripes aside, SimCity 4 still has the old hours-pass-like-minutes hook. It's crushingly addictive, especially with the fascinating new possibilities offered by having your cities trade with each other for resources. Fix the stability, add some scenarios and we might be looking at a five star game - the performance problems are bearable if you have a ballsy PC. All the micromanagement may annoy a few, but it's a pretty safe bet to say that if you enjoyed any of the previous games, you'll be captivated with this one.