Release Info:
- Developer: Maxis
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- Platform: PC and Mac
- ESRB Rating: Everyone
- Release Date:
Key Features:
- First expansion pack to SimCity 4
- Drive, fly, or sail in vehicles to see your city from a new perspective
- Complete over 80 U-Drive-It missions in a choice of land, air, and water vehicles
- Includes two new disaster types
- Build elevated rails and create a ferry system for passengers and cars
- Create one-way roads and wide avenues
- Personalize your city by naming streets, neighborhoods, mountains, and bodies of water
Description:
The first expansion pack to SimCity 4 increases the amount of transportation options available to mayors. Players will be able to expand their city’s roads, railways, flights, and waterways with several new building choices. New transportation options include elevated rails, a ferry system, a monorail network, and wider avenues. Mayors can also name individual streets, neighborhoods, lakes, and mountain ranges to personalize their surroundings.
Perhaps the most interesting new feature introduced in SimCity 4: Rush Hour is the ability to directly control vehicles and complete missions. These "U-Drive-It" missions allow you to pilot a plane to perform skywriting tasks, blast away businesses inside a tank, drive a police car to hunt down criminals, race through canals in a speedboat, and more. Over 80 missions are available in total, with each successful mission improving your overall mayor rating and the potential for earning a reward building.
Not all of the vehicles are available from the start, however. Players need to unlock specific structures that will enable them to access certain vehicle types. Once you have the correct vehicle, you’ll be able to take it on a free drive, allowing you to explore your city from a street level without any objectives, or participate in a mission. Your objectives will appear in a dialog box, and you typically have the option to perform a good or evil mission.
An example of a "good" mission may involve apprehending a car thief, while an "evil" mission may have you causing a certain amount of destruction or chaos. Land vehicles you’ll be able to control include a police car, police van, getaway van, the mayor’s limo, city bus, army truck, tank, ambulance, school bus, fire truck, garbage truck, taxicab, news van, hearse, stolen vehicle, passenger train, steam train, freight train, monorail, toxic waste truck, ice cream truck, and an individual My Sim’s vehicle.
Air vehicles include a news helicopter, police helicopter, fire plane, sky writing plane, crop duster, attack helicopter, attack jet, medical helicopter, and sky diving plane. Water vehicles available for U-Drive-It missions include a ferry boat, speed boat, fishing boat, motor boat, cigar boat, tug boat, and yacht. Each vehicle type offers its own set of controls, such as the ability to turn on a police car’s siren, activate the helicopter’s spotlight, or launch missiles from an attack jet.
Once a mission begins, you’ll typically have to reach a specific target within a limited amount of time. Targets can be on the move, requiring you to quickly chase it down or destroy it, while others may be stationary, such as a building fire that you’ll need to put out while operating a fire truck.
Two new disaster types are also included with SimCity 4: Rush Hour. In addition to SimCity 4’s volcanoes, fires, meteor showers, and robot attacks, Rush Hour offers both UFOs and a being known as "Autosaurus Wrecks." The UFO disaster type has a mothership spawning smaller UFOs, which you can attempt to fly over your city. Autosaurus Wrecks is a creature comprised entirely of vehicles, who will stomp and smash through your city in any direction.
In order to run SimCity 4: Rush Hour, you need to own the SimCity 4 base game. Rush Hour is also available as part of the SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition.