If Maxis took the time to review the success of their previous SimCity games, this game would have been a great success
Gameplay
Oh my god, Maxis sure know how to mess things up to the very extreme. The panels are all differnt now! If you were a hardcore fan of SimCity 3000 (Like Me) you're gonna have to figure your way out of this one. The 'Neighbour' panel seemed to have disappeared. Everything is located differently now. And there are no more humourous news box. Such a pity And the grid need to have roads directly in front of their house! In SimCity 3000, you can have several grids in front of one road, now it's one grid to a road. I don't understand, can't Sims walk to the road?
Graphics
Although it's in 3D now, the graphics still suck when zoomed in to the maximum, even with the max settings. And this game is a resource hogger. Don't get it unless your system is designed for high-end gaming.
Sound
Holy crap. All they give you is 'Tit tit' and 'Ring ring' sounds. No innovative ideas unlike The Sims 2 which has a fabulous music!
Value
At the beginning, your spendings will ALWAYS be more than your income. Even you can overcome that, the game gets extremely repitive after building serveral cities, unlike SimCity 3000 which offers challenges
Tilt/Overall
When the game gets repitive, and if yours is an average system, the first thing you want to do is uninstall it immediately and throw your computer outta the window. If you want great management games, get SimCity 3000 which offers reasonable graphics for all kinds of system. Stay away from this game!