This is so true. Where I grew up the roads are rarely exactly parallel, and the coastline is hard to replicate. There's highways and flyovers that weren't like the ones in the games.

When I came to the US, particularly the towns that aren't by the coast, I thought SimCity! Apart from things being on a grid, there's also quite a lot of repetitive architecture. Schools look similar, utilities look similar, neighbourhoods are filled with the same houses. And all the big box stores are exact copies.