"Doesn't look like much, but great beyond belief"

The first time I saw this game, I thought it looked lame, boring, and just plain idiotic: a bunch of boxes and an arrow to move around and choose one. Little did I know, those boxes were actually filled with entertainment that would keep me playing Alter Ego for hours.

The concept is pretty simple - you answer a bunch of true/false questions, choose which life stage you'd like to start in (infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, late adulthood, or old age), and then all the fun begins. You pick a vignette, and make a decision that will somehow affect... well, your life. Every action you do will result in some sort of change in your 'life spheres', which will determine what happens to you later on - for example, don't go stealing things with your friend, or your Trustworthiness will go down, and if it gets down too low, it'll be hard to get married later in life.

The older you are in the game, the more things you can do. By the time you're an adult, you're able to go to college, have a relationship, buy stuff (oh what fun!), get loans from the bank, have a job (how else could you buy stuff...), and have marriage and family options. You do what you want.

This game isn't really hard - it depends on what you're trying to do, actually. If you want to go out and be a baddie, there's a bunch of options to help you do that, but the chances of dying from getting stoned too much are pretty high. But it's pretty fun to be able to do whatever you want and see the consequences sometimes, even if it's saddening. Like one time, my parents told me not to go play on the big rock with my friends. I was sneaky and went anyway, and watched one of my friends get killed. But anyway, the replay value of this game is definitely high, since there's such a vast amount of choices to be made, even if you have to play the same vignettes again. Maybe one time you can be the perfect role model, the next a drug dealer. Have some fun with it.

Ages before The Sims... Alter Ego. This game is innovative, creative, not to mention full of incredible possibilities that could make you scream for joy or break your heart (well, maybe that's over doing it, but... you know.) I give the original idea and game a big hand!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/13/03, Updated 06/13/03