The Sims: Vacation

"The beginning of the end for The Sims."

The Sims: Vacation is the fourth expansion pack for the series. In previous Sims games, your Sims never had time off for weekends, holidays, etc. Now your family can be like the Griswolds and shove everyone in a gas-guzzling SUV and take them on a vacation to get away from the problems at home! But like every single Sims game, little trinkets here and there sugar-coat the experience with an OMGZORS new feature (going on vacation) until you've overplayed it and it's back to the rigors of telling your Sims to cook dinner and go to the bathroom. In other words, these expansion packs are getting worse.

Vacation is similar to Hot Date in which there's a “far-away” land in which you can edit and have your Sims visit just for kicks. In this vacation world, there's three outdoor themes—the forest, the beach, and the snowy mountain (unfortunately, no amusement parks). Regardless of where you go, your Sims can pay a daily fee to stay in hotels and/or tents and igloos and hangout and play with some of the local toys. These include fishing ponds, snowy halfpipes, snowball mounds, volleyball courts, and carnival games. When you're here, time “stops” in the real world as you needn't worry about your decaying friendships or being terminated from your prestigious job.

But in reality, what vacations should be called is “Home Life 2.0.” Like a drawn-out vacation, you just want to go home and sleep in your own bed and watch your own TV (with the channels you've memorized as well). You still have to micromanage your Sims aspects, the only catch is now you're paying tons of money a day so that you can watch your Sims sleep, eat, and play with a few remote items here and there. Yes, the thrill of watching your Sim snowboard is awesome, but considering the animations never change, it, like most other Sims features, gets boring too soon. The volleyball court is probably Vacation's best feature, as your Sims will hit the ball into different areas of the court each time, unlike most looped animations you see now and then. You can do a few more fun things in the vacation world such as use a metal detector to find buried treasure, win prizes by playing carnival games, and earn curios for having “good vacations” (keeping your family's mood up for a long time) but that did very little for the series to shake it's “Doll House” vibe.

And to make matters worse, there's no bucketload of cool items besides the basic fixed-animation stuff mentioned above. There's a few new wallpapers and floors, but besides a log cabin and a wicker beach house, there's nothing extraordinary here.

Vacation just feels like another contrived big feature tacked on to a series that doesn't need more main gameplay modes that weren't great to begin with. I don't recommend this expansion to anyone except for the most diehard of Sims fans.

Presentation: 7/10 – The idea of going on vacation is pretty cool.
Gameplay: 5/10 – Vacations aren't very fun and there's not a lot to do.
Graphics: 6.5/10 – Same aging Sims graphics with nothing new.
Sound: 7/10 – Same old Simlish, you love it or you don't.
Replay Value: 4/10 – Same old, same old, same old saying "same old"....

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/08, Updated 07/09/08

Game Release: The Sims: Vacation (US, 03/25/02)