The Sims: Castaway Stories

"An okay game, and certainly the best entry into the Stories' series, but it doesn't offer enough to warrant the price."

The Sims Stories returns with its latest installment, Castaway Stories. Now as we all know the Stories series has always been, pretty much, uninspired drivel whose existence is clearly for the sole purpose of milking the Sims name. This is proven by the previous entries into the series that were pretty much a watered down version of the original series that were more 'story driven' than the rest. Of course, 'story driven' is pretty much a leeway method of saying 'goals are now predetermined'.

Castaway Stories hopes to break that trend, and makes that apparent by the mere fact that the setting is on a tropical island and not the locales where its predecessors took place, which themselves were locales from the main series. This means all new content, and clearly that must imply effort. So the outlook is bright, but is it enough to make a name for itself?

Things start out with you choosing a neighborhood or a scenario to play in. Basically for a neighborhood, you get an island. For the scenario, it's basically about your character getting marooned on a tropical island. You can choose between two premade characters of different sex, but unlike the previous entries in the series you are allowed to create your own character, a boon for those of us who may disagree with the premade characters. Unfortunately, this probably means that the game has just one scenario unlike its predecessors. Though to be honest I have not bothered playing as the premade characters, nor have I experimented with creating a female Sim. However if there are any differences, it is safe to say that they would be cosmetic at best.

Character creation has a few new things added to it like new hair styles, facial make up, head dresses, and of course outfits. Nothing sexy, mind you. Most of the 'new' articles of clothing are roughened up version of the old stuff. Of course tribal wear exists but is locked away in the scenario Create-a-Sim mode. This is not the case in Freeplay. After creating my token sexy black Chinese guy, I proceeded to click on OK and was greeted with the sound of an accident at sea against a black background. The actual sinking of the ship was probably not in the budget, but luckily, my token black Chinese guy came to afloat his trunk. If you have a decent card and have things set to high, you'll notice the fancy new shiny water. So visually, I believe the only improvement is the shiny water. I have no idea if there are other visual improvements though, and to be honest I couldn't really tell anyway, but it's not like visuals are important in this game nor is the visuals on the Sims 2 poor or anything. The visuals are fine, and there's really nothing else to say about it.

Audio is the same as usual. I believe the tracks contained in the game are remixes of previous songs from the franchise. That's not a bad thing considering that the music in the Sims 2 was anything but unappealing. Sure the singing is in Simspeak, but the appeal is still there. They certainly won't be grating on your ears unless you force yourself through sheer willpower to hate them because they aren't dark or deep enough, heaven forbid. I won't say I'm impressed with the audio, but all in all it's something you can hum along with. Now for the important part, game play.

The game play is similar to the previous Stories' games. You play along guiding your Sims, building skills, social networks and the like while accomplishing those predetermined goals I mentioned earlier. Accomplishing those goals moves the story along, but for the most part you are free to choose when to accomplish those goals save for a couple which must be done within a certain amount of time lest the story would seem odd.

The game doesn't offer any new game play mechanics, though you now have a Food and Resources counter instead. Basically there aren't any Simoleons anymore, and as such you have to 'build' your stuff by gathering resources. The same thing goes for food which you must now gather. Also some items have dependencies, so prior to being able to use them you'd need things like a water tower or a windmill to supply water and electricity, respectively. While this may seem to be a bother, it's not really and it's not like all items of the same type require these dependencies. As such it's not really an impediment and is perfectly fine.

Something to consider though is the fact that while playing the Castaway scenario, certain things are locked like relationship levels. The game doesn't allow you to raise (or lower) relationship past certain levels with certain individuals at certain periods of progress within the scenario which can be an annoyance. Not only that but while playing through the scenario, certain Sims are off limits. For instance you can't pick a mate from any of the survivors. Not that you would anyway since they're all hilarious stereotypes of annoying people. And I wouldn't have chosen a member of such an annoying band of people as a partner for my Sim, but that one Sim mentioned she had a husband back home. Appeal++. What?

Also the story sets you on a path of true love (for as far as the scenario is concerned), so better choose wisely since the Sim your Sim chooses to date will be his partner for life (or up until you finish the scenario). So at one time during my play through, I was wandering the various locales on the island looking for this one chick I met one time but whose relationship level with my Sim was too low for him to give her a call and invite over. This part here is annoying, but I don't want to spoil anything. All I can say is that before going out to the hot springs, better find the partner you wish to spend the rest of your Sims life with (well until the scenario is... ah you get the picture) and raise relationship levels to max. Anyway, I spent an entire afternoon in real life [exaggeration] just looking for that one Sim. Sad you say? Probably, but you see she was the most visually appealing Sim around. That's extremely shallow you say? Perhaps, but she would have been the perfect mother for my Sim's children. Sadly, I just couldn't chance upon her and like in real life had to settle for less.

Oh the game also lets you keep pets, but nothing except monkeys until you complete the scenario. Though I don't think the monkeys are really pets, since essentially, you feed them bananas and they go work for you. They'll get a job and provide a steady flow of food and resources for you, and to think a lifetime of slavery just with one banana.

Another issue I have with the game (well the Castaway story scenario to be specific) is that it's basically akin to a Japanese dating game/visual novel but without the sex. Well okay, there is sex but it's not gratuitous. Anyway my point is that the entire scenario has you running around doing tasks that prod the story along, but they're all specific and don't really require any creative, or dare I say thought. I mean for God's sake the game spells things out for you. And yes I know that there's an option to disable hints, but really why would you? Unless you're into punishing yourself, you'd best leave it on since most of the times, all the goal slot ever says is that you need to find something without any hints from the game world about how to go about acquiring said item. So unless you enjoy walking from area to area and looking at all the wonderful loading screens, I'd recommend that you keep hints on.

With that said, I guess it's safe to say that this is probably the longest of Stories games even if it just comes with one extremely short scenario that can probably be completed on a lazy afternoon. So how is it the longest? Why with LOADING TIMES! Loads and loads of LOADING TIMES!

Why is that you ask? That, my dear friend, is because the entire scenario is basically a fetch quest of MMORPG proportions across an entire island. Most of the time you'll be fetching something from somewhere then once you've gotten it you have to go back straight away. It's like that one area had no other purpose than to hold that one item and once you've absconded with said item there's really no need to ever return there again. For all sakes and purposes, they could have just made one huge area lined up with different huts with signs outside of them exclaiming things like 'Jungle', or 'Crossroads', or 'Abandoned Village'. So unless you have an awesome PC, expect LOADING TIMES!

Though to be fair they did do include a map which allows your Sim to fast travel to various locations that need visiting again.

As for the story, well it starts out well enough, but then it kind of just turns comical.

THE SIMS. SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Anyway I can't really fault the story for anything but being short, but really after you've completed the story, what else is there? You're basically left with a watered down version of the Sims 2 set in a tropical island. And while the story is somewhat hilarious and there are a bunch of new items, it still doesn't excuse the rest of the game. The LOADING TIMES! are also quite annoying, which really shows just how poor the engine that the game is running on is in handling games that require exploration. I'm told that the Sims 2: Castaways for the consoles is a more fun experience and is nothing like this game so you might want to check that out.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't think you should bother with this one unless you're a diehard Sims fan who has a compulsive need to collect all the games.

All in all, it's a fairly average game totally deserving an average score of 5 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/11/08

Game Release: The Sims: Castaway Stories (US, 01/29/08)