"Biggest Online Chatroom Ever"

The Sims is one of the best selling games of all time. Basically, you build a house, make characters, and control their lives. Well, they have had many expansions and things to The Sims and many games based off of it like SimCity, SimGolf, and more. It was only a matter of time until they created a online Sims and now they have.

The Sims was a very original concept and now they have taken that concept, and just added an online chatroom type thing. Sure this might sound a lot better than the original, but it has so many flaws that it is unbelievable. I'm just going to start out and say that you have to pay $10 a month to play it. Now that was a huge turn off to me and a lot of other gamers.

When you start the game, you have to make an account. Now, you go on and make 3 sims. There are a plethora of different ways you could make a sim. You can make one to look like you or one to look like you want him to. After you make a sim, you have to designate him to live in a certain area. There are around 5 different areas. This is where one of the flaws in the game comes in. You can only talk to people in your area or, well, world. Anyways, it really sucks when you pick the wrong part as your friend and then you can't move in together or chat or something.

After you pick your world, you will move on to buying a lot or moving in with someone. This is where another flaw comes in and it involves major cheating. Say you own a lot and someone wants to move in. If they become a roomie with you, they have control of everything in your house. This means they can sell things and buy things. Now, I have played and seen many roomies tear the owner's house down and then get all of the money from the tiles and walls and crap that they used to build it. Now say you want to move into a house with someone. You move in and you give them a little money since they are letting you stay. Now, they have the option of banning you from the house forever and keeping your money. This really sucks.

Now if you do get cheated, you can report the person to Maxis and get them suspended or banned or whatever but guess what? People with the charter version cannot get banned if they aren't paying yet. When you buy the game, you also get a month free so if someone cheats you while they are in their first month, they can't get banned either.

You can do anything in this game that you could in the original. The thing is, it has a built in chatroom. That is all! It isn't even that fun to chat because people that know each other will only talk to each other. Then you have the elitists who think they know everything about the game and are there to piss people off. The game just isn't that great. If you want to chat with someone and only them, there is this little instant messaging feature that is pretty cool I guess. Overall, the gameplay is a little below average.

The graphics are good. Everything looks colorful and vibrant. It looks like the original really so there is nothing new done with the graphics engine. The sound is average. The music can get a little aggravating. It isn't that great at all. Overall, I would just turn off my speakers.

There are loads of things to do in the game but it just gets old. If you have the original Sims, I would just stick to it. It is much better in my opinion.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/15/03, Updated 02/15/03