"Not too bad, but is it worth $30?"

Introduction
Hot Date is an expansion pack for The Sims, concentrating mostly on the Social aspect of your Sim’s life. There’s a whole new downtown section to go to, either as a single Sim, or with company, and many new social interactions. But like the original Sims, it’s not as great as it’s cracked up to be.

Gameplay
I’m going to skip over the regular gameplay that comes with the original The Sims, and concentrate mostly on Hot Date’s new features (if you’re playing Hot Date, most likely you’ve played the Sims). The big new thing in Hot Date is the Downtown area. Let’s take a walk through of a typical time Downtown.

First, obviously, you need to get there, so you call a cab to bring you to one of the many locations downtown. You can either call another Sims ahead of time to invite them downtown, or hook up with someone once you get there. So by now, you’ve arrived, most likely with another Sim in tow. You can ask how the other person is, which basically tells you what they want (whether it’s food, to have fun, use the facilities, etc). For example, let’s say that your partner is bored. So you go play pool a bit. Ask again, and they’ll tell you they’re hungry.

If you built the Downtown lot yourself, this might be where you run into problems. It took me more than a few days to get the proportions correct for a restaurant. You need to have the number of tables, waiters and waitresses, busboys, and cooks all proportional to each other. During my first half dozen or so lots, when I tried to have my Sims eat at the restaurant., I’d always be greeted with the message of ‘All our tables are currently full. Please try again later.’ So you try again later, and they’re still full. At that point, I decided to demolish the lot and start anew. This time I added more tables, because obviously I was being told I didn’t have enough. So this time I have my Sims go out to eat, and they get a table, so they sit and wait and wait and wait…and wait some more. I figured that then I added the wrong number of tables, because obviously that ratio was out of whack. After many more tries, I finally went and actually counted the number of tables, cooks, waiters, and busboys in each of the Maxis-made lots. Now I finally had a restaurant my Sims could successfully eat it. Now, back to this mock date.

OK, so now your Sims have eaten. So, ask again, and they’ll tell you they need to use the restrooms. You have your Sim lead the way, and by having your Sim use the toilet, the partner of your Sim will use it also. But by now, your Sims energy bar is extremely low. So there’s no real way to do much more; you might be able to squeeze in going to a shop and buying gifts for the other Sim, like candy, flowers, teddy bears, jewelry, even clothing. Unless you’ve gotten a good job and are practically made of money, buying gifts adds up quickly. So you either invite the other Sim back to your house, or you tell them good bye.

After many times downtown, all of the dates happen this way, occasionally with the playing pool and eating switched. The one major advantage of spending time Downtown is that time doesn’t pass back at your Sims house, so you can make friends without worrying about being late for work. But 99% of the time, when you get back, your Sim wants to do nothing but sleep because they’re exhausted.

Graphics (7/10)
No difference, if any from the graphics of the original The Sims; there are still only four angles, which still hinders the visibility of objects in certain locations. The characters are still the least detailed out of everything in the game. For example, assuming your character has hair, the hair is usually mostly a solid color with occasionally a few streaks of lighter and darker shades, and it doesn’t move at all; it’s cemented to the head of the Sim the whole time.

Audio (7/10)
The background music is still there, still somewhat annoying and repetitive. Like in the original, the Sims still speak in gibberish, and use pictures above their heads to show what they’re talking about as opposed to speaking in English. The sounds are pretty realistic though with the car honking at your Sim to get in the carpool to go to work and the buzz of the alarm clock waking up your Sim in the morning. Nothing extraordinary in the audio aspect.

Conclusion
Overall, Hot Date adds more than the other expansions do with the Downtown area, easily the biggest plus of this expansion. The graphics aren’t great, but you can live with them. Like The Sims before it, it does get very, very tedious. The audio is there, not wonderful, but it works well enough for the game.

Even though I’ve given straight 7s for this expansion, it gets a 5 overall. Why? Because it’s not worth shelling out $30 for.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/14/03, Updated 04/14/03