The Sims

"Sim-ply fascinating!"

Could this be the best ''Sim'' game Maxis have made yet? Most probably. I have had a great addiction to the PC version of this game for a good long while. The Sims has a very versatile world with characters to control at your disposal, and you can make them do anything you want like any normal family would. You can edit and customise the features of Mr. and Mrs. Average everyday person. There are hundreds of items to place around your house. Heck, you can even make your own house. This game is so fun and addictive and with all the extension games, you can be kept on for ages. The way you can make your characters live and the so many things you can do will have you playing for hours, and rightly so.

To start off saying with, there is no specific storyline that is followed in The Sims. The objective is a more open one, in which what you simply do is to try to create as good a family you possibly can. You will control their lifestyles like any normal person would. You start with creating your family or selecting one, which has been pre-created, or try out a demo mode for those who are new and want to get used to it before stepping into the real major parts of the game. Maxis hasn't forgotten about you Newbies (no pun intended, Bob) =P. You can edit their looks, like hair, clothing, gender, adult or child, attributes, star signs, the lot. You can choose to start off living in a house that has already been made, or make your own. However, you have to keep in mind you also have a budget and you need to spend the others on renovating your house and paying for your groceries and stuff. Once you start working you'll have less worry about that.

There are many features to be explored and covered in The Sims, so I'll start off talking about the basics, which almost everyone can understand.

When you control your Sims when they start living, you can choose to do it yourself by giving them commands for what they must do throughout their day, which is where the fun lies. Or, you can choose to be a bonehead and let the computer to do it for you, in which the Sims tend to do whatever they please, and nothing to up their attributes and stuff. Boring. When you're controlling, you can choose to also place objects around the Sim-house and helping your Sims improve their lifestyles (which is really the main task of the game).

When you are building up the house, which you are custom creating, you can change the shape, have one or two floors, and make as much room as you please, but remember it'll cost you. You can decorate it in any way you wish, have whatever room wherever you wish and give it any look you want. The possibilities are endless, and it's a lot of fun, which is one of the best things you could say about the game.

When you're controlling your Sims, you can make them do the necessary things that humans have to in order to live, like eating, working for money, sleep and keep themselves clean (and of course, going to the toilet, one of the things humans couldn't live without!!) Also, their leisure, like computer games, snooker tables, chess, a basketball hoop and books to read. You can buy lots of things to keep your Sims occupied, but the better things that up their attributes are also more costly, but yet again, that's where the challenge lies. You also have to gain jobs from the computer or a newspaper, so when your Sims start work they get a daily wage, but when you improve their statistics they can get promoted and earn more money, thus allowing you to buy better things and have an easier lifestyle. Beautiful.

To make your Sims get better attributes, you have to make them do things that would help. To make them more social with others, you should talk with neighbours or other Sims living with you. You could engage in an activity that makes them more social, like sitting on the couch together and talking, or sitting in a hot tub, for example. When they're hungry you should feed them, or when they're tired you should let them rest. Other factors are necessary for work promotions too. Say if you needed to have good charisma for a promotion, you should practise that Sim's speech in front of a mirror in order to up it a bit until they've passed a certain limit that's needed in order to gain their work promotion.

Well, the whole meat of the game lies in the gameplay, and The Sims does a great job of keeping the player occupied for ages, and it's very fun and will not bore you, which I can almost certainly assure. So to top it all off, the Sims has some of the best gameplay you can get out of any simulation games and the complexity of controlling your Sims in their world is phenomenal. The many things you can do keeps you occupied for a good, long while, so the gameplay definitely score high marks in this region.

Moving on, I will now talk about the music and sounds of The Sims. Now what was so lacking here is that The Sims doesn't have any music while you play, but I guess it's kind of cool since it's a living simulator. There are some nice tunes that pop up every now and then that sound pretty good to say the least. Or the music that your Sims listen to, while that's nothing to write home about it sounds like the category of music you're listening to when you switch the radio on. The other soundtracks sound generally ok in my opinion.

The sound effects in the game sound realistic, and make The Sims that much better and a greater life simulation. The Sims have different speaking accents, yet they don't actually speak any understandable words so you don't really know what's going on, yet again there is nothing else that's going on. They'll babble many phrases again and again, and perhaps more could have been added...but like I said, we don't know what's going on.

The Sims has some great looking graphics, which I will talk about next. The actual person models themselves look like actual people, and there's a lot of different Sims to meet throughout the game. The objects you see in Sim-houses look very real, and the textures of the graphics look amazing. Also, you can choose the view you desire when viewing your Sims in their house, which is another feature I liked.

The PC does have a lot of power to display its tremendous graphics, and The Sims is a great example of that. The animation is smooth, the backgrounds and characters look colourful and lots of things seem very realistic to the eyes. You can zoom in and out and look at houses from many different angles and switch to many different positions instantly. This was another thing I loved about The Sims.

The Sims is a terrific game, which could have been better if some extra minor features were added. Its extensions (which make this game necessary to buy in case you are getting them) are also terrific and carry on the fun. This game could have the greatest life span of all games with its fun factor of 110%, its challenge, and other things that make the game what it is. The Sims is very well praised for a very obvious reason, and for any people who've got interests in PC computer games, this is definitely a must-have.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/27/04