The Sims 2: Castaway

"Different from other Sims games, quite refreshing"

Sims 2 : Castaways is refreshing because other Sims games take place within the urban limits, where you have all the luxuries of city life and where your main objective is building relationships and reputation, or buliding skills to get promoted in jobs. In Sims 2 : Castaways, as the title shows, your Sim (or Sims) will be castaways, stranded on islands away from civilization. You'll have to help your Sim make themselves comfortable on the islands and do all the necessary things to help your Sim survive and, eventually, get back home.

The story in this game is very, very generic and cliche'd - a story that you must have seen countless times. Your Sim (or Sims) are part of a crew. On one of your voyages you get caught up in a storm and get stranded on a deserted island. Your crew will be separated. You must reunite all your crew members, and do all the necessary things to get you and your crew back home to the city. There are a few ways to do this. Once you have returned to the city you can choose to continue playing on the island - which is reasonable since there are many, many things you can do on the island, and plenty of secrets and extras to unlock.

Customization is very good in this game. But everything in the game needs you to build it first. Which means, my fellow gamers, that you will have to harvest the necessary amount of materials before you can build even a simple shell axe, and the bigger stuff like the materials for a bungalow will need a lot of harvesting and building. Everything needs to be made yourself - even your clothes. At first, you will only have plans for clothes made out of leaves - you heard me, leaves. After completing certain objectives, eventually cloth clothes will be available for making - after you gather the materials. Different islands and different parts of the islands are abundant in materials, some rarer than others - but the problem is that will require you to go to those places and harvest the materials. And the loading times in this game are quite long, to the point that it might test your patience a little bit. So this feature in the game can get very tiring and tedious.

Obviously, there is no currency (you're on a deserted island!). No jobs either. Once you have reunited with at least one of your crew members, you will have the option to build a Home Tiki at your campfire. You can assign tasks to your crew members, such as Fishing and Gathering.

Then there are the chimpanzees - you can befriend the chimpanzees on the islands, and occasionally they will bring you banana leaf bundles with materials. To get them you will have to reward them with a banana - so remember to stock up on those bananas. But what's frustrating is that sometimes a chimp will approach you while your Sim is doing something else and once you finally stop, the chimp will have gone away already.

The graphics are okay in the game, but could have been better. There's not very much detail to everything.

Sounds? There's barely any music in the game! But the background sounds, like in the jungle, are quite good and realistic - you can hear the crickets and bugs and the chimps and everything.

Controls? Easy to get the hang of.

The game has many, many secrets and unlockables - the possibilities are endless. There are plenty of things for you to do, plenty of things to keep you busy throughout the game, plenty of new things to discover. It will take you a very long time before you can say that you've seen and done everything that can be done in this game. Finding treasure, building new things, harvesting, unlocking new areas of the islands, searching for important items to help you get home, completing your objectives - so many things to do!

Rent or Buy? Certainly a Buy. It's a long, long game, filled with possibilities.

This is by far my most favorite Sims game - it's fun and can get addictive even. A nice refreshing game, very different from the rest.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/27/08

Game Release: The Sims 2: Castaway (US, 10/22/07)