The Urbz: Sims in the City

"Not the best game for the DS, but it's pretty good."

This game isn't like The Sims. The Sims is just making them live, have a big house, etc. This game has specific missions and a storyline. I've heard people say that they don't want to get this game because it's just the Sims, city style. They're wrong.

The story is pretty simple. This game's a sequel from The Sims: Bustin' Out. Daddy Bigbucks is back, and he has another really weird plan, and you have to foil it. This requires you to do a lot of missions, such as collecting chickens, befriending people, and doing other various petty tasks.

There are, if I remember correctly, 25-30 neighbors. Each of them is different, and has a specific backstory. It's interesting to learn them all, and see how they react to certain subjects.

A large part of the game is conversations. The point, mostly, is to become friends with people. To do this, you just have to talk to them about things they like to talk about. Usually it's common sense what they like; Doctor Max likes Science, while Cannonball Coleman (the jazz musician) likes to talk about Music. If you talk to someone about something they don't like, your friendship rating goes down a bit. If you make it drop a lot in one conversation, they get really pissed off and refuse to talk to you for a few days (in-game days. Each one is about 40 minutes).

While I said this game isn't the same thing as the Sims, it does have some similar aspects. For example, you have to get a job to get money to get food, and when you get lots of cash, you can get a bigger, better house, more furniture, etc etc. But it's different in the way that you actually do the jobs yourself, and they're not conventional jobs. For example, you can win money in basketball tournaments, or be a stand up comic.

There isn't much use of the touch screen besides helping you go through menus quickly, but, in my opinion, that's good. I don't like how in some games you have to use the touch screen for everything.

The music is fine. It's background music. Nothing special. Sometimes you can hear Cannonball Coleman playing his saxophone at night. When you talk to people, they have happy sounds or pissed sounds or sad sounds, depending on what you're talking to them about. Not much actual audio speech.

The graphics are fine. It wasn't made to be uber-realistic 3D. Basically, you just see yourself running around from above. You can't really change the camera, but you don't really need to. The faces look pretty realistic, too. You don't need to pay much attention to it, anyway.

The replay, value, however, isn't really good. There aren't many split paths to take, so you're just doing the same things again. However, there are a lot of things to do in-game, like item collecting, getting a big house, being friends with everyone, doing all the missions, so it'll keep you busy for a while.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/06