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The Sims

aka: Die Sims, Dollhouse, Home Tactics, Les Sims, Los Sims, Project X, Sim Dollhouse, SimPeople, Tactical Domestic Simulator, The Dollhouse Simulator
Moby ID: 860

Windows version

It takes 3 hours to eat dinner?

The Good
The first time I heard about this game I was told that you could pretty much do what ever you wanted to do. As in you could go down and rob the local store if you wanted to. So when I got the game I was obviously disappointed that I couldn't even leave the area of my house, so that being said here is my review.

The first thing I noticed when I started to play the game was the graphics, smooth around the edges and the game didn't seem to jump at all or have many bugs. I think that the Maxis / Electronic Arts team took about three quarters of the time spent making the graphics of the game perfect and then just adding a bit of game play in at the end.

The sound in The Sims was great. The little language that the Sims speak in can get a bit annoying after a while but it is still a nice touch to the game. And the language also makes the conversations between the Sims a lot more interesting. You can also hear you Sim / Sims grumbling if they are unhappy or if you have just woken them up in the middle of one of their peaceful little naps.

The game play, though the downfall of the game still had its high points such as, making the house is one of the most fun things to do in the game, and getting a job and watching as your house and your bank account expand. There quite a few jobs that the player can choose form such as a Army recruit or a journalist. If you get bored of just being a bachelor / bachelorette then you can try and get a person to marry and maybe even give you some children. And when you get a child then your character actually gets the pleasure of waking up at four in the morning because the baby is hungry or needs to be changed, and if you decide to neglect it then a social service person will come to your house and take the bundle of joy off your hands.

The Bad
As I said in the good review when I heard about The Sims I had quite a different idea of what I thought it was going to be like compared to what I actually played. Even though the graphics in the game were quite good they still had flaws such as, swimming around in the water there are no ripples or anything and it looks like he’s floating around in his own little patch of sky. And when the house was getting built and you could choose what kind of roof you wanted on top of your house, there was one size which looked quite normal but the other two just looked stupid and it was a waste being able to have them.

The Sims have their own little language. And it would not matter if the language was English it would still get incredibly annoying after a while and to be able to play the game I had to mute the sound so that I could not hear the sounds of the annoying Sims any more.

And now we come to the worst part of the game. You have to give your Sim(s) the attention that you have to give to a newborn baby. And its even worse when the Sim is a new born baby, and if you are not up within 30 minutes after it starts crying then the bloody social service woman gets there and takes it before it can even become a child. The most annoying thing by far about the Sims though is this: it takes so long to do ANYTHING. If you want to have a snack it will take your Sim about an hour to finish it, and its even worse if you want to actually have a full dinner. For example if I wanted to be up and be ready for work in my game then I would have had to be up four hours before my car pool arrived otherwise I would've been cutting it extremely close.

The Bottom Line
The Sims is a fun game for a while even though it takes the Sims ages as I said to do ANYTHING. If you are someone who is looking for a game that has no real ending and you have to be watching like a hawk every time you are controlling then go ahead and buy this game. If not then you will probably find The Sims to be annoying after a while you will be discarding it quite quickly.

by Horny-Bullant (49) on December 12, 2003

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