The Sims

The Good
Supreme and awesome dictator. If I say go to the bathroom, you go to the bathroom. If I say watch t.v., you watch t.v. If I say jump, don't ask me any questions, just jump. That, in essence, is 'The Sims'. I'm back to my natural platform and I'm ready to rip into this one.

To play 'The Sims', you have to be an extremely patient person. You also have to be able to manage time and be great strategist. I don't like to toot my own horn but I am all of the above and have played The Sims many hours at a time. So, how exactly do you think of the game, you ask? Well, read on.

The creation process is again available in the PS2 version of the game. You can choose exactly how you want your sim to look and what you want them to wear right down to the color of the shoes. Even the smallest of details is available for you to tweak. You want your sim to have that funny color eye that you have, there's a good chance that you can make it happen. Moving on...

I've always enjoyed interior and exterior decoration so that part of the game is nice. There are a myriad of wall paper and flooring designs to choose from along with windows, doors, plants, and fireplaces. The furniture has been excellently detailed and it's fun just to put the house together and watch your creations come to life.

The new element to The Sims is it's competitive gameplay. You can now go head to head or challenge the computer. The head to head competition is enjoyable but the point of it can get silly. For example, whoever can clean the house better, and quicker for that matter, keep the landlord's daughter happy, and protect the house against the messy neighbor wins the game. Okaaaay. On the other side, when you challenge the computer, there are specific tasks that must be complete. For example, to pass the first round you must borrow 800 simoleans(dollars) from mom, make dinner, and fix the televison among other things. The game progress like that getting a little bit more challenging with each new round.

The sounds that these sims make can have you laughing your head off. If you do happen to get your hands on the game, make your sims have a baby and then listen to the female sing to it. Classic.

The PS2 has and excellent game engine and helps to bring out the graphics, animations, and what have you of the game. It's a good thing they brought it to this platform.

The Bad
Again, the first thing I mentioned was patience. If you are not, do not buy The Sims. You'd last a couple of days before you become a vegetable. The game is extremely enjoyable, when you have nothing else to do. After the initial excitement, you'll find yourself playing it less and less or on those days when more productive things aren't that appealing.

There was one time I played the game with the Newbie family and was so sick of them that I enclosed each of them into their own little glass box (which can be done in the build mode with walls and the long windows). They each had one lamp in their sections and were allowed no contact with each other. After their moods went down to the fourth red bar, I let them at each other. The husband and wife kept on fighting until he decided to leave and never come back, the two children kept on wetting themselves, and the wife...well, the wife would keep falling asleep. I found it quite funny that with all the screaming and yelling going on during the day, none of the visting sims came over to investigate.

The other sims in the game are quite dumb. If a sim comes over to visit and the owner comes out but greets a different sim, the first one will automatically go away. Didn't it see the owner come out? How about you greet him/her?!?! Also, there will be an easy route to the bathroom from the bedroom. My idiot sims decided to go throught the backyard, walk all the way around the house and back through the bedroom. He didn't need to go to the bathroom by the time he got there. His bladder was taken care of in the rose bushes.

After a couple of days, they all died. The little boy of starvation, the little girl electrocuted herself trying to change a lightbulb in her section, and the wife, of grief. Sad, but true. With The Sims, there are more ways than one to play the game.

Back to decorating, it's annoying that you can only fit so much into your house. After a certain money limit, forget about improving on your house any more. I wish I could tear that bar out of the television screen. The one that monitors the worth of everything you have put in your house. Sometimes, there's a little bit left to go, so it SEEMS that you can fit something else. When you go to buy it, that infernal buzzer sounds! But there is room on the bar, why can't I buy anything! I don't understand it!!! It only cost 4 thousand simoleans!!! No!!!!! WHY!!!! WHY!!!! WHY!!!! ahem Sorry about that. It's rather frustrating.

The open ended game play gets tedious. You basically do the same thing over and over day after day. Nothing changes. Nothing really. It's not that different from the PC version of the game.

The Bottom Line
So, EA wanted to drive people crazy and the creator thought, "We can't reach everybody on PCs, if we want to bring gameplayers to their knees we have to move on to different platforms. First Playstation 2, and then the world!!" And everyone nodded in agreement.

HAVE FUN!!!

The Good
You are able to build your own house and sims. The game allows you to be creative and outrageous without many bounds, except for the usual ones found in games similar to it.

The Bad
The camera is hard to control and sometimes down right annoying. My other major problem in opening up the whole game was to get a life mode. It takes hous to complete and holds back far to many things from players who just want to mess around. Note Get a Life mode is not imposible to beat but be prepared to sit through some pretty annoying tasks.

The Bottom Line
The sims is a complicated game that will take numerous trys to perfect, but it is enormously fun.