The Sims - Second Opinion Electronic Arts

Original review, by Kevan Mander

Reviewer: James Weiner Version: 1.0

The Sims

Did you ever read a review before buying a game and thought that the reviewer was wrong? You know, when you're reading the reviewer's final paragraph and you're thinking, "this guy just didn't get it - I know I'll like this game". Well, when I read Kevin Mander's review of The Sims, I volunteered to write the Second Opinion review because I just *knew* that he just didn't get the point of the game and that I'd love The Sims.

Well, did you ever get the sinking feeling after playing the game that the reviewer was right? I now know that feeling. The Sims is a marvelous attempt at creating virtual people, but some underlying problems and questionable design decisions will make the lifespan of The Sims on my hard drive a short and uneventful one.

The Simulated Life and Times of Walt Blackadar

My initial impression of The Sims was a very favorable one. I decided to jump right in ("we don't need no stinkin' tutorials") and create my very first virtual person, Walt Blackadar. Walt was a little messy, but he had a good heart and was very active - his astrological sign was Gemini, the same as mine. When it came time to give Walt a face and a body, there wasn't as many options as I expected, but I quickly gave him a distinctive but dignified image.

Walt may have been ready for the world, but the world wasn't ready for him. Sims have needs and without the fulfillment of those needs, they won't be very happy and productive. Or, in the case of a couple of special needs, they won't be alive. The eight main needs are hunger, comfort, hygiene, bladder, energy, fun, social and room. Some of these needs are self-explanatory: Hunger is fulfilled by food, comfort by sitting down, hygiene by washing and bladder by…well, you can guess. Some needs are a bit more complicated. Energy must be recuperated by sleeping, fun by interacting with different objects that give pleasure (get your mind out of the gutter) and social by interacting with other sims. Room is the toughest to explain - the layout, lighting and attractiveness of the items in a room all play into this need. The real test of the game is seeing that these needs are met so your sims stay satisfied.

I quickly plunked Walt down in an empty lot in the neighborhood and began to build his home. With only $20,000 (the starting money amount), I couldn't build his dream home, but I did get a pretty functional floor plan down fairly easily. There are quite a few options when building a home and I greatly enjoyed this portion of the game. There are a number of different building categories and each has many different options. For example, there are 30 different types of wall coverings and about as many different floors, with the better ones costing more. With different windows, doors and even roof styles, this is a great tool for the aspiring architect - if you can dream it, you can pretty much build it.

The 'hood

Now that I had an empty home, it was time to furnish it. Again, Maxis didn't skimp on the choices and there is a lot to consider when "shopping" for furniture. A piece of furniture will usually have a function, a value and a price. The function is pretty easy to determine - for example, a stove is used to cook food to fulfill the "hunger" need. The value is how well it accomplishes that task - for example, a gas stove is better at fulfilling the "hunger" need than the free standing range stove. Of course, the pieces of furniture that are better at fulfilling needs are more costly. This part of the game was also enjoyable - furnishing your virtual dollhouse on a budget to fill your sim's needs can be a fun experience.

Now that Walt had a home and some furniture, it was time to find him a job. I looked in the paper (only one job per day there) for a job, but I didn't want to be a military man, so I booted up my virtual computer and quickly found a job in the political field (there's 10 career paths in all). It didn't pay much (none of the starting jobs do), but what the heck, it would pay the bills. Climbing the career ladder would prove to be a tougher challenge - Walt was going to have to get some skills to move up in the world. There are 6 main career skills: Cooking, mechanical, charisma, body, logic and creativity. There are certain items that you can buy or books that you can read that will increase these skills, but finding the time to work on these skills when trying to fulfill all of your other needs can be tricky. This is especially interesting since all of your needs grow when your sim is at work. I don't know about your office, but I get enough "social" at work to want to turn into a hermit at home. In addition, you don't control your sim at the office - in fact, you never see the office. A car comes by to pick your sim up when it's time to go to work and drops them off when it's time to go home, a feature I'm not sure I like. Since most of us blend in our home life and our work life, it might have been interesting to see the sims at the office.

Walt was a loner until the neighbors started visiting. They came over an introduced themselves, but after that it was usually up to me to call them and invite them over. Conversing with the neighbors has a couple of effects. The first is keeping your social need high and the second is making new friends, which is usually a factor in moving up the employment ladder. The higher you go, the more family friends you'll need. Well, Walt needed a mate, and one of the neighbors looked mighty attractive. I had Walt put the full-court press on her and three days later she left her husband and married me.

Bella (Walt's new wife) brought her friends into the relationship, had her own career and made life a little more hectic, if a bit more interesting. I had to try to meet her needs, but her extra income allowed me to buy better furniture to more easily meet both of their needs. Since she brought her friends into the relationship, it was easier to make more family friends since Walt wasn't the only one doing all the talking. But it was at this point that I began to realize my relationship with The Sims wasn't going to be a long-term one.

Darn! No nude code!

Good Programming is Simplicity Itself

Before I start down that long road, let me say this: The Sims has been programmed exceptionally well. The graphics are crisp and clean, with three different zoom levels and the ability to rotate the screen to see things that may be covered from a different view. When your sims "talk", you see floating balloons over their heads that give you some idea of the conversation thread. Objects are colorful, identifiable and they are easy to interact with. Want to watch television? Just have your chosen sim selected and click on the TV and choose "turn on TV". It's that simple. Actions can be queued so you can set out a routine for them. For example, a morning routine might be to go to the bathroom, take a shower and make breakfast. To accomplish this routine, you'd click on the toilet, the shower and the refrigerator. Depending on the personality of your sim, they'll fill in the rest. Of course, if you have a messy sim, they may not flush the aforementioned toilet, but that's due to their different personality quirks that you defined when you created the character. Building your home and placing objects is also done with the same ease of use.

This is all due to one of the best interfaces I've ever seen. Maxis has done a great job of making The Sims easy to use. Most of the important functions are only one click away, and those items or actions that require two clicks are logically grouped. The interface isn't obtrusive but is easily accessed at the bottom of the screen. The game auto-pauses when in building or buy mode and objects are easily moved around and placed. If something (like a door) can't be placed, the game lets you know why with a pop-up box.

The interface - I wish I had one of these

Maxis has also put a lot of effort in the details. The sounds are realistic and the music (in build or buy mode) is pleasant. When your sims "talk", you don't hear the actual conversation but some gibberish. It sounds pretty bad, but in reality it works very well. The inflections in the gibberish allows you to figure out the mood of your sims and is much better than canned, inane chatter that would get highly annoying quickly. The game is also remarkably bug-free, something that deserves special mention in this day and age.

Sim interaction

The manual is a pretty hefty 100 pages of good instruction on the different aspects of the needs and life of your sims and is well written and entertaining. It also leaves things out on purpose so there's still plenty of discoveries for you to make. Maxis even included a virtual scrapbook to keep memorable moments in the lives of your sims. Finally, even though there isn't a multiplayer mode, Maxis is really putting an effort into creating an ongoing community where you can download tools to develop new skins, objects, homes and even share your different sim families. I love that Maxis is putting forth this level of support and freebies for the online community. It's something more companies should do as it builds brand loyalty - which is paying off, as The Sims is setting some sales records for Maxis.

The Simpletons

I've played and generally enjoyed a number of Sim-games. I've owned and liked (with various degrees) SimCity, SimAnt, SimEarth , SimFarm, SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000 . So why don't I really like The Sims? Well, let's start off small and work our way up the list. The whole neighborhood concept could have been done better. You can't even walk around the neighborhood - when you take over a household, the only interaction you get with residents of other households is if you invite them over to your place. While the social actions you take in one household do effect the residents of the other houses, I don't get the feeling of being part of a community. It's more like watching one sitcom and getting the occasional visit from the star of another show.

In addition, you have to control pretty much the entire neighborhood. I wanted just to concentrate on building a couple of sims and letting the computer develop the other families. Except it doesn't, and you need more sims to move up on the career ladder. So you're forced to make more sims, move them into homes (at least you can download some homes on the web), furnish their houses and get them going so there are enough sims in the neighborhood for your main characters to interact with. An option to let the computer take over filling out the neighborhood would have been welcome.

I think Maxis missed the boat in confining the sims to their home. I would have really enjoyed putting my sims in a crowded theater and shouting "fire", going to a formal dance in jeans and a tee shirt, attending another sim's wedding or any one of thousands of possible social settings. Instead I feel just like a housekeeper, keeping their needs bars filled and making sure they pick up after themselves.

You have to pick up a lot, since your sims are generally pretty stupid. They'll go make the occasional meal and relieve themselves, but overall they won't take care of themselves or their surroundings without a lot of help from you. You end up micromanaging most of their actions and thanking god that the interface was well done. Once your sims get to a certain financial point, you can purchase better furniture that will take care of their basic needs much faster than the cheaper furniture. You'll then spend your sim's time building attributes and relationships for the next job promotion. It seems like the game ends up being a lesson on time management since time moves quickly - too quickly, for my taste. In fact, it takes a sim almost 5 minutes to walk across the house! I think I would have enjoyed The Sims more if I could have slowed down the pace of the game and concentrated more on the interpersonal aspects of my sims. As it stands, you're almost forced to take over other families from time to time due to the lack of time allowed in your game to develop the many needed relationships. This lack of time is exasperated by the fact that there are no weekends. You can take the odd day off (only one in a row, though), but your sim-friends may very well be at the office during the day, so taking the day doesn't help much.

Interestingly, time doesn't really matter for the visiting sims. For example, if I leave Walt's kitchen burning and take over Bart's house, invite Walt over, have a few brewskis and then send Walt home, nothing changes in Bart's game. When I take over Walt's home again, nothing will have changed except for the friendship status between Bart and Walt. The kitchen will still be burning and Walt will be the exact same as when I left him - in fact, the time will be the same. Neat trick, eh? This really makes the game feel like a sitcom rather than a community.

Of course if I could slow down the time, that would only show the flaws in character relationships. Frankly, The Sims seem to be a very shallow group of virtual folks. The interpersonal choices are pretty limited and I never met anyone that couldn't get along with my sims. The choices are pretty simple in building the relationships and you pretty much can guess the outcome of a particular action. Jealousy is supposed to be a factor, but when Walt stole Bella from another man, nothing negative happened. The game allows multiple marriages - a "build your own harem" feature, but that just turned me off. Cheating on one's spouse should have some downside. When Walt made his untimely end (changing a light bulb and getting electrocuted, no less), Bella didn't mourn even though Walt was her husband and closest relationship. In fact, it was easy to get her to married again very quickly (three game days). So much for the "sanctity" of marriage. They don't seem to care about each other much and that makes me not care about them - a bad sign since the game really needs you to make an emotional investment in your sims.

She's faking it

Which leads me to my last point and the one that bothers me the most. I'm not sure if the message is intentional or not, but I don't like the message I'm getting from The Sims. In the real world, some purchased objects can make me happy, but most of my happiness comes from interpersonal relationships. Time spent with my wife, watching my young son open his eyes and make baby sounds or just talking to friends is what makes me happy. Yet these interpersonal relationships don't make your sims happy - spending time with objects and purchased items is what fills up the "fun" meter. This is where The Sims ultimately fails as a life simulator and becomes little more than a real-time strategy game where the pursuit of simple resources becomes the goal.

The untimely end of Walt Blackadar

Simply Resistible

I'm sure some people will love this game- who knows, I may all of a sudden "get it" and start enjoying it too. The ability to manipulate your sims, create situations to see how they react and build your dream home doesn't make this game a total dud. In fact, I feel it's very close to something that I would enjoy. Maybe it's because I'm not a fan of sitcoms and soap operas, but I find The Sims to be lacking in depth in a way that just turns me off. In addition, I never got to the point where I felt there was a "pay-off". After three hours, I was showing my wife how neat this new game was. After 10 hours, I started asking "is this all there is"? Sadly, the answer I got back after 25+ hours of gaming is "yes". All in all, The Sims is a great attempt to make a people simulator, but I think you might be better off if you used your money (and time) to build some real-world relationships rather than spending it on this game.