The Sims Review

Ever wonder what your life would be like if you had decided to be a paramedic?  Or if you had the skills to be a professional athlete?  Well now you can see what life would have been like had you followed a different path by playing The Sims.

To begin play, you must select your in-game persona - your Sim.  You can either select a pre-existing Sim or create your own.  Creating your own Sim allows you to tweak his/her personality to your liking - neat, outgoing, and fun are a few of the traits from which you'll have to choose.  You'll then be given an initial budget and with which to purchase and furnish a home.  Once this is done, your Sim is placed into the gameworld and the fun begins.  

In order to keep your Sim happy (and alive) you'll have to monitor his/her needs.  These range from the basic food and bathroom variety, to social interaction and self-fulfillment.  Managing all of these needs might prove overwhelming were it not for the availability of maids, gardeners, and repairmen for hire.  You can even have pizza delivered to avoid having to cook for yourself (it costs a bit more than home cooking, but saves time and luckily your Sim does not have to worry about fat content).

One of the first things to do when starting out is to select a job.  This can be done by reading the classifieds in the paper or searching the internet from your sim-computer.  Once a job is selected, your Sim will spend eight hours a day at his/her new job.  You don't have to direct your Sim at work (this is a game after all, and you probably spend enough time at work without having to do so in a game too); a car pool whisks him/her off to work, leaving you to enjoy some piece and quiet while you rearrange the furniture or redesign the home.

While at home, you can help your Sim work on becoming a better person.  To do this, you tell him/her to interact with various objects you can place in his/her home.  These interactions usually will help to increase your Sim's proficiency in one of the skill areas tracked by the game.  For example, sit your Sim down to a chess board to increase his logic skill or tell her to work on a painting to increase her creativity.  The more skilled your Sim becomes, the more successful he/she will be at work, the more money he/she will earn, and the more stuff you can buy for his/her home.

One of the more interesting sides of The Sims is the social interaction between your Sim and others in the neighborhood.  Sims are social beings and crave friendships and companionship.  Tell your Sim to interact with a visiting neighbor, and they'll become engrossed in conversation as evidenced by the little conversation bubbles which appear above their heads.  If they hit it off, they become closer friends.  If not, well don't expect to be invited to any of their parties any time soon.  If you build a close enough relationship with a Sim of the opposite sex, you can even propose marriage.  If the object of your Sim's affections accepts, he or she will move in with you and you'll now have a dual income Sim family.  

The Sims is one of those games that occasionally comes along that is radically different than most other games out there.  One might be at first skeptical about the concept, but after playing for a bit will find the game to be pretty fascinating.  It's fun to improve your Sim, expand your home, and enjoy the fruits of your Sim's labors.  There are a large variety of objects available for the homes, and you can download even more from the internet.  It's a chance to build your dream home, but with somebody else's budget.

One has to wonder about the long term appeal of the game, though.  Some people might become bored with it once the novelty wears off.  However, the game has inspired a very loyal following on the internet, so it definitely has a long-term appeal among many gamers.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 90%. It is definitely a unique game that is probably a lot different than anything you've played before.

System Requirements:  233 MHz Pentium II CPU;  32 MB RAM;  2 MB Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM; 300 MB Hard Drive Space;  Mouse.