The Sims: Vacation Review
The Sims franchise keeps rolling along. Originally released over two years ago, the game's popularity has shown no signs of waning, and the game has spawned four expansion packs. The latest of these is The Sims: Vacation, which allows players to take their sims away from the drudgery of daily life and let them relax and play for a while.
Once installed, Vacation works a lot like the Hot
Date expansion pack. Players call a cab from their phone and when it
arrives their sim is whisked away, although instead of being taken downtown
he/she is taken to Vacation Island. Vacation Island, as the name suggests,
is a vacation escape for sims. It is divided into three major sections
along three vacation themes: winter resorts, campgrounds, and beaches.
Each of these themed areas include three resorts, each geared to a different
budget level. The smaller resorts feature fewer activities and provide
very basic sleeping accommodations in the form of tents and igloos, but the
price is nice. The high-end resorts feature nicely appointed rooms and a
wealth of activities, but budget-conscious sims may find their funds quickly
evaporating.
Each
resort theme comes with its own set of new activities for sims to enjoy.
For example, in the winter resorts sims can enjoy snowboard halfpipes, making
snowmen, and getting into snowball fights. Most of these activities are
great for boosting your sims fun and social factors, but some can also be
rewarding. Carnival games reward sims with prize tickets that can be
cashed in for souvenirs. Sims who'd rather not spend a lot of money on
games to accumulate a lot of tickets can instead rent fishing rods or metal
detectors and dig up their own prizes. Of course, the wealthy and
well-to-do sims can avoid such tiresome pursuits by simply visiting the resort's
gift shop and buying a memento of their own. Once they return home, sims
can display their souvenirs in one of the new curio cabinet objects to remind
them of their trip and to share their memories with friends, or give them away
as gifts. Curiously, there is no "My friend went to Vacation Island
and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" souvenir to give to friends, but
maybe someone will create such an object in the future.
Speaking of friends, Vacation provides sims with plenty of opportunities to meet new people and work on their social skills. Lest their friends back home begin to feel forgotten, sims can purchase postcards and mail them to friends back home. This allows your sims to maintain their current relationships while they are off forging new ones. The focus of Vacation is fun and not so much dating as it was in Hot Date, but your sim can meet someone downtown and then call them later and invite them to join your sim on a little getaway.
