The Sims

Does needless micromanagement make you shudder in anticipation? Does the concept of being able to design your own dress make you want to roll over and giggle like a little girl? Then The Sims is for you. Otherwise, stay away from this game like the plague.

The Sims is the brainchild of Will Wright, the guy who brought you every Sims game since Sim City for the ol' computers. The Sims was originally a very novel idea- a game world that never ended, stopped, or gave you a break. The game was constantly being generated, and the thought of this (There werent MMORPGs back then) was so novel and original, people ate it up like they ate up MC Hammer.



The Sims is the basic idea that instead of managing a City, Town, or Village, you want to micromanage people. While this theoretically is a good idea, we have to remember that your typical gamercore people are people who forget to do such things as shave, go the bathroom, or even take regular baths, and such things as micromanaging other people is like giving a drunk man control of an AA meeting.

Of course, this doesnt help this from being the biggest Barbie Doll video game in history. Dressing, undressing, playing house, and getting "Jobs" are the apex of your Sims lives, and that could be considered the game inandof itself. Of course, like Barbie dolls, you have to buy countless expansion packs to keep your Sims happy, which each expansion pack lasts about 1 hour of funtime before you realize its rehashed code and concept that SHOULD have been in the first game.



For example, one of the expansion packs I purchased as an example is "The Sims Unleashed", a pet simulator for the Sims. Essentially, your Sims magically aquire the ability to purchase pets, train them, and, funnest of all, kill them (Actually, the only fun thing in this game is killing the pets). However, the thing only entertained me for about 30 minutes before I realized that it basically added an area to the worldmap (The "Mall" area), added a few NPCs, and.. well, that's it. $30 to do something that in a heavily modded game like Half Life or Doom would be undebateably free. Wow.

Another issue with this game is that it is very very shallow, as opposed to what it is made out to be. For example, its all nice and good that you can build a house, but what happens if you want wallpaper, roofing, or windows that are different than what's available? Your options:
1. Make it yourself, which takes forever
2. Download it off a free Sims site, which won't be what you were looking for, or
3. Pay for a subscription to a PAY Sims site, and then get it, which still might not be what you're looking for.

Overall, its just shallow. You can be as creative as you want with walls and doors, but there is a limit to how much you can make and how much you can design. After that, you're left to doing things like designing your own, which is boring.

Also, as another note, the Sims modification community is filled with two kinds of people:
1. The girls who are obsessed with crappy styles and anime, and
2. The perverts.

Believe it or not, you'll run across group 2 way before group 1. Why? Because the Sims nudeskins (Haha, when Google indexes this, I'll get soo many visitors) are wildly popular for some sick reason. Tricks to see inside showers abound as little 12 year olds trick the system in order to see some pixellated booty.

The other group deserves some attention for being really quite wierd. Instead of actually spending time doing something useful with their design skills, they spend time doing polygonal shading on a stupid poorly generated Sims model in order to make the Prom dress they wore last night.



Beginning to see a pattern? This isnt a guy's game, not by any standpoint. Obviously because most guy gamers would get very, very bored with the design functions, like I did, and focus more on "Having Fun" with the characters. "Having Fun" can be defined as the following things:
1. Catching them on fire
2. Locking them in a doorless room to cry and pee all over themselves
3. Not letting them clean up for a year until the accumulated level of cockroaches and vomit cover the floor
4. Constantly making a Sim sleep until he or she dies,
5. Locking them in a room until they pee on the floor and vomit, turning on the stove and making them sleep as their house slowly burns to the ground.

Overall, I give this game two stars. Its horrific for any guy gamer. For the "Deluxe Pack", you could buy an expansive, much funner game like Battlefield 1942, which takes up about the same amount of processing and video power, and is so much more of an enjoyable game. If you're a girl who likes micromanagement and designing dresses, go right ahead. Of course, the Sims 2 is out, so maybe that might be better... I'm sure not going to waste my money to find out.

2 star(s) out of 5

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