I am a serious Sims addict. I have every expansion pack, including the deluxe version for PC. Imagine my excitement to see that there was to be a version of The Sims on PlayStation2! I wondered what would be different about the console version of this phenomenon. The first news I heard about the game was that there was to be more goal-oriented game play, which was an interesting concept; given that The Sims is more of an ongoing maintenance of a family simulation.
If you’ve never played The Sims before, here’s the low-down: This is a game about creating your own character, called a “Sim,” with its own look (skin) and personality, where your main goal is to live the perfect life by getting a job to make money (actually, “Simoleons”) that helps you buy new furniture and other items for your house, or remodel the house altogether. You have to take care of your own needs too, from hunger and social life to bladder control. Speaking of social life, you make friends by interacting with them, and sometimes your job requires you to make new friends in order to earn promotions, which means more Simoleons for you to spend on yourself! You have to also upkeep your friendships by seeing them every so often since your friendships will fade over time. It’s like living in the perfect world if you make sure everything is taken care of!
If you haven’t played The Sims before, this will be a totally new cool thing for you to experience life through the eyes of a computer-generated person. But if you have played The Sims before, it may seem like just the same old thing.
To be fair, I definitely feel that The Sims for PS2 made some strides in making the game more playable on a console. The “Get a Life” game is more of a storyline, where you begin by living at your mom’s house with no job, and arguably no life. This time, rather than wasting your time away figuring out the décor of your living room, you have to get a job, get promoted, buy some new furniture, make some friends, etc. in order to move out of your mom’s house, or your lame roommate’s ugly house, etc. etc. However, I couldn’t help feeling like this game was a lot more limited than its PC counterpart.
As many Sims aficionados know, there are numerous sites out there with objects, skins, and even whole houses to download to your heart’s content. There’s even ways to make objects of your own (where do you think these other objects come from?) and create your own unique style. The Sims for PS2 is very limited in this aspect. There’s only a limited set of objects and skins, which doesn’t help if you are used to playing on the PC with your hundreds (or thousands) of downloaded objects and skins. However, if you’ve never played The Sims before, it will be a huge novelty for you to be able to create a person and build your own house, design your own rooms, etc.
The interface for creating a Sim is slightly different, to adjust for the fact that you don’t have a mouse to click on things, but it’s basically the same deal. However, I feel that the mouse clicking interface is much easier to use for this kind of game. Imagine having to scroll through dozens of objects with the directional button rather than just being able to click on one that you want. Also, building is kind of awkward, especially in putting up walls and wallpaper. It just doesn’t seem as intuitive as it should. It’s kind of annoying having to remember which button to push to get what kind of information. I also don’t like the way the camera angles work – though initially I thought it was cool, it really doesn’t have the full range of motion I’d like it to have. Also while the 3D shadows are nice, the graphic quality is not very impressive – stuff on my PC looks much better than this. It may also have to do with the limitations of my TV screen resolution and quality, however.
Aside from the interface issues and not the best graphics, the best new thing about the game is that you do have goals, and with these goals you unlock new objects and new multiplayer “vs.” games. For example, you have the Frat House where you compete against another player to make as many friends as possible within a limited time, where you not only socialize to gain friends, you also have the ability to undermine the opponent’s efforts by spreading nasty rumors. The split-screen is diagonal, rather than top-bottom or left-right, which is a little strange, but not so hard to get used to.
If you want to try something new, try renting the game first to get a feel for it. You’ll find it is very different from the PC version, but you might enjoy the novelty of playing it on the console with goals in mind.
