The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I Wasn't Planning to Buy This

At the beginning of the week, I didn't plan to buy The Sims. I didn't even know it had come out, to be honest. All of a sudden, I started seeing it mentioned on computer game sites with phrases like "The best sim game yet!"

I couldn't find any demos to download, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy the game based on the screenshots and descriptions of gameplay. I don't usually do that; I prefer to play something before I buy it. I trust Maxis to make really great sim games, though, and this one sounded unique. It is.

The strangest computer RPG ever

What's strange about it is that everything that happens in it is do astonishingly mundane. You're playing the part of normal families living in a suburb. In probably 50 or 60 hours of play, there has been no combat (although the rules manual says that if relations really deteriorate between two "sims" that combat can occur but that it's not something to shoot for).

As in all of Maxis' sim games, there's no real winning condition. Your sims try to get better jobs, better grades, and make friends. Sims can have romances, make enemies, get married, have children, and lose their jobs. If you're sloppy and leave food out for a long time, it draws flies. Burglars can come in at night and steal the stuff you've worked so hard to buy, and fires can start and can wipe out your home and kill your sims if they aren't extinguished.

Not since a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign I was in nearly a decade ago have I played a character with the goal of getting enough money to buy some better furnishings. That's exactly what I find myself doing in The Sims.

The virtual voyeur

Playing the game is realy easy and fairly intuitive. Start off with the tutuorial, which will introduce you to Bob and Betty Newbie, who live in the crummiest house in the neighborhood. Seriously, it's nothing but a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. You can only play one family at a time, but every other family in the neighborhood becomes a computer-controlled character who acts like their personality profile indicates. I'll get to that in a second. While playing the game, you switch between characters and tell them what to do, like clean up a mess, eat, bathe, or talk to other sims. Your goal is to keep your sims happy, which means they have to interact with other sims, stay fed, stay clean, use the bathroom regularly, etc., etc. Fortunately, they do have some degree of free will, so they won't die if left to their own devices, they just won't live well.

Your sims will need jobs in order to pay bills and keep food in the house. You always start off at the bottom of the ladder, but if you maintain a good attitude and work on your skills, you can advance quickly. You usually have a good idea of exactly what you need to do to get your skills increased. Often, it requires special equipment. At the very least, you'll need a bookcase and a mirror (to study cooking or repair and to practice your public speaking, respectively).

If two sims fall in love, they may be able to get married. Married sims can sometimes gain the opportunity to have a baby. Single sims or same-sex couples can adopt. (The sims apparently live in a state where same-sex marriage is still illegal.) If you can keep the baby for three days, it will "mature" into a child. Taking care of a baby is one of the hardest things you can do in The Sims, much like in real life. Babies need fed every few hours, then sung back to sleep. This means there has to be a sim in the house at all times. Careful time management is important, because sims don't get maternity or paternity leave and if they miss work two days in a row, they lose their jobs and have to start a new one at the bottom of the ladder later. During those three days, your sims will become cranky and exhausted as they devote nearly all their time to taking care of the little one. Children are slightly less work to maintain, although they can only make snacks for themselves, not full meals.

Your friends drag you down

There are a few flaws with the game play. The weirdest one I find is that inviting your friends over to hang out actually drags down your fun meter. You have to do something with your friends to have fun, not just talk with them. Talking with them increases your social rating, but decreases your fun rating. I attribute this to computer programmers being introverts.

Your sims don't age. Once a baby grows into a child, it's always a child. I'd like to see future versions of the game incorporate aging so that you could track a family down through the years. The sim world right now is just one day after another in a timeless stasis.

The final weird quirk of the game is that even if you intend for people to start off as a married couple, they don't. Two people living in the same house need to work on their friendship, fall in love, and get married. Something bizarre but kind of related is that sims seem to be ardently bisexual. A sim can fall in love with sims of either sex. A simple toggle choice during family creation would fix both problems.

Online support

Registers users of The Sims can get online patches and add-ons at the website. New furnishings, new houses, and even new sim appearances are available, with new stuff added all the time. Plans are in the works to open up part of the website to allow players to upload their sims to the website to be downloaded by others. As I'm writing this, that feature hasn't been implemented yet.

The story of my life

After playing the Newbie family for a few minutes, I got bored and started my own sim, Bob Gorilla. Bob was a bachelor. After the other people in the neighborhood visited and he met and talked with them, he found himself drawn to both Betty Newbie and Bella Goth, the only two women in the neighborhood at the time. Ultimately, he proposed to Betty and she left Bob Newbie (who seems to be taking it pretty well) and married Bob Gorilla. They've had a son, Jack, who is friends with the only other child in the neighborhood, Cassandra Goth. Bob Gorilla is currently a councilman in Sim City, and Betty Gorilla lost her job as a medical technician while she was taking care of infant Jack, but found a new career afterwards. She's now a bit player in films and television.

Other families in the neighborhood include Bob Newbie, now single and working as a cop, a pair of lesbians, Reg Black another bachelor who is following the "Crime" career path, and the Goths--the other starting sims--who live in a creepy Addams Family-type house complete with a graveyard out back.

Gameplay tips

After you find a job, use your phone to call a maid. The maid will cost you money, but save valuable time cleaning. Time's tight enough without worrying about cleaning up your own messes.

When selecting furnishings, try to get a tub instead of a shower. You can increase your comfort and hygiene at the same time. Likewise, get a comfy chair and put your TV and bookshelf near it so that you can increase your comfort while you read, study, or watch TV. Studying is especially important: build your cooking skill so that it will take you less time to make your meals.

Do not forget to buy and set an alarm clock. You'll still be rushing around before work to get everything done, but at least you won't have to manually try to wake up each and every sim in the house.

The most addictive sim game ever

That about sums it all up. It's easy to get lost in the game. I've had to rush to get to work on time because of this game, something that not even Roller Coaster Tycoon could do.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

The Sims
Author: Maxis Category: Computer Simulation Company/Publisher: Maxis Line: Sim Cost: $40.00 US Page count: n/a ISBN: 0-7845-2066-6 Playtest Review by Kevin Mowery on 02/15/00. Genre tags: Modern_day	I Wasn't Planning to Buy This At the beginning of the week, I didn't plan to buy The Sims. I didn't even know it had come out, to be honest. All of a sudden, I started seeing it mentioned on computer game sites with phrases like "The best sim game yet!" I couldn't find any demos to download, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy the game based on the screenshots and descriptions of gameplay. I don't usually do that; I prefer to play something before I buy it. I trust Maxis to make really great sim games, though, and this one sounded unique. It is. The strangest computer RPG ever What's strange about it is that everything that happens in it is do astonishingly mundane. You're playing the part of normal families living in a suburb. In probably 50 or 60 hours of play, there has been no combat (although the rules manual says that if relations really deteriorate between two "sims" that combat can occur but that it's not something to shoot for). As in all of Maxis' sim games, there's no real winning condition. Your sims try to get better jobs, better grades, and make friends. Sims can have romances, make enemies, get married, have children, and lose their jobs. If you're sloppy and leave food out for a long time, it draws flies. Burglars can come in at night and steal the stuff you've worked so hard to buy, and fires can start and can wipe out your home and kill your sims if they aren't extinguished. Not since a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign I was in nearly a decade ago have I played a character with the goal of getting enough money to buy some better furnishings. That's exactly what I find myself doing in The Sims. The virtual voyeur Playing the game is realy easy and fairly intuitive. Start off with the tutuorial, which will introduce you to Bob and Betty Newbie, who live in the crummiest house in the neighborhood. Seriously, it's nothing but a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. You can only play one family at a time, but every other family in the neighborhood becomes a computer-controlled character who acts like their personality profile indicates. I'll get to that in a second. While playing the game, you switch between characters and tell them what to do, like clean up a mess, eat, bathe, or talk to other sims. Your goal is to keep your sims happy, which means they have to interact with other sims, stay fed, stay clean, use the bathroom regularly, etc., etc. Fortunately, they do have some degree of free will, so they won't die if left to their own devices, they just won't live well. Your sims will need jobs in order to pay bills and keep food in the house. You always start off at the bottom of the ladder, but if you maintain a good attitude and work on your skills, you can advance quickly. You usually have a good idea of exactly what you need to do to get your skills increased. Often, it requires special equipment. At the very least, you'll need a bookcase and a mirror (to study cooking or repair and to practice your public speaking, respectively). If two sims fall in love, they may be able to get married. Married sims can sometimes gain the opportunity to have a baby. Single sims or same-sex couples can adopt. (The sims apparently live in a state where same-sex marriage is still illegal.) If you can keep the baby for three days, it will "mature" into a child. Taking care of a baby is one of the hardest things you can do in The Sims, much like in real life. Babies need fed every few hours, then sung back to sleep. This means there has to be a sim in the house at all times. Careful time management is important, because sims don't get maternity or paternity leave and if they miss work two days in a row, they lose their jobs and have to start a new one at the bottom of the ladder later. During those three days, your sims will become cranky and exhausted as they devote nearly all their time to taking care of the little one. Children are slightly less work to maintain, although they can only make snacks for themselves, not full meals. Your friends drag you down There are a few flaws with the game play. The weirdest one I find is that inviting your friends over to hang out actually drags down your fun meter. You have to do something with your friends to have fun, not just talk with them. Talking with them increases your social rating, but decreases your fun rating. I attribute this to computer programmers being introverts. Your sims don't age. Once a baby grows into a child, it's always a child. I'd like to see future versions of the game incorporate aging so that you could track a family down through the years. The sim world right now is just one day after another in a timeless stasis. The final weird quirk of the game is that even if you intend for people to start off as a married couple, they don't. Two people living in the same house need to work on their friendship, fall in love, and get married. Something bizarre but kind of related is that sims seem to be ardently bisexual. A sim can fall in love with sims of either sex. A simple toggle choice during family creation would fix both problems. Online support Registers users of The Sims can get online patches and add-ons at the website. New furnishings, new houses, and even new sim appearances are available, with new stuff added all the time. Plans are in the works to open up part of the website to allow players to upload their sims to the website to be downloaded by others. As I'm writing this, that feature hasn't been implemented yet. The story of my life After playing the Newbie family for a few minutes, I got bored and started my own sim, Bob Gorilla. Bob was a bachelor. After the other people in the neighborhood visited and he met and talked with them, he found himself drawn to both Betty Newbie and Bella Goth, the only two women in the neighborhood at the time. Ultimately, he proposed to Betty and she left Bob Newbie (who seems to be taking it pretty well) and married Bob Gorilla. They've had a son, Jack, who is friends with the only other child in the neighborhood, Cassandra Goth. Bob Gorilla is currently a councilman in Sim City, and Betty Gorilla lost her job as a medical technician while she was taking care of infant Jack, but found a new career afterwards. She's now a bit player in films and television. Other families in the neighborhood include Bob Newbie, now single and working as a cop, a pair of lesbians, Reg Black another bachelor who is following the "Crime" career path, and the Goths--the other starting sims--who live in a creepy Addams Family-type house complete with a graveyard out back. Gameplay tips After you find a job, use your phone to call a maid. The maid will cost you money, but save valuable time cleaning. Time's tight enough without worrying about cleaning up your own messes. When selecting furnishings, try to get a tub instead of a shower. You can increase your comfort and hygiene at the same time. Likewise, get a comfy chair and put your TV and bookshelf near it so that you can increase your comfort while you read, study, or watch TV. Studying is especially important: build your cooking skill so that it will take you less time to make your meals. Do not forget to buy and set an alarm clock. You'll still be rushing around before work to get everything done, but at least you won't have to manually try to wake up each and every sim in the house. The most addictive sim game ever That about sums it all up. It's easy to get lost in the game. I've had to rush to get to work on time because of this game, something that not even Roller Coaster Tycoon could do. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)