Review of The Sims

A simulation of everyday life. “How cool!” I thought when I heard of this new game from Maxis, the makers of SimCity. What an intriguing idea: create a human being, perhaps even modeled after yourself, and watch them live life right in front of your eyes.

I learned that most people who played it either loved it or hated it. I decided to give it a shot and bought it.

In the end, I loved it. Then I hated it.

• What it is

In The Sims, you create a virtual family, made up of people that you design. You decide what they look like, what kind of personality they have, where they live, what kind of stuff they have in their house, and what they do for a living. You guide your little sim-family in their day-to-day lives, although you can also leave them up to their own devices and just watch what they do.

• Why I loved it

The look and feel of this “game” is great. The attention to detail is incredible, and the sound effects are awesome. It’s entertaining just watching the sim sit their and turn on the TV, or pumping weights in the backyard.

I figured this game would be ideal to a role-player such as myself, since you are encouraged to use your imagination. Much of what occurs in the game is very vague in meaning, and you simply attach your own significance to it. For instance, when sims are talking to each other, their language is a garbled gibberish and picture balloons appear over their heads, indicating the flavor of what they are talking about. This quickly leads you to imagine all sorts of things about your sim, such as what kind of mood they are in, how they feel about other people, and what they like and don’t like.

The addiction factor was very high, especially in the beginning. By using your imagination, you begin to attach all kinds of significance to daily events, from conversations with other sims, to who comes to visit you and why, to strange phone calls and new job offers. Very quickly, the sim becomes a person in your mind, and I became very interested in what would come the next day.

• Why I hate this game

If you enjoy flushing toilets, you will love The Sims. After the initial rush of excitement wore off for me (after about a week), I realized that the vast bulk of this game involved guiding your sim through the most mundane inanities of daily life. You have to tell them to go to the bathroom, then to flush, THEN to wash their hands! Tell them to eat, to throw out the garbage, to then take the garbage outside. Make then bathe, sleep, go to work.

It gets old very quickly.

The larger, big picture stuff of life, such as careers, relationships, goals, etc. received the least amount of attention by the designers. The minutia got the lion’s share.

For a role-player, this gets very old. I realized that many people out there who love this game have never played a paper and pencil role-playing game before. If they had, they would realize that their is more to taking on a virtual life than flushing the toilet. Personally, I think this indicates that if some people gave RPGs half a chance, they would love them. As it is, The Sims is the closest they come, and they find they enjoy doing even the minor stuff.

The other thing I hate about it is that nothing random ever really happens. Sure, the odd phone call comes to tell you you’ve won some money, or a friend calls out of the blue, but this has more of the feel of Monopoly Chance cards than anything coming close to a simulation of life. Everything that happens to your Sim happens as a result of interaction with objects around the house. For instance, trying to fix a damaged TV can sometimes kill a sim through electrocution. That’s because that option is built into the TV object. However, it’s not built into most other objects, such as crossing the street, or getting out of the bathtub.

This creates a very mechanistic aspect to the game. It’s best to try and ignore this, but once again I kept thinking how superior RPGs are, and how they have spoiled this game for me. I know there is better out there.

• How this game could have been better

The Sims is a great idea, but very poorly executed. I wish the people at Maxis had played a few RPGs, they may have built it differently. What I wish they had done was:

1) Done away with the gibberish speech and had actual language. Short phrases to express what people are saying. Do away with the ambiguity. I know this would be hard, but considering how much graphic design attention went into the game, it’s not hard to imagine them coming up with a few thousand phrases to say. Hell, even the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire games do that.

2) Allow the sim to live outside the home. In The Sims, all of the action occurs within the home. I don’t know about you, but the bulk of my life occurs outside the home. The game would have been vastly improved if you could switch localities, control the sim at work, go out to a restaurant or a bar at night, visit friend’s houses. I think this is the single biggest weakness in the game, and all but ruins the experience. How can you have a life simulator for a character who never even leaves the home? (Okay, technically the sim does leave to go to work, but this is “downtime.” The sim simply disappears for the day and reappears with some money. But this should be the most interesting part of their day!)

3) Randomness. The simulation needs more randomness. Come on, life is messy. Not everything happens for a reason. Everything seemed just too tidy, from light bulbs bursting at fairly set intervals, to sinks clogging every 8th use or so, etc. I’m not even sure how to suggest changing this since it would involve rewriting the entire underlying structure of the game. I can just say everything seemed too mechanical to me.

• Was it worth the dough?

For me, I would say no. But like I said, many, many people love this game. I think role-playing gamers will be a little harsher on it. We know what “people simulators” are really like, since that is exactly what an RPG is, and The Sims doesn’t even come close. Those who have not tried RPGs will find the experience new and exciting.

I think everyone will enjoy this game for the first week or so. The premise is just so enticing. Those that can suspend their disbelief and allow themselves to let their imaginations run will enjoy this game for a long time.

• I think you will like this game if:

- You enjoy the other Sim titles - Enjoy very free-form gaming - Love stylish, well-designed computer interfaces

• I think you will hate this game if:

- You are more of a simulation RPG gamer, and expect raw detail.