Developer: Maxis
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Game Type: Simulation
Similar To: Jones in the Fast Lane; Little Computer
People; SimCity (except w/ people)
By: Rice
*Note: Screenshots courtesy of Gamespot.com, Game-Over.net, and myself.
Who said violence sells? Amist all the talks of Quake 3
and Unreal Tournament, I'd like to quietly point out that the top 2 selling games on the
chart are neither. Rather, the number two selling game currently is Disney's WHO WANTS TO
BE A MILLIONAIRE and rounding off at number one is... THE SIMS, from Maxis / Electronic
Arts.
No one is stranger to Maxis, because one time or another in your life, you must've played or heard of their games before. They go way back to the original SimCity, where my clunky 386 enabled me to build a metropolis rival to Gotham City. Maxis hasn't looked back since then, as they have released a plethora of titles using the "Sim" tag, including relative unknowns such as SimTower, SimAnt, SimEarth, and a few thousand others. However, their biggest hits has always come back to the SimCity series, which has since then evolved into SimCity 3000.
SimCity 3000 was Maxis's last game, prior to The Sims, which was well over a year ago. There was a lot of hype on The Sims around the community, with people whispering how Will Wright (founder and lead programmer) was working on some type of micromanagement game involving the ability to play God over people's lives. As the anticipation built up, so did the rumors. Some were wild, some were realistic, and now... we finally get to taste his vision in The Sims.
Before you go off spewing on the revolutionary aspects of this game, as it being a genre trailblazer of some sorts, I'd like to remind you that these games have existed for a long time even before Will Wright cooked up the concept of The Sims. Probably the most popular example would be the Japanese Tamagotchi. Not exactly humans, but the logic is similar in you control an animal's life. Also, on the Commadore 64 side there was this game called Little Computer People. I personaly had no experience with that title, but like Tamagotchi, you were able to control and manipulate living beings. Finally on the PC side, there was Jones in the Fast Lane, where you control the life of a person via a boardgame interface. Do you see where the obsession stems from, and why The Sims is the #1 selling game in America right now?
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Jones in the Fast Lane... now this is OG stuff |
Getting into the game itself, its interface is built around a neighborhood. Within this neighborhood there are 10 different lots in which you can start building your character in. Each lot is a saved game within itself, but a lot of the concepts of the game requires the involvement of neighbors, as I will explain later on. You have the choice of starting from scratch, by formulating your own family (or bachelor if you prefer simplicity), selecting their individual attributes, and then moving them into a lot where you can then choose to either use a pre-built house or flex your architectural muscles and build your own from the ground up.
The building tools is pretty straight forward, but has a surprising amount of flexability attached to it. This isn't exactly professional in the sense of blue prints and the entire works... but personally I think it's simple enough for 99% of the users in the world to grasp, and with enough depth so you can basically manipulate it to create your own dream house. Options such as walls, stairs, windows, doors, floor tiles, and wallpaper are all present. Each of them have their own sub-category, with different attributes and of course, different pricing. If you opt for the default wallpaper, it's pretty damn ugly, but it's free. If you'd like to spice up the environment a bit, you're gonna have to shell out the dough for it. Same goes for the windows, tiles, etc...
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Me, the architect. I feel talented. |
Once you're armed w/ a house, whether you put your own sweat & blood into it or you just bought a pre-built one, you're ready to put your Sim family into gear. Here's where the fun begins, because when you first start off, you'll want to experiment. You'll want to play around with buying furniture, re-arranging them so they're asthetically pleasing. You'll want to build a backyard, maybe plant some flowers. There's a virtual catelog to go through which has almost everything a house needs, including appliences, lighting, electronics, and tables. After you go on a spending spree (each family starts off w/ $20,000), you're going to find yourself really short on change, especially after the purchase of that pretty flat screen 40 inch TV in your living room. Alright you deadbeat, time to get a job.
There are a variety of ways to find a job. You can look in the newspaper, which is delivered by the paper boy every morning. The problem is that there is only one job opening per day, so if you don't like the first option, you gotta wait until the next day. What I recommend you do is to use some of that capital in the beginning and invest in a computer. With that you can find up to 3 jobs a day (monster.com baby, yeah). There are a total of 10 career paths, including medicine, military, accounting, and even burglary. Here's where my first gripe of The Sims come in.
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Looking for a job. If only I were this diligent in real life. |
The entire game is built on the foundation of money. Although the ad for The Sims claims you can choose to be a more social person, or what not, but in the end, everything runs a distant second to your need for money. You'll start of the game pretty jovially, experimenting with different aspects left and right. Then you realize you're running out of money, and eventually, you'll be focusing more on getting a raise than getting new friends or what not. To get raises, you'll need to raise certain attributes, including charisma, logic, mechanics, and a host of others. To do so, you'll need equipment, which you need money to buy!! It's like a big giant loop. When you get pretty far into the game, you'll be scurrying around trying to satisfy each requirement.
Another thing you need to advance in your job are family friends. It's a pretty good concept to begin w/, but because of the entire job/money loop I described above, you'll find yourself trying to make friends just so you can get a pay-raise. Basically, money and job becomes the single motivation behind every one of your actions in The Sims that takes the air out of the more ideal motivations. Ironically, maybe Will Wright intended the game to be this way, because isn't this is how our society is exactly like? Driven by work-a-holics that neglect their family to the point where being a marriage counselor is a profitable occupation. Money is truly the root of all evil.
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Creating my family/character. |