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Review

Maxis’ The Sims is about creating, managing, and controlling the lives of tiny computerized people who dwell in miniature homes. The game’s excellent music and sound effects, detailed scenery, cleverly animated characters, and equally clever writing go a long way toward fulfilling this intriguing premise. Yet though you can exercise a considerable amount of control over your sims’ behavior and lifestyles, The Sims’ actual gameplay is rather limited in some respects – either by odd inconsistencies or by actual restrictions placed on your actions. But to the game’s credit, the most objectionable thing about these occasional limits is how starkly they contrast with the otherwise tremendous freedom you have to lead your sims’ lives. At a glance, The Sims looks fairly good, if plain. The game itself takes place entirely within a small suburb just outside SimCity, and the streets, houses, and fixtures are all colorful and detailed – and all in a style consistent with the SimCity games. At first, the fully polygonal characters might look no better than the scenery. But if you leave them alone for even a few minutes, your sims will do all sorts of things; they’ll dance to the radio’s music, hunker down in front of the TV, or strike up a conversation. And when your sims start doing anything, they’ll do so with expressive animation that lends them a great deal of personality. When the music is playing, sims dance the Charleston together; TV-watching sims will lean forward and gaze intently at the screen or laugh out loud; and conversing sims will gesticulate appropriately as they chat, dish out insults, tell jokes, and more. Despite the fact that the actual dialogue among the game’s inhabitants is made to sound like complete gibberish, The Sims sounds superb overall. You can’t make out exactly what they’re saying, but you can easily infer their intentions from the tone of their voices. Sims will speak, then pause and clear their throats while they’re thinking of what to say next, yelp in pain when they cut themselves preparing a meal, or tell naughty limericks as jokes. Sims also interact with their surroundings, and everything from coffee makers to toilets sounds realistic, clear, and in some cases downright hilarious, like the slapstick noises of the TV cartoons. The Sims’ music is also excellent; even though much of it consists of vapid easy-listening, those unassuming tunes provide a perfect ironic contrast in the background against whatever havoc your sims are wreaking on center stage. Your sims can get into all sorts of trouble depending on what choices you make in their design and actions. You can begin the game with a pre-generated family of sims or create your own using a number of different 3D models, more of which are constantly being made available on Maxis’ web site. Each sim has five personality attributes (neat, outgoing, active, playful, and nice) which help determine the sim’s personality and how compatible he’ll be with other sims. Each sim also has six learnable skills (cooking, mechanical, charisma, body, logic, and creativity), which not only affect the way a sim interacts with his fellow sims but also how well he can make use of the objects in his house and how well he can perform his job. There are ten career paths available in The Sims; each is best served with a sim trained in a particular combination of the six skills. Once you find a job in the daily paper or online via a computer, your sim will be picked up by a carpool at a certain time each day. Getting a job is advisable, since it’s really the only way for your sims to bring in a steady income to buy more stuff. One of the most important things to do in The Sims is to buy things, whether appliances or furniture for the inside of your house, or walls, windows, or even a second story for the outside. For instance, a new mirror will let your sims increase their charisma, and a new stove will help them cook more satisfying meals. Each product you buy for your sims’ home has its own description; many of these are extremely funny, and it’s worth the effort to simply browse through them just to read some of the better gags. There’s a fair variety of products to choose from, and Maxis intends to continually provide new household goods for download. In addition, you’ll eventually want to expand the size of your house’s exterior, since a bigger house means more room for more sims and more stuff. You can do so quickly and easily with one of The Sims’ many user-friendly interfaces, the build mode, which lets you customize, add, or remove all sorts of new walls, floors, windows, doors and more with some clicks and drags. –Andrew Seyoon Park
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