Reviews

It's all about control, manipulation, observation and appreciating people's needs. Jay has no trouble with the first three, but like so many prime ministers, presidents and dictators, the fourth will be his downfall.

The Sims is for girls. Let's face it. The Sims is essentially the videogame version of some kind of bizarre soap opera, except here the player has some degree of control over what happens. Do you know of any girl who could resist running her own soap? Saying this though, the PC version of the Sims hasn't become the number one selling PC game by just cynically tapping into what girls want though, it has also successfully homed in on that girlie part of all us males as well - more males like to watch soaps than let on. We admit it, there's nothing better than spending half-an-hour sat in front of the TV watching EastEnders, absorbing the misery and blight of the fictitious characters on screen, as they go through hardship after hardship, making us feel better (or worse) about our own painful existences in the process.

We're assuming you all have at least a basic understanding of how the Sims works by now. The idea being to guide your family to success and happiness by instructing them to act on their desires and motivations and make all the right decisions for them along that way. Yup that's right, these people seemingly cannot, and invariably will not, think and act for themselves.

Annoyingly, you have to suggest to your Sims that they take a trip to the toilet when their bladder meter is hovering in the danger zone, as approximately 90% of the time they either can't be bothered, completely forget how to solve the problem, or just leave it too late. As entertaining as it is to watch one of your Sims wet themselves and cry from the shame whilst in mid-conversation with someone else, it gets tedious as soon as it stops being funny. Often you can see that they are aware that they need the toilet, as their little thought bubbles indicate this point, so if they are aware of such a potential disaster on the horizon, why is it that they very rarely act on their own?

A lot of it is down to how happy they are. Only when in a state of joy and all-round contentment with their lives can they actually be arsed to do certain things like get up and go to work, or go to the toilet without first being instructed to do so (don't worry though, you can always override their intention to go to the toilet with other tasks, forcing them to wet themselves, if you so desire). The thing is, when they're down, their lack of motivation to do anything makes them worse, resulting in a vicious and self-destructive catch 22 situation. So whilst they're miserable, it's up to you to make them get up in the mornings, socialise or take a bath. If left to their own devices they'll simply descend into ruin, as they and everything around them falls apart until they eventually die.

We do wish they would make a small effort to do certain little things on their own though. It's also annoying when the Sims display a lack of basic logic that would see them take the initiative to turn off loud electrical appliances like the TV or stereo before they go to bed. Whilst it's understandable for them to simply stomp about in a huff when another Sim is watching the TV, what truly baffles is when your Sim goes to bed, leaving the TV on himself and then immediately gets up angry at the noise, not bothering to turn it off, choosing instead to simply stand in baffled protest until you - yes YOU - react and manage to guide him through the process of switching whatever appliance it is, to its 'off' position, all-in-all, wasting about half-an-hour of in-game minutes in the process.

In-game minutes are precious! There's so much the Sims need to get done in the small amount of time that's available, that wasting these minutes is never an option. Yes, you may want to sit them in front of the computer and have them play games all day long in order to tragically mimic your own day-to-day existence, or have two Sims of opposing sexes strip down and share a hot tub together, but overuse won't get you anywhere. All that's needed is enough of everything to make sure those little motive bars have more green than red.

As well as tragic stupidity and uselessness, the Sims also regularly display acts of social behaviour that are a tad strange. The best less-than-comfortable-in-real-life situations we've seen are instances of in-bathroom toilet queuing, Mom sleeping in the same bed as her son and every Thomas, Richard and Harold wanting to engage you in conversation whilst you're having a bath. Imagine the real life agony of having next-door neighbours or dependant relatives, barge into your bathroom whilst you're scrubbing or wiping your underside, in order to discuss the latest day-to-day gossip! Often, the Sim on the receiving end of this inappropriate act will shoo the intruder out of the room, which you'd expect, but later this same Sim - despite knowing what it's like to have someone burst in on them - will commit the same crime.

Despite the Sims' pathetic nature, The Sims is still a fun and jolly experience. Having to take so much care of them makes you love them and makes you want to get them the best jobs and see them get married. It's very easy to waste away hours and hours of your life taking care of these desperately and painfully inadequate SIMpletons, before 'coming to' and realising you should be washing up/meeting your girlfriend/going to work?

For the PS2 version of the Sims, you start by playing the Get A Life mode, which rather than being open-ended, actually requires you to achieve certain goals via a cunningly weaved together succession of levels. Once you complete the Dream House sequence, you'll then be able to play the Play The Sims mode, where you can just mess about and lead your Sims to a life of wonder and happiness, or a life of pure cruelty and misery.

When you start the game, you'll have to create a Sim, using the merry selection of facial variations and clothing choices available to you. You can also define their personalities by distributing a set number of points between the available personality areas, making them active, playful and nice, or rude, boring and messy - it's your choice. Should this power be too bewildering, you can administer them with a star sign (Leo, Aries? etc) that already represents a pre-designed personality.

Also worthy of note is the way the Sims sound. A bizarrely funny aspect is their voices: They sometimes sound like German adult movie stars - or should we say, they sound like the characters the 'actors' play, after that crucial last-minute over-dubbing process has taken place.

When not worrying about your Sims' toiletry and social habits, you'll also be required to fix up the house. Providing your Sims are happily going to work and earning the necessary moolah, you can build extensions to the house or add superior items of furniture for your Sims to enjoy, not only replacing standard, boring chairs with upgraded, comfort-to-the-extreme versions, but also introducing altogether new luxury items into their immediate environment for them to use, such as pinball machines and pool tables.

As a PC game, the Sims worked, no doubt about that - clever marketing is not singularly responsible for making this the biggest-selling PC game to date! It sold because it's fun and clearly gives people what they want. But what about on PS2? Considering the differences in the way gamers have control over PS2 games and their slightly different gaming tastes, this could be an issue. We suspect many will tire of the repetitive and unnecessary tasks that have to be endured as part of this game, but we also suspect that many, many PS2 owners will - for varying periods of time - become totally immersed in this funny little world and thoroughly entertained by all the little quirks the game has to offer.

Controlling the proceedings really couldn't be simpler, with the normally daunting tasks of (a) figuring out all the things you can do and (b) memorising how to bring up the correct icons that enable you to do these things, being incredibly simple, with many things being obvious straight away. We won't describe which buttons do what here, as it'd take ages and all the info is in the instructions anyway.

We'd recommend the Sims to anyone. Anyone except those people who hate (and we mean really despise with a passion) normal soap operas and those people who can see themselves getting annoyed with the Sims characters' continual incompetence. However, everyone else will happily get their money's worth from this and will become totally immersed in these weird little characters' lives. There's so much to do, so much to witness, so many items to buy, so much joy to bring and so much experimental pain and misery to cause. How can you resist?