Overview - Part I

Sim City started a revolution. Real life became fun and dealing with problems that annoy us in reality engrossed us for hours.

Planning an industrial zone and sorting out traffic problems were the order of the day, and if things didn't go to plan you could always cause a melt down in a nuclear reactor. The latest title in the range, The Sims, pushes the concept of controlling a simulation of real life even further. Instead of a city you control a person.

Either creating your own Sim or selecting one from a pre-generated set you must shape their life. Their personality (which you create at the beginning of the game by distributing points among certain values) will shape the things they do but you can help them out and gradually change them as the game progresses. For example, the demo that was shown at E3 where the game was previewed had a slobbish, bad tempered character who, through careful handling and gentle hints to find a job, became an astronaut with a wife and kids.

The open endedness of The Sims is rivalled only by the freedom it allows you. YOU set your own goals. If you want to create a master criminal then you can (or at least try to), or a well meaning nobody, or a pop star; you can do anything providing you make the right decisions.

Review II

To survive in the Sims world, (as long as you are not my wife) you need to get a job, increase your skills and friends for the big promotion, keep the Sims happy, and in the process try not to kill the poor person. The Sims lets you control the life of a person, choosing what he/she does, and who are his/her friends; their fate is at the click of your mouse.

The interface will take most gamers about ten minutes to get used to, but on the whole the system is quite intuitive. Everything is clearly labelled which makes everything a lot more pleasing, yet in hindsight it would have been easy for Maxis to neglect this area, yet instead they came through with flying colours. Bravo.

Although this game has great promise for originality and fun, just remember there are huge amounts of tediousness and pain (like in real life) that just trickle out. First of all you will need a house with all the essentials of life, Sims hate the gutter but the gutter's not so bad with a leather chair and a blanket. It is best to keep things small to start with, mainly saving your money to feed yourself until a job pops up.

Second you will need a healthy career to support your various needs, whether it's new furnishings, exotic food, greedy children - we all know they eat a lot. Don't they realise that costs money?

Third, you will want some friends to keep your Sims sane and it's wise to make time for your little creations to keep them spritely too. Fourth, get married, boot the job, develop an unhealthy alcohol addiction and basically bludge off the wife - a sloth-tastic way to live... Huh? Mr Couch Potato you say?