Review III

Once you have your house and a good source of income plus all the other necessities, you should be right until the Stork comes along and, if you thought the Sims were bad, try the Baby Sims. That's the Sims life for you; when you think you have it all worked out between friends and work and the balance is perfect, life throws you a curve ball and bringing up an infant is a most harrowing experience.

First burglars, then getting sacked, then fires, depression and the bundle of joy (supposedly so). What's next? Chipmunks taking over the grain industry and adding a clever amount of anit-freeze? Sheesh... Now you have to work, look after the little thing and all the while you are running hot on coffee, adrenaline, and four hours sleep in the past 72. You've got a bad hygiene problem, an angry wife and a house which looks like a pig pen.

So life in the glasshouse isn't always as good as it looks, but it is still great for the power trip, with an enormous amount of control available. With endless hours of fun and even more hours of pain, I guess you can have it all in the digital world. This is an outlandish foray into uncharted waters. It provokes feelings and emotions never felt in a computer before and as a result is one of the most addictive games ever.

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?