| As I rush every morning to get a decent meal and make sure I am neat and clean for my third week on my most recent job, I am reminded why I stay up partying so late. Lots of women over, TV and radio louder than loud can be, and garbage covering my once-neat carpet. As my carpool arrives I rush out the door, throwing my coffee mug on the floor and nearly tripping over the pile of newspapers on my walkway. Walking to the car I see Bob, whom I had recently got into a pushing match with. I get in the car and begin to drive down the street. That’s when I see her: Bella, the women I have been trying to woo for the past month. As the car turns the corner, I am off to work; who knows what will happen to my peaceful neighborhood while I am away at the office…
Sound like your life? Hectic to no extent, and oh-so-much fun. Unless you really do want to lose your job, I suggest you don’t follow in the experiences of our friend as he describes his morning routine. You don’t have to throw smashing parties every night, or portray yourself as a good guy to get the girl when the world you live in is completely fantasy. Welcome to the world of The Sims. What a crazy world it is.
Will Wright’s latest brainstorm has turned into something much more than a people simulator. Sure, on the box the company line is "The People Simulator from the Creator of Sim City" but this game will not only simulate the computer people, it will draw you so far into the game that all sense of time and material necessities will be lost.
Having created myself (using some of the bonus skins received from EB World), and buying the cheapest house on the block, I then proceeded to fiddle around with the game. For those of your awaiting Black and White for its promise of Godlike power, take a detour and give The Sims a try. You have full control of your simulated people, or you can let then live out their lives as they see fit. Sometimes that isn’t a good idea as they get caught up in other things and will miss work, start their kitchen on fire, or even die.
The interface of The Sims shows how much Maxis cares for us. If you thought SimCity 3000’s interface destroyed SC2000’s then The Sims interface smacks them both down into submission. With one circle central hub located in the lower left-hand corner, you have full control of selecting the mode (more on these later), seeing the time, or speeding the game up into llama-like speeds. Like all games in the Sim series, if you don’t know what a button does there is sure to be a rollover to explain just what you are about to do. When working in the Build and Buy modes, the rollovers are particularly helpful.
The Buy and Build modes are where the real fun starts. When you are in Live mode, everything is at normal pace (most of the time) and your Sims will use everything at their disposal to live their precious little lives through. When switched into Build mode, the game pauses and you are free to modify, add or remove any of the structural elements to the house you live in. Add rooms, enclose your yard or just repaint your walls, this is where it gets done. Need to replant that neglected garden? Use the planting tool and weed out those old plants.
Switching to the Buy mode gives you a chance to furnish your dream house. For the arcade fanatic, a pinball machine and a slot machine are available. For the kid in your heart, buy a train set. Like to have a pet even though the game doesn’t have real animals? Buy a fish tank. Just make sure you clean it, or it’s Green Slime City for the fishes. Buy mode gives you a chance to go out with Monopoly money and shop till you drop, or run out of cash. Just remember that you need to have enough bathrooms or you will see your future military captain taking a tinkle on the bedroom floor, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
It won’t matter how much nice stuff you give to your Sims; if they are not satisfied with what they are getting or need, they will sink into a deep depression. This can be seen under the mood section of the Live Mode interface. Visual queues and the red and green bars will tell you when your Sim needs to eat, use the restroom, shower, have fun, and sleep. If you don’t pay attention to these, and your Sim gets a full red bar, then it’s six feet under for them. Once your Sim sinks into a depression s/he will not want to do much of anything. If they sink further into depression, then friends will mourn their untimely death and you will choose how the other Sims will remember that individual. From a tombstone to an urn on the end table, you will always be remembered.
Hopefully you are not the sick and demented fool who furnishes the house without a fridge, but there will always be people who will see this opportunity to torture the little ones.
To touch on the basic elements of the game, the graphics and sound will prove that an almost perfect game can only get better. The game doesn’t support any acceleration at all, due to the fact the game is entirely sprite and texture based. This also makes the game a system hog. Even on my Pentium III 500 with 128 Megs of RAM I still experienced some slowdown; nothing too serious, just little hiccups while scrolling. The soundtrack is very well done and blends well with the sound effects from everything. Even if you don’t like the soundtrack there is a way to make the game read your MP3s instead of the ones off of the CD.
In the end, this game has no major flaws except for some weird collision detection and unusual walking patterns, but you will be having so much fun playing this game that it won’t matter. This game has stolen days from me, and I will keep playing trying to outsmart it and get them back. The Sims is the first game this year that must be seriously considered for Game of the Year, and if everything goes well we will be playing this game well into next year. | 
