The Sims' extreme makeover goes right down to the DNA
By DWIGHT N. ODELIUS
For The Chronicle
When you really think about it, The Sims should never have been made.
For one, it wasn't aimed specifically at pasty 16-year-olds without girlfriends, the major market at the time. No one got to shoot anything. Nothing blew up. The graphics weren't even very good.
Worse still, the game amounted to nothing more than micromanagement of tiny simulated people — Sims — and watching them in their tiny simulated house living their tiny simulated lives. They went to work, came home, learned stuff, messed up the kitchen, forgot to pay their bills and fell in love with each other.
And gamers the world over ate it up. The Sims bridged the gender gap and drew more people into the world of gaming than any PC title before it. It has been translated into 17 languages and sold more copies than any PC game ever.
Now, after four years and seven expansion packs, The Sims franchise has reached its end. The replacement, The Sims 2, is a souped-up version with slick 3-D graphics, a revamped character creation system and a reconceptualized Sim life, one more involving than ever.
Of course, you still micromanage the daily lives of your Sim family, telling them when to eat, sleep and shower. You still have to get them off to work in a good mood, encourage them to interact with each other and deal with the chaos of their lives.
The basic gameplay may be the same, but the overall experience has changed. Sims now have traits, aspirations and memories that make them seem all the more real.
The game's robust character-creation system lets players tweak nearly every detail of a Sim's appearance and create an identity. The system makes possible the game's most significant feature: Sims now have a genetic makeup they can pass on.
When Sims procreate, they pass along behavioral traits as well as family resemblance. Parent Sims must take care of child Sims until they reach maturity and can move out. All Sims die, leaving only a legacy of descendants as testament to their tiny little lives.
It's all very entertaining and engaging, although veteran players may find that the game suffers slightly without the expansion packs to which we've all grown accustomed. Although no expansions have been announced yet, it's a pretty sure bet that they're on their way.
HoustonChronicle.com - At Home
For The Chronicle
When you really think about it, The Sims should never have been made.
For one, it wasn't aimed specifically at pasty 16-year-olds without girlfriends, the major market at the time. No one got to shoot anything. Nothing blew up. The graphics weren't even very good.
Worse still, the game amounted to nothing more than micromanagement of tiny simulated people — Sims — and watching them in their tiny simulated house living their tiny simulated lives. They went to work, came home, learned stuff, messed up the kitchen, forgot to pay their bills and fell in love with each other.
And gamers the world over ate it up. The Sims bridged the gender gap and drew more people into the world of gaming than any PC title before it. It has been translated into 17 languages and sold more copies than any PC game ever.
Now, after four years and seven expansion packs, The Sims franchise has reached its end. The replacement, The Sims 2, is a souped-up version with slick 3-D graphics, a revamped character creation system and a reconceptualized Sim life, one more involving than ever.
Of course, you still micromanage the daily lives of your Sim family, telling them when to eat, sleep and shower. You still have to get them off to work in a good mood, encourage them to interact with each other and deal with the chaos of their lives.
The basic gameplay may be the same, but the overall experience has changed. Sims now have traits, aspirations and memories that make them seem all the more real.
The game's robust character-creation system lets players tweak nearly every detail of a Sim's appearance and create an identity. The system makes possible the game's most significant feature: Sims now have a genetic makeup they can pass on.
When Sims procreate, they pass along behavioral traits as well as family resemblance. Parent Sims must take care of child Sims until they reach maturity and can move out. All Sims die, leaving only a legacy of descendants as testament to their tiny little lives.
It's all very entertaining and engaging, although veteran players may find that the game suffers slightly without the expansion packs to which we've all grown accustomed. Although no expansions have been announced yet, it's a pretty sure bet that they're on their way.
HoustonChronicle.com - At Home
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