the sims Preview

Sim City games are great. Maxis, their developer know they are great. What's strange, is their insistence on churning out crappy spin-offs from the game. SimIsle, anyone? However, none of these had seven years worth of work gone into them, from Maxis game guru, Will Wright. Seven years is a long time in anyone's book, but it looks like it's paid off. The Sims could well be the smash hit of the year.
The release date for The Sims is February, so you can be pretty much assured the game is almost done. Unless The Sims falls into Daikatana development hell...

But enough of all this waffle, what on earth is the game about? This is where it gets interesting. You are put in charge of a family of Sims (those little guys in the Sim games) and lead them through their lives. A domestic simulator, if you will. It's your influence on the family that can make or break their existence. Friendships can be made and lost, you can attempt to woo a potential partner or simply laze around playing computer games all day. The latter one is TVG's personal choice.
Should you be a nasty type of person, you can spice up the action with a family crisis, such as one of your Sims committing adultery. Which should make things a little more interesting, to say the least.

A hell of a lot of work has gone into the way the Sims react to certain situations, trying to mimic real life. There are Sims who are far more interested about themselves than hearing what others have to say, for instance. It's this segment of the game that will be the most important. If the Sims do things that seem unrealistic, the whole game is going to fall to pieces. From what we've seen, Mr. Wright has made damn sure this doesn't happen.

For those of you budding interior designers, there is even a bit of Changing Rooms can paint the walls, add an extension and add a nice lava lamp as a finishing touch. If your Sims live in a nice, comfortable home, it can greatly affect their happiness. Let's face it, there aren't many people who like to live in dirty, urine stained hovels. Apart from university students.

A much touted feature of the game is customisation. Add your own wallpaper styles, photos (and if you're really sad) Quake skins. EA is promising skins of all sorts of people, including Will Wright himself, for those that pre-order the game from ebworld.com. When starting a new game, you can also decide the personality of your family. This could mean playing through a version of yourself. Which would be very weird.
It's these little features that add the icing to what looks like a delicious gaming cake. It's original, it's fascinating and it should be darned fun too. Mmmmm...cake.

Chris Lewis