The Sims
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Maxis
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"Sims also interact with their surroundings, and everything from coffee makers to toilets sounds realistic, clear, and in some cases downright hilarious, like the slapstick noises of the TV cartoons." - Andrew Seyoon Park, GameSpot Review
The Sims is a remarkable game for a number of reasons: It's extremely easy to play, it's completely nonviolent, and it's remarkably addictive. The game lets you create your own virtual family of computerized people, or "sims," customize each of their personalities, and lead them on whatever sort of lives you wish them to have. It's a formula that's proven to be remarkably addictive and to have extremely broad appeal, as evidenced by its consistently high sales numbers for the year. But The Sims isn't just fun; it's also funny, especially because of its expressive (though incoherent) gibberish language and its wide array of hilarious sound effects.
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Perhaps the game's developer, Maxis, decided to make The Sims' language gibberish (instead of English) so the game wouldn't exclude speakers of other languages, or perhaps the sims speak gibberish to suggest that the topics of their conversations are unimportant and superficial, or perhaps it's a combination of both. Whatever the case, the sims' gibberish speech is surprisingly appropriate for the game, and despite being incoherent, it manages to express your sims' emotional state, whether they are depressed because they are so lonely, they are terrified of the gas fire in the kitchen, or they are telling a naughty limerick to a fellow sim or laughing at what they saw on TV.
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When you play The Sims, you don't just hear your sims' unintelligible babbling; you also hear each of the sound effects from the game's various events and from the items you can purchase for your sims' use. Each of these sound effects is clear and believable, and many of them are extremely funny. You can amuse your bored sims by purchasing them a TV set that will play drama, horror, action, or cartoons. And though you can't actually see what is taking place onscreen, you can hear each TV show and commercial, delivered with absolute conviction, but in the same sort of gibberish that your sims utter. You can also entertain your sims by purchasing them a radio or stereo set that plays four types of music - and many of these songs feature equally funny gibberish lyrics. The game's excellent sound effects and its straight-faced presentation of sims' gibberish as an actual language adds immensely to the game's already quirky sense of humor.
