You've probably already heard of The Sims--it's the life-simulator strategy game that lets you create a household of miniature people, or "sims," then conduct their virtual lives, including feeding them, sending them to work, and having them meet and interact with other computer-controlled sims from the neighborhood. The Sims: Hot Date is the third expansion pack for The Sims and is easily the most interesting of the three. It's also the best expansion pack for The Sims yet. That's because Hot Date doesn't just do what the previous expansions did--that is, add more household items and a few new ways to use them. It also features the new downtown area, which lets you finally take your sims out of the house and into the exciting and turbulent world of dating.

Hot Date adds even more items with funny descriptions.

The previous two expansion packs for The Sims, Livin' Large and House Party, both added lots of new household items for you to buy for your sims' homes, which helped keep their domestic lives interesting. And as you might expect, Hot Date also adds plenty of new items that you can furnish your home with, and as in the previous games, you buy each of these using the game's easy-to-use shopping and building interface. Also as in the previous games, each of the new additions you can make to your virtual home is accompanied by an extremely funny description. What's more, Hot Date actually lets you use some items--ones that your sims either buy or make by hand--as gifts to give to other sims.

But Hot Date isn't just about items; it also features a number of real improvements to The Sims' already-interesting social system. As in the original game, sims communicate with each other in "simlish," an expressive but almost completely unintelligible gibberish language, but Hot Date features new simlish phrases and new character voices. More importantly, Hot Date features an expanded set of social options; instead of just greeting a new sim, you can choose to wave at it from a distance or walk up to it and shake hands. Instead of just giving your neighbor a hug, you can choose whether or not you want your hug to be a friendly gesture or a more romantic embrace. Making this sort of decision is especially important for your sim if it's on a date, since choosing an inappropriate thing to say or do can make your sim's date get up and walk out.

You can become more interesting...with the right magazine.

To help your sims be more compatible with their dream dates, Hot Date features an entirely new attribute for your sims: interests. Your sims can read magazines to increase their knowledge in areas like money, the weather, technology, and the '60s; the more your sim knows about a topic that its date is interested in, the better they'll get along. If your sim gets along well enough with its date, the two can get married, and your sim's fiancé (or fiancée) will move into your house and become a regular sim under your control. But getting far enough into a relationship to get married takes time, and Hot Date includes a new two-part relationship meter to help indicate how well your courtship is coming along: a "current" relationship meter and a long-term meter. You'll need to keep your date happy in both the short and long term to get that far. If you've played House Party, you'll know that it was difficult to fit a relationship with a neighbor into a schedule that already included a career and a sim's own basic needs of eating, resting, and entertainment. Managing all of those things together with a steady dating schedule would have been impossible to do if it weren't for Hot Date's new downtown feature.