The Sims: Vacation Preview
Isn't it about time your sims had a break? Read our preview of Vacation and learn all about this exciting add-on.
There's no doubt about The Sims' worldwide popularity. The numbers don't lie--since the release of the first game in May 2000, Maxis' Sims franchise has sold well over 2.6 million units in North America alone, and significantly more if you consider Europe and Australia. Obviously, the notion of having to manage all aspects of a family, from building a dream house to finding the ideal career, has struck a chord among gamers from all walks of life. And as we've stated before, because The Sims emulates common, everyday life, it has an infinite amount of content from which to draw upon for add-ons and expansion packs. And in fact, there have been three expansion packs for the game already--Livin' Large, House Party, and Hot Date--each of which adds more objects to decorate your house with and expands the basic gameplay structure of the original The Sims a little bit.
The wildest tangent (and the best-selling, incidentally) of these expansion packs was Hot Date, as it was the first time that the game let your sims initiate and maintain a social life outside of the house--something fans of the series have been craving for a long time. The designers at Maxis are proud of what they accomplished with Hot Date. The ability to take your sims to a neutral downtown area that you could construct from the ground up, if you so wished, was a new direction for the Sims franchise. But admittedly, the designers wanted to do more--they wanted sims to have a more fulfilling life outside of their homes. Hot Date let you explore a downtown area of shops, restaurants, and boutiques, yes, but you could only take one sim and a date with you. And there was a clear separation between the downtown area and your sims' house, in that time stood still while you were out on your date and nothing that you did in downtown really affected your normal life back home.
This desire to improve upon the concepts introduced by Hot Date led to the creation of The Sims' fourth expansion pack, Vacation. Of course, like the other add-ons, Vacation will add hundreds of new household objects, including furniture and appliances, as well as new décor themes and new construction tools that make adding new floors to your existing house easier than before. But the expansion pack will focus on several new gameplay elements that will be truly unique to The Sims universe, the most important of which are new familial relationships between sims parents and their sims children and an entirely new resort area called Vacation Island. It's this latter addition that will be the biggest draw for fans of The Sims.
The Vacation Island area is a lot like Downtown from Hot Date. It's a separate area that your Sims will be able to go to for a little R&R by simply calling a cab, and like Downtown, Vacation Island is completely customizable. This destination resort--it's actually three resorts in one--has it all, including camping grounds, fishing spots, sandy beaches, and powdery snow, and you can build it and expand upon it as you see fit. You'll have an unlimited budget with which to build hotel resorts, erect equipment rental shacks, and even set up an entire carnival--complete with carnies--in order to keep your sims entertained.
Let's take a closer look at what's involved in taking a vacation.
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