The URBZ: Sims in the City Hands-On

We got a chance to play around with a PlayStation 2 build of The URBZ, Electronic Arts' upcoming spin-off of its extremely successful Sims franchise, which will put players in inner-city streets, trying to build a good rap. The game allows players to start off in any of the game's various neighborhoods, and from there, by impressing the right people by doing the right things, they'll be able to expand their reach deeper into the city and eventually become the person who everyone wants to meet, if not be. We checked out the game and tried one of its "microgames," which is a sushi-making challenge, and also tested one of the ways in which the game will incorporate EyeToy support.

Let's talk about the EyeToy while we're at it. The camera device can be used, at the moment, to snap pictures of oneself (or whomever) and superimpose that person over key parts of town. For instance, we found ourselves in the neighborhood of a particular character whose face was plastered all over a big billboard--so we used the EyeToy to take a snapshot and replace the image with one of us. Not necessarily an improvement, but hey, it's a pretty cool feature. Apparently, you'll gain the ability to customize parts of town like that only after you conquer those specific areas. The developers, incidentally, are also looking at other ways of incorporating the EyeToy into the game, such as using it in some of the minigames; this is still up for consideration, however.

The game sports a good look to it, with its fully 3D environments, stylized characters, and nicely done animations and lighting effects. Its microgames seem like they could be pretty fun, too. The sushi game required us to enter a sequence of button presses in order to compose beautiful, tasty sushi items before a conveyor belt dumped the ingredients on the floor. In addition to the rhythm/timing-based gameplay, we were also told that we'd need to account for traditional Sims-style motives, such as hygiene; so these microgames take place within the greater framework of tried-and-true Sims gameplay.

The URBZ is due out in the fourth quarter of this year, and it seems to be shaping up well. We didn't get to see too much of the game, but we did get a good feel for what it's trying to accomplish and it seems like it could be good for some casual, open-ended fun. Stay tuned for more information on the game.