Strangely addictive, yet very boring.

User Rating: 5.2 | The Sims PS2
The Sims seems to be more a life lesson than anything. Now that parents have started saying that we need to learn what real life is like, EA comes and makes a game that teaches us that.

There are 2 play modes. The first is "Get A Life" and the second is called "Neighbourhood".

In Get A Life, you do just that, and give your personally created sim a life. You start by living in your mom's house, and then you just keep going up from there. To go up, you need to they might be things like get promoted, clean the house and have kids while maintaning your happiness.

This all sounds interesting for a game, but it's not carried out very well. There are serious problems that lead to VERRY agravating gameplay.

The most apparent problem would be the controll. Instead of moving your sim, you move a target on the ground and then tell your sim to ge there. Why couldn't we atleast have the option of moving the character directly? The mobility problems don't stop there though. Even after you tell your sim to move, he'll pause for a few seconds, and then he'll walk to where you told him very slowly. It gets really annoying FAST!

There are more problems. Say, for example, you need to find a job. Unless your Fun and Social stats are at least half full, your Sim won't look for a job. To get them up again, you need to read and talk to people. But, when you read your social stats go down, and talking to people causes trouble. When you tell your Sim to talk, it will get up very slowly, and then take very slow steps toward the person you want to talk to, and then pause infront of the person, and then they start talking. What does that mean? By the time you've opened your mouth, you've lost all of your fun stats!

The last plague on the game is the stupid AI. Say you've ordered a pizza for dinner and you wait outside for it. The oizza man will walk right by you and ring the door bell for the empty house. Then, when you try and greet him and take the pizza, you'll find yourself doing nothing for one real minute, or an hour in the game.

Let's say none of these problems were there, and the game played more quickly. It would still be boring because you can string as many comands together as you want, so you'll find yourself watching more than playing.

There's also a neighbourhood mode where you take controll of a family. It's plagued with the same problems though.

This graphics for this game aren't really very pleasing. Every thing is clear but unimpressive, and there's not much detail. The only car you'll ever see on the road is the one that takes you to work, and the only house you'll ever see is the one you live in. The framerate is pretty slow. For the mostpart that's not a problem, but when a car drives away in about 3 frames, you know there's something wrong.

The sound is pretty annoying. There's no recorded dialogue, and for some reason, there's this repetitive whistling tune that some one keeps whistling. When the sims are on the phone, all you hear is mumbling. On the other hand, the sound effects are good and realistic.

The Sims is an original idea, but it was porly exicuted. Why do we need to wait before they start walking or eating? I'm surprised that the PC version sold so well, and I'm even more suprised that the PS2 version is a greatest hits title. It's really hard to recomend this game.