One of the landmark titles of video gaming.
The life simulation itself is strangely enjoyable. But it is a plethora of details enriching it that transform a good idea at the game's heart into a truly legendary game. The simulated people's activities are displayed with both adorable and funny animations and they talk using an unforgettable "nonsensical" language. The game's audio is generally superb including many satirical variations on real life music genres as the game's soundtrack. The designers' humour is perhaps best displayed in the sometimes outright hilarious descriptions of the various purchasable items.
Speaking of in-game items, the unparalleled freedom in designing homes and furnishing them with the all the needed equipment is another thing setting the game apart. Populating the house with families of any desired type with the resulting sexual undertone (more stressed with some of the expansion packs) can be understandably fun and made The Sims into a household name, popular among both genders.
Unfortunately, the game has several flaws, which, although quite minor, can be surprisingly bothersome at times and prevent the game from attaining the 10 score. The screen scrolling is horrendously sluggish regardless of hardware used, path finding is really poor and you'll have to design homes with this in mind avoiding choke points wherever possible. Also, the game time is structured unevenly resulting in tedious activities taking too long (say, taking a bath for an hour), leaving you precious little time for useful and enjoyable activities like sport, self-improvement and socialising. You can't follow your Sims to work and career paths make no difference whatsoever on the rest of the people's lives. There are more quirks to The Sims, but listing them would be nitpicking. None of them matter anyway, as the game's qualities overweigh its shortcomings by a huge margin.
Bottom line: an amazing, innovative, humorous and generally fun game that should be played by anyone interested in video games.