15-Aug-2001 Amazing life simulator or male chauvinist pig game, you decide Imagine a God sim, but instead of telling an entire race of people what to do, you just control one character (or more as the game progresses). And instead of some fantasy world setting, it's based at home. Not just any home, but a dream house, furnished by you for your little sim bloke (or woman) to live in. Imagine a virtual soap opera, where you make all the decisions about what a character does. Get it right and promotion, fortune and happiness await. Get it wrong and, well, you figure it out. This whole idea was first tried way back in the days of the Commodore 64 with the Little Computer People Discovery Kit, which was as addictive as hell as you made your little bloke do things, but you ended up getting bored and just trying to kill the little sod instead. Much the same principle was tried with Tamagotchis and we know how popular they were for five minutes. The Sims has added so much more to the simple keeping someone alive style of gameplay that it's the first life simulator to actually hold your interest for more than a few minutes. The Sims has so many twists and turns for you to deal with. Getting a job and making sure your character develops the right traits to get promoted, keeping friends, keeping all the stats as high as possible, spending money on doing up the house and buying gadgets could soon lose its appeal, if you weren't constantly bombarded by new things to deal with. On top of all that, if you leave your character alone they'll just get on with their life anyway, leading to a few interesting developments, especially when they start throwing parties and snogging people they shouldn't (my bloke was happily married but still copped off with his wife's best friend - this is better than Eastenders). We could tell you about everything that has happened to our guy, but it would make your average soap opera seem tame by comparison. His wife's copped off with another girl, his child's been taken away by social services, and God only knows what the press will say when they discover his pickpocketing past as he goes for a career in politics - we've seen it all. The problem with this is you just don't know you've become addicted until you're tuning in every day to see what new antics your character can get up to.
You know how you always go to certain web sites when you're surfing the web before you do anything else in the evening? Well you can forget that because the first thing you'll do before you watch TV or go out is check how your sim bloke (or blokette) is doing. Virtual soap opera is here. Forget Corrie and Eastenders, this is much more real.
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
