Luke Warm for Hot Date
Written: Dec 28 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Tons of new possibilities! Fascinating new items, great new interactions!
Cons: Very buggy and shoddy in parts.
The Bottom Line: Tremendous improvements, but still lacks that "umph!" we've been waiting for. Great game, but still has pitfalls. I do recommend it, but only to those that love the game already.
|
|
|
| Alastor's Full Review: The Sims:Hot Date PC for Windows |
I'm an avid Sims fan. I have been from day one. I even know one of the lead programmers for the game and he has commented on some of my articles about it. In the past, I was critical, but still an intense fan. While Hot Date is certainly worth the funds, it comes up well short of what I would call "quality" work.
I'll break this down into separate sections for you. The first will be what's great and good. The second will be what is buggy and deficient, and the last will be what should be here, but is not.
What's Great!
There's a lot that's great actually. I love the idea of building my own shops and meeting places for my sims in case they want to get social. I love the new items, the new outfits, the new skins, the new tools, etc. It's all very excellent stuff! I'm at a loss as to where to begin...
Since God and everyone is going to mention that you can go downtown and they're going to tell you all about it, I'll skip that part and move to the more subtle aspects of enhancement. First up I suppose would be the increased interactions. I can now greet someone many different ways, tickle them at least two ways, snuggle, cuddle, and get a little wild with my sims in ways I never have before.
The new items are great. Sim gamers have been crying their eyes out for a decent single-bed. Now we have one. The new and better couches are great, as is the idea of gift storage and gift giving. I can now buy all sorts of things downtown or make them myself, and give them out as presents. And what can I say? You have to love the new hot tub and other sexually charged items in the game.
There are tons of new decorations and paintings and the like, and I love the hanging lights (although I wish they'd disappear once placed so they didn’t obscure my view).
And of course, you have to love the new, randomly created characters in the neighborhood. I've met five or six and only had to kill one or two. Three of them I liked enough to keep around. One I seem to have misplaced though, because I can't find her any more. I think that damn neighbor took her.
The list goes on, but there are plenty that will tell you how great this game is. I prefer to look farther beneath the skin and eye candy that first strikes you when you play the game.
Bugs and deficiencies
There are several pretty bad bugs in the game right now. Some of them make the game completely crash, and others simply make you go "huh?” Most are not severe, but they do affect game-play and some can affect it very dramatically.
The first example is the phones. Off the shelf (and even after patching) if you want to be able to call people that you met in town but who do not own houses, you need to buy one of the antique phones. You can't use the beige ones; they won't call the "Townies" over. It took me about three days to figure out that it was the type of phone that I had that was not allowing me to call the townies, since the rest of the phone works fine (except inviting others to go with me to town).
In the new items layout menu, you can notice if you look that they are not put together well at all. For example, go to electronics, and then to phones. Notice anything missing? I do. About half the phones are not there, and in order to find them you need to look in the master directory. The same is true with the toilets. There are three types of toilet (granted they're not conventional potties) that are not listed under the toilets in plumbing and must be accessed through the master list or through the "other" category.
I went to the Maxis site (which is organized like a five year-old's bedroom, including very confusing patch information and organization) and downloaded their cheerleader outfit for my sims. I was actually looking for a phone patch that would make my phones work, but I saw it there and decided it was time I had a few cheerleaders running around. Anyway, perversion aside, I downloaded the skin. I promptly went in to make a new sim cheerleader, and the skin did not appear. I decided I'd go into the game itself and check and see if the clothes appeared in the dresser inside my house. Sure enough, they did. But I can't create a sim with that skin; I have to change her later. Also, only white girls can be cheerleaders. How racist is that?
I noticed tonight that the same old bug with the couches and chairs exists. I can have two separate seating items (one chair and one couch for example) in the same room. If I sit a sim on the chair, and then I sit his girlfriend in the couch, they will talk and their conversation does affect their relationship score, but neither of them gets any social fulfillment from it. This bug has been known about since day one, and they still haven't fixed it.
There is a similar bug with eating. If you have three sims at a table eating dinner, the two that get along best (even if that's not by much) will sit there and gab all through the meal. They will completely ignore the third sim meaning he doesn't get anything social out of the meal at all. I have tried adjusting for this by adding a fourth sim to the breakfast table, but then the three that get along will converse and the fourth will be left out. This bug has been known about for a long time as well. Since the original game release.
The hot tub was an original item that came with the standard game, and so is this bug that goes with it. It is supposed to keep everyone in the hot tub until all four of the needs it fulfills (hygiene, comfort, fun and social) are full for everyone that is in the tub. Then they're all supposed to get out. Well, it doesn't work. People bail as soon as they're good to go, leaving my last sim in the tub (who's needs clearly aren't fulfilled or else he wouldn't still be in there) lacking any social benefits.
Here's a new bug, one that came with the expansion. If you have a family of four (we'll use mine as my example) I can take a sim downtown. Here's what happened my first time. I took Alastor Sim downtown to buy some nice things for Cassie, his girlfriend. No big deal, I thought it was cool. I stayed there two days as a matter of fact. But while I was down there, Cassie shows up! And what's more, she starts getting in my way! I wanted to talk to my friend, Rocko, but I couldn't because Cassie (who I had *not* sent down there) was having a meal with him and wouldn't shut up! Finally, Cassie got up and went home. But so did Rocko. It just annoyed me that my sim would A) be down there when I didn't want them to and that B) I couldn't get her out of my damned way.
But the best surprise met me at home. I watch my sims and their friends very carefully. I have a town of 80 sims (plus the new random ones) but I only let them interact with one or two at a time because managing their relationship is hard. Well, when I got home from town, I went ahead and checked Cassie out to make sure she wasn't lacking needs from her trip to town. Sure enough, she wasn't. What *had* happened though, was far worse than needing a nap. During her conversation with Rocko (which was run entirely by the computer) she managed to take a score that was previously 90+ and drop it to -30. Apparently their conversation did not go well.
I do not like the idea that my sims can go downtown without my consent or control, and what they do there counts towards my relationships. I guess when it's time to build my career I'll need to make sure not to visit town.
There are other bugs and deficiencies too, but I'll leave these as a notice that the game is not all roses when you get to the nitty-gritty details. In fact, I think it is the worst made of the Maxis products I have purchased since Sim Theme Park. And I buy almost all of their stuff.
What should be here that isn't
These are the things that Sims players have been asking for for a long time, and they have never gotten, but should have.
A daily planner for your sims so that you can write a "script" for them to follow throughout the course of the day. This would allow you to micromanage but still enjoy the game without spending all of your time crunching out the commands. I suggested this a long time ago. It's very common in some PC gaming genres, and should be available here.
A way to manage money better. Many of us would like to be able to assign money to a particular person in the house. I want separate funds for bills, Cassie, Alastor, and the house, etc. This has been asked for a lot, and has never arrived.
We still can't label objects. If I have three beds in a house, I want Alastor to use Alastor's bed at night, not Robert's. I don't want Robert or his guests coming into Alastor's room when Cassie and he are being "intimate" and screwing things up because they have to use the bathroom. Robert needs to take his guests to the guest bath or to his bathroom. Labeling objects like doors and beds with "ownership" tags is a simple program to build according to those I've spoken to, and would allow us all to live more happily in our sim-houses. We've asked for it for a long time. It's still not here.
How come when I am in town I can't buy in bulk? I have to make a separate trip for each of the 50 teddy bears I want to buy instead of just buying them all at once. The shops should ask me what quantity I want.
I still can't control my career as much as I want to. I keep getting switched over in career tracks even if I don't want to go. Leave me the hell alone. When I want to change jobs, I will. Offer me a new job, but don't force me to take it. Same with promotions.
Kids *still* don't grow up. Enough said.
I still can't move my family to a new house without getting them evicted, and I can't get one person to move out on their own. I have to build a bogus character, entice them to move in, and then whack the bogus character. I want to be able to adjust living arrangements with greater ease. It's tedious to do it the way I have to because they still haven't added this portion of commands to the game menus.
Where are the new careers? They're not hard to make, or so Patrik Barret told me once. He is one of the lead programmers at Maxis for The Sims. He says it can be done easily, coding-wise. All anyone really needs are the career specifics like the jobs, job titles, times of work, random cards, requirements, etc. The information is more easily put into the computer program than actual creation of it. Give us a bunch of new careers, don't be lazy.
How come I can get so many items in my inventory with my sim but then not be able to sell any back? I currently have 500 lollipops. They were bought before I realized that gnomes could be given as gifts. What the hell am I gonna do with 500 lollipops!?
And there's a long list of other wants that are more desires than actual game needs or semi-needs. For those I'd refer you to my other articles about The Sims line.
Overall, this game is worth purchasing. It's fun and adds to the game spectrum. It is not the great savior of the PC gaming world that others will tell you it is though. It does have bugs; it still lacks a lot of things we all wanted (and in some cases needed for practicality's sake) and still leaves a lot to be desired. I do recommend it, but it is far from the crown jewel in Maxis' line of games.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Alastor
|
|
Location: Littleton, Colorado
Reviews written: 90
Trusted by: 64 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.