After reading many reviews on how great this game is, I had to have it. Now, how can I describe this game? One word, addicting! The first day my husband bought me this game I spent 6 hours, yes 6 hours, playing it! My kids would come in and ask, "You're still playing that game?" A very addicting game.
The basics of the game are that you control a person, people or family, you choose how many you want. What I mean by control is that you have to tell them, by clicking on actions, what to do. You have to tell them to pick up trash, go to the bathroom, eat, bring in the paper, watch TV and even interact with other Sims. There are many things for your Sims to do depending on what you have available in your house and you have to provide all of these things for them by buying things.
They have the Newbie's, which is where the tutorial is, it will help you understand how you interact with your Sims, it will give step-by-step instructions on the basic things to do. I only did this for about an hour and then decided to create my own family, but it gives you the basic knowledge on how to play the game.
There are three preset families, so to speak, already set up for you under Pick or Create a Family. You have The Pleasants, a family of 4, Roommates (2 female roommates) and you have the Bachelor. You can use these or create your own family, I chose to create my own family, when you create your own family you have your choice of male/female, adult/child and many different looks to the Sims, then you create each Sims personality from neatness to outgoing.
Once you have your Sims chosen, whether it be one of the preset ones or one you created yourself, you move them into one of the house. Now, you won't have a lot to work with in the beginning because they start out with a preset amount of money, you may choose any available house, if you can afford it and someone is living there you just evict them. You can also evict, then destroy the house on that lot and build a house from scratch, but remember all of this will cost money and you will still have to fill the house with furniture all the way down to the toilet! Beds, couches, tables, stoves, showers, a big collection of things to choose from is right in the Buy menu.
Once you've done that, the fun begins, this is when you start controlling the Sims. Depending on their personality you will have to make them clean up after themselves, they don't always throw the trash away, they sometimes just put it on the floor. You will also have to remind them to flush the toilet! I didn't realize it, but some of these Sims are worse than my kids! You will have to get them to look in the paper for a job, hopefully a good one too!
You do have to be careful though, sometimes the Sims don't always get along, their personalities clash. I've got a couple that after playing the game for 2 weeks are finally sleeping in the same bed, but she still won't let him kiss her! They've adopted a baby that in the game, grows up into a child very quickly, but you have to make your Sims do things for the baby including feeding, playing and singing and even the Sims aren't too happy about being woken up in the middle of the night to take care of baby.
I've had one couple where the wife became a widow rather quickly, because my male Sim didn't have a lot of cooking skills and he burned up trying to make himself dinner. She mourned him, you have that option to make them mourn and they really cry a lot during this process, the neighbor even came over and mourned for hours until she politely (or I made her ask politely) asked him to leave.
Neighbors will come over and visit and while it can be bothersome at times, you need to have your Sims interact with them so they can keep up their social happiness.
You will have a menu for each Sim, when clicked on, that gives you their mood, personality, relationships, job and house. Right next to those you will see their needs, they are: hunger (self-explanatory, but a word of warning, these Sims can eat a lot), comfort (how comfortable they are, usually when this gets low they need to sit down and relax), hygiene (whether they need a shower or bath), bladder (yes, you have to make them go to the bathroom), energy (how much energy they have and if they need sleep), fun (whether they are having fun or not), social (goes hand in hand with interacting with other Sims) and room (they like big rooms with a lot of windows and or light, they don't seem to like small spaces).
Once you get more money, by your Sims working, you can expand on your house with the Build tool, you can add rooms and such to your house, even a second story if you have a lot of money. And you can decorate your Sims house to your desire, just be careful, what you like, they might not and they will let you know if they don't like something.
The graphics are great in this game, everything moves nice and smooth, from the Sims moving around to scrolling around the screen. I haven't run into any lagging problems or lockups with this game at all and I'm not running on a high-end computer. The menu's are easy to use and pretty self-explanatory, there is a help menu you can use if you run into problems in the game where you don't know what to do about something.
All in all this game is fun and addicting, you can find yourself playing for hours before you know it. You can also download some extras from The Sims website to use in your game at http://thesims.com. The site also has tips on playing the game and you can register right there on the site, it also gives an overview of what The Sims is about.
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