Many of you may be cringing before I start. The Sims started as an innocent enough idea from the creators of SimCity, SimWorld and SimAnt, and went on to become one of the best selling videogames in the world, ever. Not to please everyone’s tastes, the game offered a virtual and simplistic representation of life. Record sales lead to expansion after expansion and eventually the magic number 2. With the franchises roots buried firmly in PC ground, it’s the console spin-offs that often lead to the fans turning away from their televisual devices in horror. The Sims first hit the consoles back in 2002, with the first title appearing in a fairly solid form with mission-based additives on GameCube, PlayStation2 and Xbox. Great – now we can all play! However, it was here the series began to lose support, as only 11 months later; there was a second console title – The Sims: Bustin’ Out. The ‘Urbz: Sims In The City is the third edition of these annual releases, however with the NintendoDS being the new boy on the market, obviously, it’s the first to make the jump onto two screens.

            Unfortunately, as your king of impartiality, I failed this once and sided with the journalistic types, managing to avoid any interaction with The Sims: Bustin’ Out other than the necessary to join in the annual “have-a-pop-at-EA” festivities. So when entering The ‘Urbz: Sims In The City for the first time, the progress of the gameplay was quite refreshing, abolishing all my preconceived ideas. Whilst the “life” part of the original title remains intact; buying furniture, decorating your house and the meter-system – the work, talking and basic gameplay have been greatly reworked. No longer is the game open-ended.

You begin in a small territory, your ‘hood, which as you progress expands from a small area of play into a captivating and imaginative world to roam about. A mission structure is in place which will see you completing objectives ranging from recycling trash, to befriending a stranger, to travelling through time. Whilst extremely varied most of the missions may last only a few minutes, whereas the odd-objective can stump you for a few hours, providing you with the necessary time to improve your habitat. The structure of the conversations is radically different from anything I’ve previously experienced in a Sims title. Rather than the idle glaring at your sim as they either charm the-pants-off the girl they’re chatting with, or end up being beaten with a frying pan that you may be used to, now you have control over your social skills. A subscreen appears on the touch-screen, allowing you to select one of four randomly selected conversational options which, depending on the character you are conversing with, will either be deemed pleasing or annoying, and you relationship will build accordingly.

While the drastic changes to the gameplay make you think this isn’t actually a Sims game, the context of the play hasn’t changed the feeling at all, it’s more like a rejuvenation – and this is where the Touch Screen features come in. As the game seems to have been approached as a mere expansion on the Game Boy Advance version, the touch screen isn’t the best used feature in the game, however the several mini-games that have been included provide some often much needed light-hearted refreshment. Varying from dragging your stylus across a twisting and turning line to selecting which card to play from your hand to a variation of “pairs”, there is certainly some evidence of imagination here, however limited.

The graphics sported in the title are clearly disappointing. With our shiny new piece of creatively inspiring hardware we want games that reflect its ingenuity. Super Mario64 DS and Metroid Prime: Hunters are perfect examples of what can be drawn from the system so early on in it’s life, and yet with EA already settling for Game Boy Advance ports, how many will follow?

For all the annoyance that both EA and The Sims franchise seems to have caused the journalistic end of our industry, there is equal satisfaction on behalf on the consumers. With The ‘Urbz: Sims In The City EA have proved that while they may be a money spinner at heart, they can still provide entertainment on a grand scale.

Kev J.                                                                                                                  Reviews Score Table Interpretation.

22/02/05

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