|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Review: The Sims - Hot Date Expansion PackReviewed By: Tieraney Hiner Review Date: July 9, 2002
Hello. I'm Tieraney, Kirk's wife. The husband (or a husband, as I like to refer to him) is downstairs watching Flash Gordon again, so I'm writing this review for him. There are two main reasons for this. First, I've played the game more than he has. Second, Kirk wouldn't know a hot date if he won it on a game show. He did, after all, propose to me under a reportedly haunted bridge off of State Route 42 in Ashland, Ohio. Nothing sings romance like pentagrams and Aerosmith lyrics spray painted onto concrete.
Oh, and speaking of Bill Stiteler, have any of you ever met him? Kirk has the strangest friends, and Bill's the strangest of them all. His wife is on TV all the time in Minneapolis, though. She's the Bird Lady. I think I want my own TV show. I'll be the Butterfly Lady. Okay, back to the game. Hot Date. This expansion pack requires the original version of The Sims, so I think $30.00 is a little much to ask. $20.00 sounds fair for an expansion pack, but I guess The Sims is popular enough that they can charge more. They can also do so because this is the first expansion pack they've released that actually makes the game more fun to play. The problem with the Livin' Large and House Party expansions is that they didn't really add anything. You got some new objects and some minor new capabilities, but certainly nothing as interesting as that which you can download off the internet for free. Hot Date, on the other hand, expands the games. It gives your characters more to do, new ways to interact, and new places to go. It makes the game interesting again.
They haven't done it with the time, either, although perhaps they've geared it more to the nightclubber's fantasy. When you leave your house to head to town, you return at the exact same time you left. Leave at 8 p.m., return at 8 p.m. the same day. Leave at midnight, return at midnight. Imagine that. You wouldn't miss Buffy, you wouldn't miss any phone calls, and you'd never be late for work. You could start cooking chicken marsala, and if you suddenly realize you have no linguini, you could run to the store to buy it and come home thirty minutes later and your chicken wouldn't be burnt! Now, if you're not happy with the downtown area, you can build your own lot. Build your own stores and stock them up with any of the 125 new objects included in Hot Date. I seemed to have more trouble with this than with building a home, so I just stuck with what's already in the game. My entrepreneurial yearnings extend no further than a pretzel stand, anyway...or a hot dog stand. Hot date does include a hot dog stand, and Kirk wanted me to mention hit so he could say that he used to be a man with a stick in his hand, and I used to be a woman with a hot dog stand. I have no idea what he's talking about, and he says no one else will either, but if someone does get the reference, it'll be funny. Somehow, I doubt it.
There are new clothes and characters, as well. I was especially happy with the butterfly shirt. Butterflies rock. I was also pleased that they've put glasses on the characters this time. Did they have them before? I know they had the hip kind of sunglasses, but I don't recall any of the characters wearing normal glasses. Not everyone wears contacts, you know. Hot Date also adds many new ways in which your characters can interact. You can now actually choose about what your Sims talk, rather than letting them just discuss anything as in the past. The more interest your Sims share with other characters, the more they'll get along. They still talk gibberish, of course, but I like it that way. It's still more intelligent than many of the conversations I hear in real life. I wish a bubble appeared over my head that made it perfectly clear to people just how disinterested I am in golf.
Anyway, some of the new modes of contact are difficult to get to. There's supposed to a running hug, like how girls in high school great each other after not seeing each other all summer, I presume. I was never able to make this work, but maybe my Sims were just never happy enough to see one another. Kirk says I should point out any problems with the game, but the only one I can think of (aside from the difficulty in building stores downtown) is that it played far to slow on my Lime iMac. It was bad enough at home, but was horrible downtown. The frame rates, as Kirk calls them, were very low, and it made the game seem boring. I'm not sure what the deal was here, since the other expansion packs all played just fine. That, and I've played games with much better graphics that also ran just fine. It was frustrating. Still, this is my favorite of all The Sims expansion packs. It's the first one that really made it interesting again, since it's the first to add entirely new elements. Interaction with the other characters is now much more fun because there's more control. Also, a game thats goal is to hook up skanky computer characters is simply more fun the game thats goal is to get them jobs and families and aquariums. I mean, why else do you think all those MTV shows are so popular? It's fun to watch stupid people make asses of themselves, and it's even more fun when you're controlling them. Oh, am I allowed to say "asses?"  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
. |
Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
|
||||
Anyway, Kirk has never really played The Sims. Bill did the reviews for 
The downtown area is the biggest addition to the game, as your Sims are no longer confined to the neighborhood. It's as if the game just turned sixteen and got its diver's license. You can do a little bit of shopping, hang out at restaurants, visit the park and sail a little sailboat, and even make a fool of yourself at the local bar. In wonder why the male Sims don't come stocked up with dozens of stupid pick-up-lines. The Sims haven't quite yet hit reality.
Of the over 125 new objects, some work only in the home, and some work only in the downtown (you can't put a hot dog stand in your living room, for example). Some of these are kind of fun, some are kind of pointless, and I won't bother pointing out which is which since everyone will have their own...oh, sorry, Kirk...everyone will have his or her own opinion (never marry an English major). There's enough here to keep everyone happy, or at least away from the download sites for a while. In fact, the game includes what the manual calls "....the best objects and skins from 
Physical contact has been expanded as well. Kisses and hugs are more passionate, which I guess is what gives the game its "mature sexual themes" rating. That cracks me up. The Sims is only as mature and sexual as you make it, so the guys at the ESRB must be pervs. Not that that's a bad thing, of course. When I first played the game, the character named after my husband became gay. Perhaps that's why he never plays it now.