|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Review: The Sims: Unleashed Expansion PackReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Computer: 867MHz G4, 640MB RAM, ATI RADEON 8500, Mac OS X v10.2.4 Review Date: February 24, 2003
I have a new theory on The Sims. I'm quite certain now that The Sims--in all its incarnations--is not a game, but is instead an experiment. A study. Remember the movie The Last Starfighter? It starred Lance Guest, who was that guy who was absolutely no help to Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween II. It also starred the late Robert Preston, who was The Music Man, although, here, he sold no clarinettes to the kids in the town with the big trombone big brass bass big brass bass. Instead he recruited starfighters to assist in the war against Xur and the Kodan Armada. He did this through a video game that was scattered throughout the universe. When players did very well, he'd fly to their planet and try to recruit them into completing their training in a real starfighter to fight real enemies. I think that's the dream of most kids who play computer games...well, back before computer games were about beating up prostitutes and performing bicycle stunts in nothing but your underwears. I'm not sure what kids dream now when playing computer games, and I'm not sure I want to know. Me? I'm still dreaming that my Red Faction skills could be used to save a desperate planet, but I'm losing faith that there are any planets left in situations more desparate than our own Earth.
So, here are millions of humans playing The Sims, relaying their human behavior patterns back to some mothership hovering silently in the cold, blackness of space. What these aliens are doing with this information, I have no idea. I just hope they're not taking Bill Stiteler's game too seriously. That boy's a stone freak, and I'd hate to think his Sims characters are being considered models of humanity.
Installation of The Sims: Unleashed is handled pretty much like all the other expansions packs, albeit with more warning labels this time around. If you already have other expansion packs installed, be certain to play close attention to the installation instructions to make sure Unleashed plays nicely with the others. The good thing about all of these expansion packs is that, for the most part, they all play the same way. After hot date, which was the first to take us out of the neighborhood, there have rarely been any new rules or a new interface; just more options available to the player within the standard framework. It's kind of like buying a new Foo Fighters CD, or something like that. You know how it'll play and you know basically how it'll sound, but there'll be enough new about it to make it worth your while. Unfortunately, unlike the latest Foo Fighters CD, The Sims: Unleashed has no guest guitar work from Brian May. What does it have instead? Well, a bunch of stuff. Honestly, I was quite surprised by the wealth of new options and ways of doing things even before any pets came into play. For instance, each neighborhood now has 41 lots. Talk about urban sprawl. Each of these can either be a community lot for all your Sim families to share or a residential lot on which your Sims can live. In other words, there's plenty more building to be done. I'm still not sure if I more greatly enjoy the building or living components of this game, but that dilemma goes all the way back to my childhood. Did I more enjoy building bridges for my Matchbox cars with the Girder and Panel Playset, or did I enjoy trapping the cars on the bridges as Godzilla attacked and destroyed them? I may never know for sure.
But, there's more here than that. For instance, you can now have a garden in which you can produce food to eat or sell. That's kind of cool...I never knew what to do with my sims' big backyard anyway since I don't go for statues and I got rid of the hot tub. There's also a new town, called Old Town, in which your pets can get their exercise and other animal necessities. There's stuff there for humans, too, but its mainly about the animal parks, pet stores and such. In fact, that's where you have to go to buy your pets in the first place. So, let's move on to the pets themselves. There are plenty from which to choose, although--just like in real life--only a couple provide any real entertainment value. I mean, yes, owning a lizard or bird may be kind of cool (in real life, pet tarantulas can be very effective in scaring away unwanted guests), but the entertainment value pretty much stops with looking at them. So, there are dogs and cats. I like cats, but I greatly prefer dogs, and that's where my time and money went. Like owning a real dog, taking one home in The Sims means a pretty big lifestyle change. There's suddenly a lot more about which to be concerned, like feeding them and training them and basically keeping them content. Yes, the dogs do need to be house trained, but I found it odd that sticking their nose in their messes, spraying them with Bitter Apple or even smacking them lightly on the rump with a rolled up newspaper weren't options. Instead, it's mainly a matter of scolding them when they've done something wrong and praising them when they've done something right. Obviously, the developers of this game have never owned a real dog (or, at least not an alpha female Siberian huskie). Of course, when choosing a pet, you can decide if you want a male or female. Choose wisely, because you can also breed your animals for profit. Again, unlike in real life, the animals in The Sims pretty much have to fall in love before they can breed. Growing up, my family had a real male collie we used to send to the stud ranch once a year. He'd be gone about three days, and it wouldn't be long before there was a litter of little Beaus scampering about. Seems to me, there's not a lot of love blooming in three days. But then, what is that in dog days?
Therefore, I think Unleashed is a much better expansion pack than was Vacation; the addition of pets was more fun to me than the addition of snowboarding ramps and a juggler. To each his own, I suppose. This is because I own pets in real life, whereas I don't snowboard and I tend to punch jugglers when I see them. Jugglers and magicians and clowns who blow up balloons. I let mimes go, though, because at least they're quiet. Jugglers, magicians and clowns who blow up balloons for some reason feel the need to be funny, and that just makes me want to punch them because they never, never are. The Unleashed expansion pack doesn't revolutionize The Sims, however. That'll come with The Sims Online. Still, if you've grown bored waiting for that and want to breathe some new life into your fake life, Unleashed offers more than enough fun and new interactions to make it worth your while. Now, this is the point in the review where I would normally complain about the game's performance. I won't do it here, though, because it's obviously doing no one any good. The performance of The Sims has been extremely poor on lower end machines since Hot Date was released, and it's not getting any better, so I assume there's a valid reason for this. As a result, we moved our copy of The Sims from the 500MHz G3 iBook to the 867MHz G4 Quicksilver, and things are much better. I realize that most of you aren't afforded this option, and I'm sorry. It's either build a new house or move off the block, your Sims neighbors are telling you. It's progress...suburban development. Or is it? Maybe it's just that the aliens can't be bothered with subjects using slower computers. Maybe if you're not on a G4 or a dual processor machine, they'll have to resort to crop circles and probes. Boy, if ever there was a reason to upgrade, that would be it.  [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, The Sims stars neither Lance Guest nor Robert Preston, but you can download skins of Brad Pitt and Xena: Warrior Princess. I'm sure that, at one point in their careers, Brad and/or Xena had a part in The Music Man. Regardless, I'm now convinced that The Sims is not just a computer game from Electronics Arts, it's a human behavior experiment being conducted by aliens. I'd also consider the government, save for two things. First, The Sims is far too clever and sophisticated to have been fabricated by the government. Well, the U.S. government, anyway. Second its popularity would explain the sudden lack of U.F.O. sightings and crop circle appearances. Remember the 70s when U.F.O.s were appearing just about everywhere outside of places were people had nice cameras that took clean, crisp photographs? Remember all the crop circles that started showing up at about the same time that The X-Files took off? Why don't we see these things anymore? I'll tell you why. It's because the aliens have realized that experiments conducted by computer are faster, cheaper and cleaner than...uh...probes.
The latest alien experiment involves mainly the addition of pets. The aliens have given us 
Each expansion pack for The Sims comes with new careers, objects, non-player characters, and so on. I normally don't factor these into the review, however, since I personally feel they don't offer anything new to the gameplay. Careers just affect your mode of dress and the amount of money you make, really. Objects can be downloaded from all over the net, so there's never a shortage of these to begin with. The NPCs mainly just reflect the individual expansion pack. For instance, the new Animal Control characters were never needed before now, nor were the pet judges and pet trainers.
More interesting than breeding, though, are the pet shows. Train your dog well, and you can enter him in a dog show (which, unfortunately, is not hosted by