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Review: The Sims - Vacation Expansion PackReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Date: October 15, 2002
I've always been a fan of The Go-Gos. One of the first albums I ever bought was Beauty and the Beat, and I had to buy it twice because my cousin left it in the car and it melted. I even greatly enjoyed their new album from last year. That Jane Wiedlin was always my favorite, you know.
Wrong. No Go-Gos here. Not even Kathy Valentine! No Go-Gos music, even. It's as upsetting as was the movie Starship Troopers, which ended up featuring Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards blowing up giant space bugs with machine guns instead of featuring Chris Squire and Jon Anderson blowing up giant space bugs with pounding bass riffs and ethereal harmonies. But, okay. The Sims: Vacation. Apparently, The Sims is now the biggest selling computer game of all time. I assume this is the case for the same reason that Titanic is the biggest grossing movie of all time; because women like it. If you can successfully appeal to both men and women, you're bound to have yourself a hit (the lack of female viewers is the only thing that stopped Army of Darkness from becoming the top grossing film of the 90s, after all). It also doesn't hurt that Electronic Arts has kept the game current by releasing nearly half a dozen expansion packs, all of which need the original version of The Sims to run. Keep it on the shelves, keep it moving off the shelves...The Sims is a franchise. And, like most franchises, it's getting old. Vacation really solidifies this. Had this been the first or second expansion pack, it would've been pretty good. Following Hot Date, however, it seems fairly pointless.
Of course, you have to check into a hotel. Just like in real life, you're billed for each night unless you check out by 11:00 a.m. the next morning. Once that's all settled, you can start to have fun and buy new stuff, including souvenirs and post cards that can be given away as gifts to other sims. Your sims can also engage in some of the more popular vacation pastimes such as fishing, volleyball and snow boarding. Wait a minute...is this a vacation or a boring afternoon of ESPN2? Each Vacation Island has its own set of entertainers, as well, which will make your sims happy. I'm not sure why that works, as this only that ruins a vacation for me faster than a resort "entertainer" is a stomach virus...and even then, it would have to be a really, really bad virus. There are all kinds of things to do on the Vacation Island. Indeed the island is an anomaly of nature as it provides beach volleyball, snow boarding, and camping in one small area. Take that, Sandals! You can also participate in archery, play some carnival games (for which you win tokens that can be redeemed for prizes), swim, and even rent a metal detector in an attempt to embarrass your family. And hey, speaking of family, you have to manage them, as well. It's important to keep your kids in line or you could draw the ire of the resort staff. No family? No worries. You can take along your significant other for a romantic getaway, or maybe even meet that special someone during a water balloon fight.
As far as I can tell, people who really enjoy The Sims are into screwing around with the lives of their characters. They make them fall in love, they make them cheat on each other, and they make them burn down their kitchen. People seem to play the Sims for the same reason that they watch The Real World. They...wait a minute. Tangent. Now, I don't watch The Real World. Never have. But I understand the latest incarnation of this show has the kids living in a penthouse suite in Las Vegas. My question is, in what world is living in a penthouse suite in Las Vegas with a bunch of movie cameras in your face, roommates who are skankier than the actual whores in the clubs below, and no real jobs to go to considered to be real? I think that show has lost its focus...if, indeed, there ever was any focus. Anyway, The Sims: Vacation doesn't really add much of interest, unless you find guys dressed up like sharks to be interesting. There's a lot of new stuff to watch your sims do, but there's no real reason to have them do it. It's all just eye candy. Perhaps this would've been more entertaining if the whole thing had taken place on a cruise ship. The Sims: Love Boat, maybe. Or The Sims: Wrestle Vessel! Hey, yeah, remember that? The Sims could meet Bret Hart and get choke slammed by Kane while sailing between exotic ports of call in the Atlantic ocean and buying coral pen souvenirs! Sweet! And I wonder if we'll ever see The Sims: Macworld Expo. Oh, and speaking of eye candy, the frame rate problems still have not been solved. The game looks the best it ever has, but the graphics are soured by poor performance on slower machines. I was willing to forgive this we tested The Sims: Hot Date on the 333MHz iMac, but we ran Vacation on the 500MHz iBook and still had frame rate problems while on Vacation Island (the game ran fine when the sims were at home and there wasn't as much going on). Should I really have to play The Sims on the 867MHz G4 in order to have a good gaming experience? I think that's asking a little much of the target audience.
As I mentioned before, I might have received Vacation more warmly had it not followed Hot Date. It's at least as good as Livin' Large and certainly better than the pointless and dorky House Party, but it seems pale and tired in the wake of Hot Date. And now I'm seeing commercials for an expansion pack that brings pets into the mix. No doubt, that'll give us the pleasure of watching poodles jump through hoops and of cleaning messes off the living room floor. I'd almost rather have the resort entertainers juggling in my dining room. So, if you're the type of Sims fanatic who spends all day downloading new objects and skins, Vacation at least puts them all in one tight package for you and gives you new locales in which to use them. If, however, you play The Sims not for what they can do but for what you can do with them, give this one a miss. Go on your own vacation, or at least buy The Go-Gos: Vacation. It's not that functional as an expansion pack for The Sims, but hey! "Cool Jerk" rocks, and that Jane Wiedlin is hot!  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
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Therefore, when I found out Aspyr was releasing the Vacation Expansion Pack for 
So, Vacation certainly offers plenty to do. But know what? Who cares. I couldn't get into this expansion pack. Even my wife, who normally finds The Sims to be much more entertaining than real life, quickly grew bored with Vacation. We both agree that this stems from one thing: no new character interaction.
Also, building construction has not been much improved. You can create your own little vacation villa, but doing so can be quite a chore and must be carefully planned out or the sims won't enjoy themselves. You can't make repairs on the fly, either. You have to send your sims home, exit play mode, enter build mode, make the fix, then send your sims on vacation again. Sorry folks, Wally World is closed for repairs.