So anyone who’s ever played games on PC will know about The Sims. You know, the game where you create a person and live your dreams and romantic fantasies through the tiny man or woman on the screen? Well now you can manage someone else’s life when you’re stuck somewhere not being able to enjoy your own. The Sims has finally come to your mobile and The Debaser [Online}’s Tom Bisson has been having a bit of a play.
Ok I’ll say this up front: I’ve always hated mobile games. They’ve always been a cheap knockoff of something better on PC. I have been playing the mobile version of The Sims 3 for about 8 hours and I have been completely blown away by how detailed and addictive this game is.
Before you start getting your tiny person (Sim) to fix himself breakfast or start flirting with his neighbour Maggie, you need to how you want your Sim to look and act. This was the point in the game that I knew I was playing something different. Most mobile games give you the choice of two or three preset characters, but The Sims 3 allows you to fully customize your Sim. You can alter your hair, skin colour (including green) and dress your Sim in the latest threads. Once you’ve decided how you want your Sim to look, you then need to decide how you want your Sim to act. You can choose from five personas, such as Nice Guy, Sleaze (where your primary goal in life is to make ‘WooHoo’ eight times in one day), or Maniac (where one of your life goals involves watching people sleep). I chose the sleaze persona.
Just like in the PC versions of The Sims, the game constantly tries to keep you busy. You need to make sure your Sim is clean and well fed for a long day at work, but you also need to give your Sim a social life and have a bit of fun. On top of that, your Sim needs a job so he can afford to eat and buy sweet new TVs. I struggle to manage these things well in real life, how am I meant to do it in a game too? Well The Sims 3 makes it very manageable, but still challenging. Obviously you need a job, but you get weekends off. You need to make friends, but they don’t knock on your door every 45 minutes, giving you time to enjoy the good things in life, like reading a book, going fishing at the lake in town, or making ‘WooHoo’ with your married neighbour, Jill. (Jack is a jealous Sim).
You start the game with 700 Simoleons (Sim dollars) in a humble home with a bed, shower, fridge, toilet and a dodgy looking TV, as you earn more money at your job, you can upgrade all these things and add more furniture to your home. As you run out of space, you can start to build extensions on the home.
Along the way, wishes pop into your Sim’s head which you can either choose to accept or ignore. Accepted wishes sit in a bank of 5 current wishes and they can be seen as a bit of a challenge on top of just keeping your Sim happy and forward moving in his career. Some of the more ridiculous wishes I’ve encountered so far:
- Kick over a neighbours bin.
- Become someone’s enemy.
- Cook cheese on toast
- Catch a salmon
Many of the wishes involve buying stuff from the grocery store or the hobby shop and playing a mini game in order to fulfil the wish and gain a skill point.
The most impressive thing about The Sims 3 is how intuitive the whole thing is to play. It’s easy to know when your Sim is upset and the game makes it difficult to let your Sim’s bladder get so full he wets himself in public and crawls into a sobbing ball of humiliation (as hilarious as it is to do). Sure, there are simpler games out there to control (you have to play the whole thing by using the up, down, left and right buttons on the your phone and moving the cursor over various items) but given the sprawling number of options in the game, I think it’s a pretty good trade off.
It’s pretty common to see successful PC games get released on mobile by greedy companies and in most cases mobile gaming fans get a disappointing watered down version with terrible graphics and even worse game play. In this case, I think fans of The Sims have really been given a treat by EA. This isn’t just a port of the real thing, this is the real thing: A game with limitless possibilities made from scratch for mobile. If you’re the sort of person who has a heap of spare time in their life, then this game is highly recommended. It will make the trip to work go by in a flash as you get sucked deeper into your Sims life.
The Sims 3 is available through 3 Mobile at their Planet 3 web portal for $7. For some reason, people will pay $100 for a PC game, but refuse to pay $7 for a mobile game. If you’re one of those people, remember: you’re not buying a crappy mobile game that you’ll be bored or frustrated with after 10 minutes, this game will keep you busy for countless hours and will change the way you look at playing games on your mobile.