Game Debate #211: The Sims

[Reed Rothchild | 9,717]

[Gloves | 12,040]

For a lot of people this is their first "I wonder if I do this really cruel thing what will happen..." game. Good stuff. 

[Sumez | 3,066]

Suprisingly addictive for how stupid a game it honestly is

7/10

[RH | 5,081]

I guess I'll give it a 7 but the facts are that I only played the first one and, maybe, it had the first expansion pack where you had more building options.

The game, as intended, bored me.  Instead, I enjoyed building massive homes. I don't know why.  There were plenty of other options for either designing levels for games, or even $5 bargain-bin software that you could use to "model your own home", but The Sims had an easy-to-use interface and a lot of  content for the initial roll out.  I had a good time building mega-mansions and castles.

[NostalgicMachine | 279]

I played a bunch with friends like, 20+ years ago.

8/10 gaming experience!

Sim City soon?!

[Tripredacus | 1]

I tried to guess how I would actually review it, so I gave it a 5/10. Outside of perhaps playing a demo for it when it came out, my experience was tainted in an interesting way. For whatever the reason was, I did not actually own a copy of The Sims until much later and didn't end up trying to play it until after many hours of Sims 2. Going backwards as a first experience wasn't kind. The mechanics were too foreign to me and some things like not being able to leave the house made the gameplay boring.

[G-type | 2,679]

I've never played it, but I've heard enough people talk about that it feels like I've played it. I get why it would be appealing. Not super interested, but I'd probably be able to kill some time with it if I had the chance.

[TDIRunner | 2,818]

I enjoyed it, but didn't get into it as much as most people.

I had way more fun trying to design a house than anything else.  

[Webhead123 | 693]

Never played the original but did play a wee bit of Sims 2 and an even smaller sampling of Sims 4. I can understand why the series is so long-lived and has such a passionate fanbase. There's something cathartic about lording over a virtual person/persons and either genuinely attempting to take care of them or to flex your god-muscles and force them to dance for your amusement. That said, for me, the appeal usually wore off fairly quickly, especially once more and more responsibilities pile up and managing your sims starts feeling like work.

This is THE game series that my wife plays and she probably has most of the official expansion packs. For her, it seems like a combination of "Interior Decorator/Fashion Design Simulator" and "Soap Opera Generator". She probably spends as much time designing homes as she does controlling the actual Sims themselves...but she loves it.

I can't rate the original game (haven't played) but for the series as a whole, I'd say it gets a 6/10 from me. Amusing and plenty of ways to express your creativity but falls into tedium fairly quickly, so best experienced in short, infrequent bursts.

Edited Thursday at 05:13 PM by Webhead123

[DefaultGen | 5,631]

I played it a lot. Similar to Mario Party, I think it would be hard for me to not overrate it since virtually everything that's come out since has been better. From Minecraft to Animal Crossing to V Rising some of my favorite things to do in games are still to get my house set up and furniture neatly arranged how I want it, and that all started with The Sims for me.

7/10?

[Gentlegamer | 189]

Never played it... is this the game where you drown your guys in the swimming pool or come up with other horrific deaths?

[AstralSoul | 517]

Maybe biased because I haven't played it in years. Afaik it doesn't run on modern machines and there's nowhere to buy it to play it. But that said I have a ton of fantastic memories playing this game. So many late nights designing houses and making a family and buying stuff. I spent 100s of hours in this game. I'm sure if I played it today it would not hold up as well as I remember but I'm still giving it a 9/10 because it's one of my favorite games of the era it came out and is one of my most nostalgic games. I played the Sims 2 afterwards, and a tiny bit of 3&4 but none of them had the same charm as the original. And in 3&4 I think they tried to do too much and stopped focusing on the small things which is what the original did so well.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,717]

A rare never, never for me.  If it fell in my lap I'd try it out for reference, but I don't see that happening.

I remember when it was announced and got some hype.  But as a teen boy with his Half Lifes and StarCrafts and what not, I couldn't be bothered 

[fox | 1,723]

I never got the appeal

At least rollercoaster tycoon had rollercoasters

[Gentlegamer | 189]

1 hour ago, Reed Rothchild said:

But as a teen boy with his Half Lifes and StarCrafts and what not, I couldn't be bothered 

aka real games

[Kguillemette | 1,576]

Sims 2 was a marked improvement, but I can't deny that I was totally absorbed into the Sims when it was new. 8/10. Sims 2 would be a 9/10. I've tried the GameCube port, and it was absolutely terrible, however. On 3 separate occasions, one of my family members automatically ordered pizza then immediately choked and died. Wtf?

[Sumez | 3,066]

19 hours ago, RH said:

The game, as intended, bored me.  Instead, I enjoyed building massive homes. I don't know why.  There were plenty of other options for either designing levels for games, or even $5 bargain-bin software that you could use to "model your own home", but The Sims had an easy-to-use interface and a lot of  content for the initial roll out.  I had a good time building mega-mansions and castles.

Sounds like you were tricked into actually playing the game as intended  

[RH | 5,081]

2 hours ago, Sumez said:

Sounds like you were tricked into actually playing the game as intended  

If the intent was to fiddle around with the people for 1-2 hours and then build homes for 20-40 hours more, ignoring your Sims, then yes.

And if this isn’t supposedly possible, I probably cheated to unlock content. Were there early homebrew mods for this game? If so, I probably used whatever mods there were to expand the games functionality for building.

[Sumez | 3,066]

There were tons of mods as well as official expansion packs created solely with the home building in mind. It absolutely was intended to be a primary appeal of the game  

[DefaultGen | 5,631]

My sims actively annoyed me. It's like, get out of the way and go make some money already. We need to build a second living room!

[koifish | 566]

On 6/27/2024 at 8:11 PM, Kguillemette said:

On 3 separate occasions, one of my family members automatically ordered pizza then immediately choked and died. Wtf?

Must have been little caeser's.

[koifish | 566]

On 6/28/2024 at 6:54 AM, RH said:

If the intent was to fiddle around with the people for 1-2 hours and then build homes for 20-40 hours more, ignoring your Sims, then yes.

And if this isn’t supposedly possible, I probably cheated to unlock content. Were there early homebrew mods for this game? If so, I probably used whatever mods there were to expand the games functionality for building.

There were infinite money cheats. I had a friend that played this and all he did was max the money and build mega-mansions with gold toilets.