Review: The Sims: Life Stories game

The beauty of The Sims to some people is what makes it so infuriating to others.

The fact that it’s less a narrative-led game and more a series of moments that pieces together to become a virtual lifestyle rather than a traditional gameplay experience.

The Sims Life Stories attempts to bridge the gap between these two markets by maintaining its open-ended nature while adding a more linear structure to proceedings.

Firstly, it should be noted that this is not some add-on, so items and characters from previous Sims games will not feature. This is an admirable idea as the myriad expansion packs have become a little tiresome but some might miss being able to integrate their favourites.

There are two modes, the story mode and a more conventional (in the Sims sense) free mode where you can mould your own character.

Within the story mode, the two campaigns are based around a pair of unlucky-in-love types (Rita and Vince) borrowed straight from the Friends book of charming urbanites frustrated by their lack of other half. As mentioned, the tales are linear, so don’t expect to turn Rita into a skydiving polygamous hermaphrodite, but like the aforementioned American telly show, they’re extremely good fun and packed with quirky twists of fate.

It’s pretty easy to run through the 24 ‘missions’ (12 for each campaign, and annoyingly you can’t play Vince until you’re well into Rita’s tale) and lacks the amusingly unexpected moments of the real deal when you use an object inadvertently and head off on a whole new tangent. But it will therefore appeal to a new crowd, although if you hated the Sims world before we’d be surprised if you have much time for this one either.

Visually it’s nothing new, but we don’t mean that detrimentally. It’s still got a charming presentation but don’t expect to be shocked by a brave new world when loading Life Stories. It’s still the brand of pleasant smooth skinned characters and Ikea furnishings that you’d expect to find in Wisteria Lane-esque suburbs.

One nice feature is the addition of a 'laptop' mode, which reduces visual flair in exchange for quicker game speeds on a notebook computer. It also places it in its own window on the desktop – in theory to allow you to complete spreadsheets at the same time but more likely to be used as a quick method of hiding your antics from the boss.

This definitely adds value to the package, which in our humble opinion seems a little overpriced given that EA has naturally used the same graphics system to develop this new game.

Also consider:
Sims 2 Glamour Life Stuff
Cheap, good fun and plenty of humour in the latest add-on for the Sims 2

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