These games always seem to enthrall me for 15-20 hours, then I immediately put them down and give up any desire to even touch them again. Would this game be different? The hype was that they were taking away the micromanaging, taking away the ever pressing Social/Hygiene/Hunger/Fun bars that were always in need of refilling.....and replacing all that with an interesting system of aspirations and rewards.
Well, no. The "Needs" bars are still present, they are just buried in your menus. You still pretty much have to eat twice a day, sleep 8 hours a night, bathe once a day, etc. You still can't really leave your Sim to her own devices. My Sim's Lifetime Aspiration was to be a Forensic Specialist for the Police Department, and you might think this would motivate her to up her Logic/Art skills. But nope, if I stopped dictating her every move and let her do what she wanted she would pretty much play computer games all day everyday (kind of a sad mirror into our own lives at least
).
The Aspiration/Reward system is a pretty thoughtful addition to the game. Your Sim has a single Lifetime Aspiration (usually a career or skill-oriented goal) and multiple recurring random aspirations that pop up randomly throughout the game (stuff like "Read this Book," "Get Art to Level 5," "Buy a $1000 computer", "Become Jane's Best Friend"). Fulfilling aspirations gives you reward points that can be used to buff your character with any varied number of rewards -- attributes like learning faster, being able to skip work and get paid, not having to shower/eat/shit very often. Fulfilling a Lifetime Aspiration gives you mega reward points and allows you to buy some really high-end abilities.
Character death. Apparently this was introduced in The Sims 2, but I never got far enough into it to see. My character fulfilled her Lifetime Aspiration and I was just beginning to enjoy some of the huge rewards/buffs you get from having done so. Then all of a sudden I sent her to check the mailbox and the Grim Reaper showed up and struck her down, leaving in her place a tombstone on the suburban sidewalk. It felt capricious and stupid. The whole rewards system seems pretty useless if you're going to die almost as soon as you begin to reap its biggest benefits. The game told me I was going to have to create another character, and I at least hoped I would be allowed to let the new character move in to my old house, or retain some percentage of the rewards points I'd earned. Nope. Nada. The new character would start over from scratch completely, and all the work I'd put into my first character was gone.
So yeah.....I'm completely done with this game. See you again in another 5 years EA/Maxis!
