jumperless's Full Review: The Sims Online for Windows
Having played The Sims for awhile with all the expansion packs, I was looking forward to this game and was wondering how it would be. After a few days of playing, I enjoy it, but don't thinks it's as good as I thought it would be, though is appears to be a work in progress with more features yet to come.
Installation
One thing that bugged me is having to pay monthly to play this game, the game itself can cost up to $50, which comes with 30 days free, then you're expected to pay about $10 a month after that. I installed in on a Windows XP Professional system, for the installation and game play, it will automatically set your color settings down to 16-bit color. While the game is copying all the files over, you’re walked through setting up your account. For this, you can either create a new account with username, use an existing AOL/AIM username or use an existing Sims account if you already have one. Even though the first 30 days are free (well, included in the cost of the game), you still have to provide a credit card number to create an account.
After this is done, you're shown a tutorial while the file copy completes, but the tutorial is ended early if the file copy is done. After installation, you're asked if you want to install other programs, like DirectX 8, then if you want to start the game. Before you’re ready to play, it checks for file updates, downloads and installs them. This process took about 5 minutes for me and can vary on how many updates are needed. It will check for updates each time the game is loaded.
Getting Started
Unlike the stand alone Sims game, you're only allowed to play one Sim at a time. However, you can have up to 3 Sims in different areas. First, you design and name your Sim by picking the face/hair and the outfit, the name must be unique, I must have tried about 10 different wacky names before I found one that worked. Your Sim will be stuck with this outfit for a majority of the game. After that, you choose the town you’re going to live in. For me, there were only about 7 towns open to choose from. But, I think they add more as needed to accommodate everyone. There's a brief description of each town to help you decide. Then, you choose if you're ready to buy property or wait and become roommates with someone. You only start out with $10,000 and buying property can take a large chunk out of this, leaving you with very little to build your house. I started out with a 1-room efficiency house that had cardboard boxes for tables.
Game Play
The object of the game starting out seems to be get skills and make money. But, neither of these tasks are easy and both time consuming. You have to make money to live by attracting other Sims to you property and/or going to use other Sims resources on their property. It's a strange premise that's not like the stand alone game where you had to get a job. I guess because the time always moves at the same pace, having your Sim go to work every day would be a little boring. It takes awhile to build your property up to where other Sims will stay at it for awhile, because much money is needed to do this. Having lots of roommates helps speed this process up. Also, gaining roommates can be tricky. I got two on the second day and one added on to my house and designed a different floor plan without verifying it with me and the other is never there anymore. If you want to change your property, you have to make sure your roommates are okay with this (well you should) and this can be a hassle if they're never online when you are.
In order to make money faster, you need to get your skills up. But, strangely, if you get more than ten points in overall skills, they start to deteriorate. So, many players just max one skill out and use that to make money. Building skills is a painfully slow process, which speed varies depending on how many Sims are working on that same skill on the property. So if my Sim is working on logic by itself, the learning speed is a lagging 13%, but with other Sims it can go up to 99%. The same goes for money making, pretty much forcing you to spend time with other Sims. Even at a speed of 99%, skill building seems to take awhile, leaving you to chat with other players while waiting and waiting. Because this game attracts all ages, I found myself involved in some interesting conversations. And, of course, there will be players determined to turn the game into a porn-fest, I ran into one the first day playing and had to ban that Sim. As noted before, because of the younger crowd, you can be reduced to less than stimulating conversations of N'Sync and what cars their parents were going to buy them, there seem to be more junior high players than players who would appreciate my humor. Also while waiting for skills, I found myself going through that mammoth pile of junk mail on my desk I've been meaning to get to for the last 4 months. I also ran into many twenty-something players wanting to turn the game into a dating service and was constantly being asked my age and location.
Your Sim can make money by doing various tasks, such as creating a potion and selling it, carving a knome and selling and solving a problem on a chalkboard and selling it. The amount of money you make depends on how many other Sims are doing the same thing on that property and how high your skills are in that area. I found myself hunting for various properties that specialized in building skills and/or making money and I found it helped to go to the properties with the most Sims there.
Like the stand alone game, your Sim has needs you have to tend to, such as hunger and energy. But, because of the time thing, your Sim will gain energy from sleeping much quicker and on most properties, you can use their beds and eat their food will working on money and skills. What's strange is your Sim is no longer picky about who they get into bed with, any Sim can join you in a double bed for a quick nap.
Okay, say you've finally made enough money and roommates to build your property up and have regular visitors. Then what? From what I can tell, maintaining the property can be tedious. Making sure everything is clean, keeping food out for hungry Sims and staying online enough to accommodate the Sims needs. Not sure that sounds like a fun thing to do. In order to keep Sims at your property, at least one of the roommates has to be there. I was at one property building skills and got kicked back into the town view because all the roommates left.
But, after playing for a few days, the game play started to get better once I got more roommates. I was able to expand my property and started to attract more Sims. Problem is, at times too many players want to talk and will send you instant messages. One time, I had 4 players sending instant messages and 5 Sims arriving at my property asking to be roommates, it got a little stressful. But, once you have the max number of roommates, 8 I think, you won't be able to let anymore join and I'm close. In the town I'm residing is, the property names are less than thrilling. Such names as "Logic-Pad", "Beach Skills" and "Skillz". Not sure why all the names seem weak, but I think the off-the-wall name of my property has prematurely attracted more Sims.
Graphics
Graphics are just like the stand alone game, they've never been a strong point to the game. As noted before, they can get goofy and seem a little slow at times. Some objects will disappear or flicker, sometimes your Sim will walk through another Sim or object.
Sounds
The sound affects are nothing special, just the usual noises that go with certain actions. There's no surround sound and the sounds come and go as you Sim moves around the property.
Bugs?
I'm running this on Windows XP Professional and I've noticed a few bugs so far, such as a humming sound coming from the game after being minimized and maximized. I have a cable modem with an always on connection, but have lost connection to the server for unknown reasons and had to log back in. Other Windows XP users complain of randomly being kicked back to the desktop, but I haven't had this happen…yet. Sometimes the graphics seem a little goofy, like players text boxes will overlap and be unreadable, some objects may disappear and reappear and if you give your Sim a task, it may just disappear without them doing it. I think this happens because someone else has giving their Sim that task first.
Performance
Because everything is done online, things can seem much slower. For the most part, the performance is good, better than I expected. Considering that many of the players I talked to were playing on 56K modem connections. However, sometimes it slows down, such as when you assign your Sim a task, it may take a few extra seconds to show up on the screen. Occasionally, the screen seems to lock up for a few seconds, all the sound effects are working, but nobody’s moving. 56K modem users were complaining of frequent drop-offs and having to connect and re-log back in, but none really complained about speed issues.
Like the previous Sim games, The Sims Online takes awhile to load. First, you get the splash screen that usually sits for a few seconds, then the login window, which is another few seconds, then the display kicks over and you get the standard looking Sims/Maxis load screen which seems to take longer. Finally you get to a screen where you can select one of your 3 Sims and choose whether you want to start in the town area or you property, and yes, it takes a few more seconds to load and connect after this. I'm running this on a Pentium 4 2.53 GHz/512MB DDR/64MB GeForce2 system, so resources shouldn't be a problem.
Overall
This game is a cool concept and can be great for groups of friends or family that what to play together. But I'm finding it hard to get into the game and set goals, after a few days of playing that it can be very boring. As said before, your primary goal is to make money and maintain skills while interacting with other Sims, but this gets very old after awhile. I'm finding it impossible to come up with ways to make it more interesting, like becoming a mass murderer and killing all Sims that entered your property (this was fun in the stand alone game) or finding new ways to annoy fellow Sims. Though, there are many features that are marked as "Coming Soon", so there may be bigger plans for this game as EA and Maxis get more feedback.
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