DESCRIPTION

The Sims is a life-building simulation with emphasis on intimate details of individual characters rather than expansion of an entire society or civilization. You are in control of nearly every aspect of the lives of the individuals who make up your chosen population in the neighborhood. Characters are developed from the ground up and you infuse and mold them with personalities, looks, desires, moods, urges, living arrangements, career and personal choices, life styles, and reactions. Five personality traits are rated from zero to ten and include basic areas of sloppy to neat, shy to outgoing, lazy to active, serious to playful, and grouchy to nice.

Management in The Sims revolves around decision-making. From physical environmental layouts (homes, rooms, paint, tiles, floors, walls, window placement), to mental outlook (personalities, motives, needs), emotional makeup (jealousy, marriage, having kids) and skills (cooking and mechanical abilities, charisma, mental and physical levels of development) of your Sims, you'll be immersed in their daily lives. Activities include buying and placing up to 150 unique items for households and offices, selling and replacing worn out furnishings, and otherwise building and maintaining the world in which your Sims live.

The interface is mouse-driven, with points-and-clicks that works in conjunction with a myriad of development tools offered for use in establishing your Sims' environments. Placement of walls, windows and doors, floor layouts in homes, terrain adjustments, water and pool tools, fencing options, balustrades, columns, wallpaper, stairs, fireplaces, plants, roofing, furnishings, and second-story dwellings are just some of the hands-on development options that will need your attention.

You'll guide your Sims in life-development phases such as having children, feeding hungers, basic survival needs, hygiene, comfort, energy levels, fun, social interaction (e.g., dancing, affairs, marriage), body-building, cooking, skill development, and even bladder control. Chemistry between your Sims is a product of your manipulations as well — slippery, smooth, introverted, extroverted, positive, and negative thinkers — all form the level and style of interaction through conversations with other Sims.

The Sims has a range of ten career tracks for your breadwinners to follow and each career advancement requires specific skills for success. For example, a minimum-wage mailroom clerk must have Body, Charisma, and Repair Skills while a person in the medical field must have Logic to go along with Repair skills. There are ten levels of positions within each of the ten career tracks — your Sims can work their way up in career fields such as entertainment, law enforcement, crime, medical, military, politics, athletics, science, or extreme (daredevil).

As in many Maxis simulations, the natural disaster has not been overlooked — your Sims can experience floods, fires, and robberies. Neglect, starvation, loss of energy, failure to perform basic bathroom visits (they'll have to clean up the mess) — all can affect your Sims and even stop them in their tracks. Death is an option and entire families could be wiped out by complete neglect and starvation.

Ever wanted to play a "god game" with complete control over individual characters? Now you can, with designer Will Wright's The Sims. Although not multiplayer per se, you can share your Sims and their houses with other fans, get skin design tools, tutorials, new wall colorings and textures, and more at www.thesims.com. You can also automatically save JPEG snapshots of your Sims and their statistics in the Web Pages folder of The Sims directory by using the "Export HTML" option in the game.

Time to get busy — the Sims in your head are waiting to get out and now's your chance to put some faces behind those little voices! ~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide