5 Most Disappointing Games of 2014 (So far) - #3: The Sims 4

Up next in my list of the disappointing games of 2014 (so far) is 'The Sims 4'; a game that was quite simply a step back in the much beloved series of life simulation games. Players have been dissatisfied with the conduct of EA for quite a while and the release of SimCity 2013 did nothing to quench that, Sims 4 was due to be EAs next big thing but, sadly, cracks were already starting to appear as more and more details about the game were leaked. 

Fans were furious at the lack of toddlers, dishwashers and swimming pools, a fair enough complaint, though they’d probably have been released as an expansion pack that's still beside the point as they're all revenue chasing scoundrels etc. etc. But, ultimately, I would have gotten over it if the rest of the game was fantastic. However, it's not, and there are problems that destroy what made 'The Sims' such a fantastic series of games and which consequentially renders the game unplayable for someone like myself.

#3: The Sims 4

Developer: EA Maxis and The Sims Studio
Genre: Simulation
Release date: September 4/5th 2014

Platforms: Microsoft Windows
ESRB: T - Teen



To begin with, 'The Sims 4' has an extremely tiny world map that is ugly, unrealistic and uncharacteristically limited for a modern-gen Sims game. For instance, you can only visit one small section at a time that consists of roughly 5 lots and where the rest of what you see are all decorative areas, often with rather flat graphics when you go too far out, and none of which you can visit from this location. To visit other buildings such as next door you must go through a loading screen which is unusual, considering the size and scale of the 'Sims 3' neighbourhoods that were utterly seamless and without a single loading screen. Even stranger, in the Sims 4 the Sims no longer progress but simply age; a strange mixture of the previous two games resulting in a map of dead Sims that never did anything with their lives, I could reflect on the realism of that but it’s probably best I don’t.

Whilst I disliked the constant evolving world of the Sims 3 as it allowed me little to no control over my entire neighbourhood, this is not what I wanted. What is the point in allowing time to progress for aging only? For some reason the dynamic story progression has been stripped and yet the micro-management style Sims 2 neighbourhoods are a no-go here either since everybody would be dead by the time you go to play them. For those attempting to play a thriving neighbourhood of individual personalities and complex relationships; that’s not going to happen, for those who enjoy an almost obsessive system of creating perfect Sims and perfect houses… you too will be disappointed. 

Whilst the designing of houses is ever so slightly superior to the Sims 3 and a few new additions have been slapped in like picking a whole room up and plopping it somewhere else, everything else is basically the same, but with a lot less objects and a limit of just 3 floors. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the build mode and it looks like it’s been refreshed for the new game but that’s kind of it really, things which I used to enjoy have been removed like terrain tools and the infamous ‘create-a-style’ feature which I fell in love with after I finally got used to it. The major problem lies with a lack of choice in objects and everything tends to feel extremely bare and a bit boxy due to the new furniture styles that make me feel as though I'm playing in a plastic dollhouse.Your options when creating a sim are limited as well with significantly less clothing and hair options to previous base games and whilst the intuitive click and drag style of designing the shape of your Sims features is a fantastic edition there exists gaping hole where so many features have been removed. Features such as body hair, favourite food/music/colour, multi-toned hair, skin sliders, zodiac signs and a few others have been taken out of the game for which is a blow for those who enjoyed that added level of personalization.

The Sims 4 is not a 'bad game' by a long shot and for those who are first coming into the series it will seem fantastic as the Sims series has always been at the front of life simulation games. However, for long standing fans of the series it will feel as though the game has been severely crippled with the game not taking advantage of more than 4GB of RAM and with dozens and dozens of removed features. I truly wanted to love this game as there are some fantastic additions such as multi-tasking, moods and an overall re-vamped apperance of the Sims themselves. Whilst there are plenty of good aspects it’s overall lesser quality results in a game that's been needlessly stripped back, emptied of content and severely simplified. As usual, I guess we'll have to wait for a dozen or so expansion packs to render this game playable yet with unavoidable problems like an excessive number of loading screens and extremely tiny maps I know that for many this is simply not good enough.

The Good:

• New UI is less invasive and nicely toned down
• The Sims themselves look brilliant, flawlessly animated, very emotional.
• If you enjoy the style, the graphics look amazing
• Sims are more intelligent with a lot more personality
• Build Mode is somewhat improved
• Less juggling of motives
• Charming in places
• Some interesting and quirky bits of content

The Bad:

• No Create-a-style
• An excessive number of loading screens for every little detail
• Sims just disappear whenever they leave the house to go to work.
• A lack of content in buy mode.
• Unrealistic, small world map.
• Create-A-Sim has a lot less options such as clothing/hair/extras
• A very limited and restricted world that feels empty constantly
• Anti-climatic life events that have very little effect on your Sim
• These 89 removed features

The Score: 6/10

Final Thoughts: "As many have said, this feels a lot like Sims 2.5 and whilst I prefer a lack of story progression I don't see the point in restricting playable areas to just 5 or 6 lots. I used to enjoy Sims for the creativity and perfectionism it allowed me but now there's very little opportunity to create my perfect world."  

5 Most Disappointing Games of 2014 (So far)

• #5: Destiny 
• #4: Elder Scrolls Online 
• #3: The Sims 4 
• #2: Thief 
• #1: Watch Dogs

Monster Rancher 2 - Full Review (PlayStation 1 game)

This is no ordinary virtual pet game and, despite comparisons to Pokémon, Monster Rancher has a defined identity with its own tantalizing hook; find your monsters by inputting your own CD disks into your console. Unlike typical ‘pet raising’ games you don’t buy them from shops or trek through jungles in search of powerful creatures. Instead you must put any audio or PS1 game disk into your PlayStation console and, depending on the disk, receive one of over 400 monsters with many of these only being acquired once you’ve earned the right to raise them.

Developer: Tecmo
Genre: Simulation
Release date: 2000
Platforms: PlayStation 1
ESRB: E –Everyone

‘Monster Rancher 2’ is arguably the most successful and popular game in the Monster Rancher series despite later editions boasting better graphics and additional features. Often compared to Pokémon, ‘Monster Rancher 2’, or simply ‘Monster Rancher’ if you have the European edition, puts you in the role of a certified monster breeder where your job is to train monsters to fight in arena style battles. This strangely enticing game has the potential to take up hours upon hours of your time and dozens upon dozens of your old CD disks as you try and unlock the hidden mysteries within your CD and PS1 game collection.

Gameplay and Story

After introducing yourself and taking a short personality test you’re thrown into the role of a certified monster breeder with your assistant, Colt, by your side. The story of Monster Rancher 2 is mostly non-linear with key events only occurring when you choose to engage in them or when you meet specific requirements. The game also never has to end if you don’t want it to as you can carry on playing even after watching the ‘end’ video so this is a fantastic game for the casual gamer. The general aim of the game however is to raise different monsters, unlocking rare breeds and rising through the 6 ranks by beating other monsters in tournaments and cups. 

Gameplay is split into different segments that mostly revolve around training your monster or battling other monsters. After finding and naming your monster, be that by purchasing one of the three available at the market or by finding one on any audio or PS1 games you happen to have, you take it back to the ranch with you. This unusual twist to the game is painfully addictive and you’ll find yourself rooting around the house for any old CDs that you still have but, in this new digital age, I personally lacked enough CDs to get a real variety. Frustratingly a lot of CDs contain a ‘rare monster’ that means you haven’t met the requirements to train it yet but, by playing the game and advancing through it, those rare monsters will be unlocked with enough time and dedication and if anything it gives you an incentive to continue playing. 

 

Almost every aspect of your monster’s training regime can be controlled by you including choosing what food it will eat at the start of every month, all of which have different effects, which drills they engage in or when they should go on an ‘errantry’. All monsters have a collection of stats to be raised; Life, Power, Intelligence, Defence, Speed and Skill but monsters exceed at these in different ways, for example some monsters are intelligence based rather than power meaning rather than brute strength they adopt entirely different attacks that focus on not just damage but reducing the ‘guts’ of their opponent. ‘Guts’ is what you need to attack your opponent so by reducing them in the enemy it means they cannot physically attack you and allowing you to chip away at their health gradually until they either die or the match is up. Battles are won by having a greater percentage of health at the end of the battle, whether or not you K.O your opponent doesn’t tend to come into it as matches are fought on a time limit. 

The battles can, admittedly, be frustrating as luck tends to factor into it quite frequently and often you’ll be battling against your monster’s unwillingness to listen to you. How many opponents you face depends on what kind of tournament it is and there’s a nice round mixture of tournaments where sometimes you’ll be fighting for the most wins and sometimes where you’ll only be battling two or three other monsters who were the winners of previous fights. Whilst occasionally battles can become repetitive there’s a huge variety of opponents that are genuinely quite challenging and, when you enter a new grade or start with a new monster, verging on impossible. Due to the quite steep rise in difficulty level as you rise through the ranks the game is kept constantly challenging and rewarding so there’s no worry of out-levelling any of your opponents without some serious dedication to training. 

The amount of interaction you have with your monsters fighting and training regime is kind of variable as during battles you can choose to control it yourself or allow your monster to fight by themselves. You will always see how the fight plays out but this effects your ability to select the techniques, when to select them and whether you advance or retreat during matches. You cannot use items during battles which may seem a little odd at first but, provided you use them outside of battle, there are still plenty of items that can be used though with unusual effects. Generally however these items don’t affect the outcome of a battle as that depends entirely on how well you’ve trained your monster and how well you can play to their strengths during a match. 

Training your monster involves drills or errantry but you can also select whether to train using light drills or heavy drills. Each light drill will raise a single stat whereas heavy drills will raise two and decrease one as well as tire your monster out faster. When you select which drill your monster will perform it takes an entire week and, with only four weeks in a month, you can at most only get away with three training sessions a month and with one week to rest. During the drills themselves you can either watch the scene of your monster engaging in it, for instance swimming around a course or enduring the force of huge battering rams pounding into them, or you can just skip the cutscene and get straight to the results. Your monster is not just limited to failing or succeeding; they may also cheat or exceed and this often reflects how they are raised or their individual personalities. The way in which you can praise or scold your monster is an added dimension and a contributing factor in how loyal your monster is to you, as well as how spoilt they may be. Monsters that are frequently scolded, refused praise, pushed too hard during training sessions or doing their individual ‘dislike’ such as feeding them something they hate or forcing them to battle when they dislike it will ultimately stress your monster out. A stressed out monster means that they will die sooner, are more likely to fall ill and will frequently be tired and unable to fight properly. Monsters that are stressed out or neglected may even run away and this usually occurs when they dislike you but, on the other hand, a monster that likes you and that has more loyalty is more likely to listen to you during battle. Unlike many ‘virtual pet’ games, if this can be considered that, the fact that the way you raise and train your monster has a huge impact on the game makes it all the more absorbing as sometimes your personality and training regime will clash with a monster. What worked with your previous, precious monster now no longer works for your brand new one who needs to be brought up to speed. What this results in is you and your new monster both hating one another and either this poor partnership continues or you change your tactic and adjust to the new personality and style of this new, baby monster.

A huge part of the game and one I particularly enjoy is the feature of combining your monsters into new ones and unlocking more disk stones. Your monster won’t last forever and, depending on the type of monster, will have a lifespan that will decrease depending on how stressed or mistreated they are. There’s no actual way to view the lifespan of your monster so sometimes it can come as a bit of a shock when you wake up one morning, open the barn and find them motionless on the ground. Combining monsters is something of an art and it’s fairly confusing at first as it can be temperamental. The basic idea is that you raise two kinds of monster, the same breed or different ones, you can only have one at a time but you can ‘freeze’ them which is essentially putting them in a cryogenic freezer to be defrosted whenever you want to use them again. Once you’ve got two fine specimens you can then combine them for a flat fee, this merges their DNA to produce you one new monster that is supposed to have traits from its parents including stats, personality and any techniques the parents learnt. To help push your combining in the right direction you can use special items that you’ve picked up from expeditions, won from battles or found in other way. Items can include bits of a broken disk stone which is basically an essence of another, possibly rare, monster. Your new monster will always be back at the lowest grade for battles, level E, but this is doesn’t mean he’ll be lagging behind as the monsters you fight in battles do not raise their stats so, just as his parents did, your new monster can climb the grades and attempt to become a champion. 

Graphics and audio

As PlayStation 1 games go, Monster Rancher is reasonably attractive though not especially detailed. The sprite animations for the dialogue are particularly nice however and each character you encounter has an original look so there’s no rehashes of models. Everybody, including your monster, rae rather animated in their emotions and what’s especially nice to see is that your monster’s personality shows through the way they express themselves and move around. There’s also a noticeable growth in monsters as they age and visual indicators like this are always appreciated. Depending on the breed of monster and the sub-species that they may contain they all look different; colours, textures and features like horns or spines may be integrated into a base monster’s original appearance and this diversity is critical to making each monster feel like an individual. The environments too are pretty decent though the ranch is very unfurnished and mostly consists of just an empty expanse of rolling green hills. The weather is done particularly well in the game and you’ll notice the change in seasons is quite apparent due to the level of light and little things like the hue of the grass, how rainy or stormy it is and whether there’s snow or not. Finally, the battle arenas and town areas are fairly well drawn however, even though most of the buildings in the market do remind me of a bunch of disturbing faces, but overall I’d say the graphics for the game are of a decent level of quality. 

The music is something I particularly enjoy in the game as it’s very atmospheric and, the battle music in particular, changes depending on what kind of tournament you’re playing. It’s a very memorable soundtrack that after several sessions of playing is likely to be stuck in your head forever. There’s no verbal dialogue in the game as everything is done via text but your monsters will make noises that reflect their mood so I guess that’s something.

Overall

There’s a great potential to get hours and hours of gameplay out of Monster Rancher and still not quite understand how the complex calculation system of combing works, but it’s fun all the same. Whilst the graphics aren’t exactly the game’s strong point and gameplay can become repetitive and uneventful there’ s still this sense of achievement when you raise your monster’s rank or find a new, rare creature. The game is a nice level of challenging but is still very accessible and I particularly love how connected you can feel to your monster and how you develop favourites, I hate Pixie’s for example because I personally believe they’re a bunch of spoilt brats who never do what I say and who cheat all the time. Ahem. The game is definitely addictive and extremely time consuming, the original spin of finding your own monsters by using your own disks from home is always a draw for me and there’s a lot of replay value in the game due to how different the monsters are. This is one of those games where you can play it for the long haul or for a short stint but, I warn you, it’s a rare find and will cost you more money than your average PS1 game. If you can pick it up for less than £20 I advise you to buy it, immediately, because it won’t remain that cheap for long.

The Good: 

• Original premise of using your own CDs
• Lots of personality
• Huge selection and of monsters
• Nice difficulty curve
• Addictive gameplay
• Monster combination very fun to toy with
• Monsters are very interactive
• Lots of hidden features to unlock rare monsters
• Some nice quirky events to break things up such as birthdays and expeditions
  

The Bad:

• Can become repetetive and boring
• Training your monster takes a long time
• Graphics are a little grating
• Could use more features and places to go

The Score: 7/10

Final thoughts: "This is the golden age of Monster Rancher, it's really fun, super addictive and just has bags of originality. It's not like Pokémon, I swear."

Kill the Bad Guy - Full Review (PC game)

This monochrome game looks and feels as though it has more ambition than it can handle and, whilst it has some decent moments, tends to come across as pointless and repetitive. Unfortunately, a sleek look and some tongue-in-cheek humour is just simply not enough to elevate this game to the status it desires as an intelligent and imaginative slaughter fest. 

Developer: Exkee
Genre: Puzzle, murder simulation
Release date: May 28, 2014  
Platforms: PC, Mac and Linux
ESRB: T - Teen

‘Kill The Bad Guy’ is an indie puzzle game that revolves around assassinating targets using objects in the environment whilst remaining undiscovered and is generally depicted in a simple, understated artistic design with plenty of dark humour. Though the game suffers from some key issues you’ll still manage to squeeze a few hours of good old fashioned puzzling fun out of it even if it is an incredibly slow starting game. This is a puzzle game that puts you at the heart of revenge murdering individual targets who are more often than not based on real life offenders.

Gameplay

The objective of the game is rather self-explanatory; for each level you must kill a bad guy in various, unusual ways. The game comprises of 60 of these bone shattering, blood splattering levels and for every level there will be some way in which you can manipulate objects within the environment to bring about the doom of your target. At the start of every level you read a fairly amusing profile about your intended victim which tends to include details of their crime and a name that vaguely points towards somebody in real life like ‘KimDotKom’ in reference to Kim Dotcom or ‘Oscar’ in reference to Oscar Pistorius. After reading your target’s profile you’re then dropped into a white environment with black objects such as cars, ropes hanging on walls, steam vents and pianos that you can pick up, rotate and combine. You’re given very little guidance on what to do from here, except on the first few levels, so instead you have to work out what it is you can do that will result in your target’s death. By selecting dark coloured objects you’re shown a large array of arrows that point to where you can place objects, be that on the top of buildings or just simply anywhere on the ground. Objects that can be combined are coloured green after you pick up one of the constituent parts so, in this sense, it’s not particularly challenging to work out what goes with what. 

During gameplay there are very few controls other than picking up, rotating and combining but after you have managed to pull off your mission you can watch, cinematic style, as your target is killed over and over again in a replay mode. During replay you can switch the angle of the camera to get the best shot but, though not a particularly offensive element of the game, it does come across as a rather pointless. During actual gameplay you can, rather helpfully, pause the game and look around the area but you cannot manipulate anything whilst the game is paused meaning that, when you decide what you’re going to do, you need to do it quickly. This is fairly useful as in the later levels there are usually so many elements to contend with you need to give it a few moments before you figure out what it is you’re going to do. It’s not a simple matter of strapping a spear to a glorified slingshot and flinging it halfway across the map into the poor sod’s chest though, oh no, you have CCTV and the police to be concerned about. The real challenge of the game comes with doing everything undetected as these obstacles, and later on bodyguards, all have lines of sight. If you’re caught doing any of your dastardly assassinating then its mission failed and you need to try again but with less probability of your assignment being plastered all over YouTube.

As you progress through the levels you’re not just exposed to new challenges like the police and cameras, there is also a pretty significant increase in the variation of objects you’re given and thus the ways in which you can assassinate your targets. It must be said however that the first ten levels of this game are by far the worst of them all. Truthfully, I was amazed that I even progressed beyond them and discovered that the game did actually contain something challenging and interesting. Although these first few levels are intended to be tutorial levels that ease you into the mechanics of the game what you instead experience is something painfully dull and excessively lengthy. Never has a ‘tutorial’ chapter dragged on so slowly and so uneventfully and, worse still, it doesn’t even feel like a tutorial as there are very few instructions on what to do or how to do it. Instead you must trawl through what feels like a rite of passage before being allowed into the real game as you suffer through level after level of repetitive music that sounds as though it’s been put together by two thirteen year olds, deaths that all look the same bar one electrocution and one screaming guy on fire and an incredibly limited set of tools to experiment with. Now, whilst I’m of course glad that’s not all there is to this game I doubt many people enjoy the feeling of suffering for somebody else’s art.

Thankfully the game opens up after a couple of hours play and you’re exposed to more than one way to kill your target with these methods becoming gradually more complicated. The animations of your dying target do become a tad more varied in that they fall over when they are electrocuted but overall there’s not much difference between driving a spear through your target’s head, dropping a car on him and crushing him with a wrecking ball as, either way, he ends up as a bloody smear on the pavement. In a game where the method in which you kill your target is designed to be the be all and end all of the gameplay I would have expected more death animations such as a crushed, flattened body or some pierced limbs. 

The game has some degree of re-playability as within each level of the game there are ‘secondary objectives’ which include the same basic tasks; catch the tooth of your fallen victim, kill them on the first day and find a hidden passport. The only interesting additional objective is to kill your target in a specific manner as the rest are repetitive and restrictive. The passport tends to be in locations like beneath cars or objects and hidden within buildings that become transparent as you pan over them. By completing these unimaginative challenges you gain stars which count towards unlocking a bonus level at the end of each chapter. These bonus levels are, ironically, quite a bit more interesting than the main game as they tend to have more varied objectives like killing 30 zombies before they hobble over to the other side of the screen. Despite the fact that the bonus levels are pretty fun it’s still a shame about the ways in which you must unlock them as repeatedly clicking on a tooth that bounces away from your target after he dies is extremely dull. Searching for a passport in the environment is also very boring as, due to the unfurnished nature of the area, it’s very easy to spot them. Even though they are sometimes hid under an object this really adds in little to no depth and, frankly, I don’t know why they wouldn’t offer up different objectives. 

As a final note I found that the game’s humour often borders on the tasteless as there are sometimes very graphic descriptions of real life crimes such as those perpetrated the Columbine killers that some, if not many, may find uncomfortable. Generally the profiles of your targets are humorous covers of less invasive crimes such as fraud and embezzlement but when the game describes in graphic detail the crimes of the monstrous Albert Fish then the vibe of what is supposed to be a carefree, slaughter orientated romp is very quickly killed and is instead turned into something much darker and not at all light-hearted. Questionably dark humour aside the profiles still do offer good, immersive introductions to the start of every level and are relatively engaging. Besides, since all the targets look the same it’s good to offer up some way of distinguishing between them.

Appearance and sound

The game is decked out in a very simplistic design of pure white backdrops and solid black interactive objects. This professional feeling environment comes across as clean and crisp and, overall, it’s all very pleasant. The simply designed streets and parks never feel too plain however as, once your assassination attempts start, the landscapes are quickly cut through with bright red blood, fiery orange explosions and piercing blue water. Your targets also stand out vividly in comparison to their surroundings as they each support a yellow jacket and massive red bull’s eye target on their faces so there’s no chance that you’ll mistake a regular pedestrian for them. Unfortunately all of the targets look identical to one another and any kind of variation, even if it was just the colour of the jacket, would have done the trick but, regardless, I enjoyed how apparent they were in their surroundings.

I’ve already mentioned that I didn’t like the music and, whilst initially I enjoyed it, it quickly grates on you as essentially it’s just a sort of rap lyric of ‘kill the bad guy k-k-kill the bad guy’ over and over again to a beat. Thankfully the music only plays at the start and end of every level and not during gameplay as it would quickly become unbearable. Aside from the music the game has very good sound effects with plenty of appropriate noises for almost every action you can perform. There are

Overall

Whilst the game starts off slow and simplistic it quickly develops into a more robust murder simulation with some fairly imaginative solutions to the dilemma of how to discreetly kill your target. I particularly enjoyed the rather difficult task of luring your target to a particular spot or changing the path they were following by quickly putting obstacles in their way without them noticing. The level of difficulty scales as you play but even when the game becomes more complex there are moments where it comes across as pointless and repetitive. The secondary objectives are uninspiring but add in a reason to replay the previous levels and the bonus levels are a nice change of pace if you’re tired with the base game. Currently the game feels incredibly overpriced at $15 as it feels very much like a free, online game that’s been bulked out with additional levels and a couple of added in features. I would recommend waiting until the price has dropped but if you enjoy flippant murder simulation games with stark graphics and environmental manipulation then perhaps you’ll enjoy this more than I did.

The Good:

• A good concept
• Cool bonus levels
• Achievements are always fun 
• Nice looking map area
• Quite challening in later levels 
• Sometimes pretty amusing
• Nice use of CCTV and other obstacles to put more pressure on player

The Bad:

• Boring and uneventful
• Very under-developed
• Overpriced, feels like a free game
• Repetative and unexciting
• Lack of varation in death animations
• Pointless challenges

The Score: 4/10 

Last thoughts: "Thank god I don't have to play any more of that dreary rubbish..."

Viva Piñata - Full Review (Xbox 360 and PC game)

'Viva Piñata' presents a tantalizingly unusual premise that you’ll either love or hate; attract a variety of Piñata creatures into your lovingly crafted garden on Piñata Island then tame, personalize and manage them all. These Piñatas come in all shapes and sizes but are all based off of real creatures though with quirky names that reflect a type of candy and a strange array of colours that may be changed, if you can figure out how. There’s no denying it, this is a very casual game for the causal gamer but despite its childish appearance it’s a charming and addictive game with great creative opportunities for those who enjoying gardening, designing and pet keeping.

Developer: Rare (Xbox 360) Climax Group (PC)
Genre: Life simulation
Release date: November 9th 2006
Platforms: Xbox 360 and PC
ESRB: E - Everyone.

Story and gameplay

There’s not a great deal of storyline though there is some attempt to explain what’s going on; you start by walking through a beautiful haven filled with flourishing flowers, trees and crops with piñatas flying overhead, prancing through the grass or drinking from streams and pools. In the centre of all this fluff however is a tiny plot of hard, cracked earth with a woman sobbing in the middle of it all. After comforting her you’re charged with using this plot of land as your own and to turning it from something that resembles the aftermath of an explosion to something more in tune with the surrounding area. You’re given a watering can that’s practically falling to pieces with rust and a shovel that looks like it’ll snap as soon as it touches the earth, armed with these two devices you’re instructed to get to work. The game is vastly open-ended with very few objectives once the tutorial is finished with and though it may appear to be a simple gardening free for all there’s a hidden structure in the way that you progress. As you begin your gardening career you’ll gradually unlock new titles, better equipment, more garden space and different seeds that allow you to garden in more complex ways.

Whilst initially you’ll attract low level piñatas that simply require you to have a certain amount of grass, dirt or perhaps a particular flower or vegetable you’ll soon catch glimpses of wild, black and white creatures as they prowl the outside border of your garden. Attracting the attention of huge eagles, magnificent lions or clumsy elephants will take time, dedication and maybe even a few sacrifices as, after all, the animal kingdom is not known for its kindness towards smaller, weaker creatures. You start out in a very restricted manner; confined to a tiny plot of dilapidated land that’s in need of some serious maintenance but once you’re removed all the junk, beaten out the cracks and grown a bit of grass you’ll be faced with an empty canvass for you to play with. You’re never thrown too far into the deep end yet you’re given just enough freedom to discover a gardening style by yourself. Do you start with patches of flowers and draw in butterflies and bumblebees or do you opt for a vegetable patch to try and allure some rabbits or mice? Either way they’re all low levelled but the way in which you advance and nurture your garden will have an impact on the creatures you’ll lure inside your newly developing patch. Piñatas will only enter your garden once you’ve met their individual ‘visitor’ requirements and, once inside they’ll develop an additional set of requirements in order for them to actually become a resident. Once you’ve finally convinced them that they should inhabit your garden they’ll move in, change into their true colours and settle down to enjoy themselves. Here, they’ll live, sleep, mate and attract other piñatas to become residents too or, if you choose, entertain people at parties should they be that lucky piñata that gets chosen. It’s, admittedly, a very strange concept but still a very entertaining one once you’ve become enthralled in the everyday drama that comes with managing a horde of cute, but ultimately wild, animals.

Although a huge part of the game consists of attracting and taming Piñatas the game is so much more than that and, if you feel like exercising your creative side, there’s huge opportunity to get inventive with your garden’s design. There’s a surprising amount of content packed into this charming game whether that’s levelling up to unlock new features or dressing up your Piñatas to increase their worth before sending them off to children’s parties. If you enjoy gardening then you’ll be delighted at the whole host of trees, crops and flowers you can nurture and at the vast difference a few drops of fertilizer can make. The variety in trees, flowers and crops is actually quite impressive and there are some lovely elements like the magnificent oak tree that, when fully grown, has a trunk that appears to be carved with the forms of many different species of Piñatas. Whilst the huge range of, not only flora and fauna but buildings to, may seem impossible to fit all into one garden due to a build limit of sorts you can have multiple gardens with the same profile. In this case, chocolate coins and your gardening level all pass over so you will still have access to everything that has been unlocked yet now with a completely empty plot of land. It makes sense to have multiple gardens as many piñatas are specialized creatures who will only live in certain environments that would be extremely difficult to integrate into an already beautified and designed garden. Large piñatas such as hippos require gardens that are mostly consisting of water, for example, so attempting to make 80% of your garden consist of lakes and rivers whilst speckled with bulrushes and water lilies will, quite naturally, naturally destroy any attempt you had at a designing a perfectly crafted flower bed and orchard.

You are not the only non-piñata resident on the island however and throughout the game you’ll be guided and helped by the local residents who offer services in shops and, if you pay for it, services in your garden such as weeding, gathering and as either watchmen or night watchmen. Whilst the first couple are pretty self-explanatory the presence of watchmen in the game is unusual as gardening and virtual pet simulation combinations tend to be of the peaceful variety, not this one. Amidst the everyday scraps and brawls that occur between piñatas that don’t get along you also have to contend with outsider aggressors such as sour piñatas, ruffians and the evil Dastardos who’s the ringleader of all of these. Sour piñatas can be made resident and turned into good variants of their sour selves but ruffians and Dastardos are evil for life. Whilst ruffians simply make a nuisance of themselves by dropping poisonous sweets for your unsuspecting piñatas to eat and throwing up land over rivers and pools you may make, Dastardos is actively violent. When your piñatas get sick, by losing a fight or eating something poisonous, Dastardos will show up and break them open with a stick, effectively killing them. Well, not exactly kill them as this is a nice place so rather than die permanently broken piñatas merely respawn as the black and white variety outside of your garden.

Whilst the standard way of keeping these antagonists away from your garden is by taming sour piñatas and using their special abilities to keep Dastardos distracted you can also buy special upgrades. The game’s in-game currency are, quite appropriately, chocolate coins which can be made by selling piñatas, building a mine and selling what you find within it or making and selling produce for profit. Chocolate coins can be put towards a huge variety of things such as garden items, fertilizer, piñata houses, special buildings, hirelings, fashion accessories for your piñatas, seeds, produce or special services like the doctor or the hunter who can capture piñatas for your garden. In order to keep track on everything that’s going on it’s useful to utilize the in-game journal which is there to not only provide backstory about the island and its residents but also to track your accomplishments and statistics such as whether you’ve achieved maximum growth for individual plants or how many piñatas you have in your garden. The journal brings to light several unofficial objectives as it lists each plant and each piñata with several checkboxes beside them all which are checked as you accomplish things such as finding each of the 3 variants for each piñata or romancing a species a certain number of times. A piñata variant occurs when you instruct your pinata to eat something and, after enough experimentation, you’ll find three different items that will change their colour into something else. Whilst this is of course simply aesthetic it’s a pleasant option to be able to discover more hidden elements within the game.

Part of what makes this game so enjoyable is not just the attention to detail and the open-ended, casual gameplay but also the charming personality of your piñatas themselves. It’s quite easy to form opinions on certain piñatas and pick out favourites as the way in which they interact with each other and the environment differs depending on the species. Syrupents, a snake type piñata, for example often start fights and can be quite stubborn to get rid of yet, if you perform special actions with them, can become entirely different creatures that are extremely useful. Many piñatas also enjoy wearing special accessories and, whilst some have the potential to enhance the piñata in some way or form, mostly it’s just to boost their happiness meter or to allow them to ‘romance’ one another. Swananas, for instance, enjoy wearing diamond collars and strutting about, honking snobbishly whilst Cinnamonkey’s are disturbingly human as they sidle about on two legs and who require a fez hat to allow them to breed. As an interesting addition you can also buy domesticated piñatas from one of the several shops as well as put down fencing to enclose them should they be something like chickens or sheep. Amongst all of this is the actual ability to send your piñatas to parties as, now and then, a crate will be given to you with the request for a certain type of piñata or just one of high worth. By packing your piñata off to a party you receive some ‘joy candy’ that makes piñatas happy in return but, what with everything else going on, this apparent ‘objective’ in the game is lost.

Graphics and audio

The artistic style of ‘Viva Piñata’ is both unique and extremely distinctive with its bold, colourful and patterned style. Whilst it may not be to everybody’s taste due to them appearing somewhat childlike it cannot be denied that, visually, ‘Viva Piñata’ is technically impressive and extremely advanced for the time it was brought out. There’s a very fine level of detail in the game that can only really be appreciate when you zoom right in as only then can you witness the growth of plants or admire the little augmentations strewn across buildings and clothing. Every blade of grass can be identified, the clouds roll by as the time ticks by in a well enforced day and night cycle and even your custom designed labels can be seen clearly on the bodies of your piñatas. Not one stone has been left unpolished and everything from the texture of the grass to the beautiful, vibrant scenery has been crafted to maintain that distinctive ‘Viva Piñata’ atmosphere. 

he music of the game is generally very soothing and not at all irritating though, for very long periods of play, it may start to grate a little. All of the Piñatas have their own individual sounds that tend to a little exaggerated such as a ‘peeping’ noise from worms or a strange, haughty honking noise from those uppity swans I mentioned earlier. The personality of the piñatas are all very well addressed in the sounds that they make but truly it’s the overall ambient noises from the gentle swishing of the wind, the hammering of the rain or the combined snuffling of your piñatas. Now and then there are some very abrasive noises such as when a sour piñata enters your garden or drops a poisoned candy but these simply serve as loud, audible warnings that something has happened and so in this sense are not particularly annoying.

Overall

Despite initial reservations ‘Viva Piñata’ is an undeniably good game with a great deal of personality and charm that’s simply hard to resist. With a very solid 30 hours or so playtime the game puts you in a position where you start caring passionately about taming all available piñatas and about making the perfect, piñata paradise. It’s an extremely casual game with some basic multiplayer support where up to four people control the same on-screen cursor and, whilst this is likely to not interest older games, is beneficial for parents and their children. Its very friendly demeanour makes it a great game for beginners with plenty of help at the beginning of the game whereas for those looking for more of a challenge I tell you this; just try and get a hold of a Dragon piñata, then tell me it’s not challenging.

The Good:

• Looks fantastic, very detailed, very vibrant
• Relaxing, casual gameplay 
• Deceptively challenging at later stages 
• Addictive and ‘collection’ orientated mentality of meeting all objectives 
• Fun for all ages 
• Unique and distinctive gameplay 
• Lovely audio and music 
• Multiple gardens a nice addition for allowing themed gardens 
• Piñatas are very charming, huge variety

The Bad:

• Co-op play limited to sharing the same cursor
• A lot less to do as you level up 
• Some autonomy happens as you employ staff making you feel a little redundant 
• Lacks any real storyline and objectives which could have given the game more structure

The Score: 8/10

Final thoughts: "This is quite possibly the best 'gardening' game I have ever played, despite there being an updated version of this game (trouble in paradise) I still find this one to be the most accessible."

Lion Simulator - Full Review (MS-DOS game)

'Lion' is a type of life simulation game where you take on the role of a lion that may be either a solitary lion or one that is part of a larger group. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like trying to survive as a lion in the African landscape then you’ll enjoy the highly realistic and highly enjoyable game that is 'Lion'.
 
Developer: Sanctuary Woods
Genre: Simulator
Release date: 1995
Platforms: PC, MS-DOS
ESRB: E - Everyone.  
 
Gameplay and game modes

Lion has two primary modes of play; a scenario mode and a simulation mode. There’s an additional mode that’s called ‘Safari’ which is actually just an educational resource about lions, presumably to make this game more attractive to parents who feared their children were just frivolously pretending to be big cats. The Safari mode is extremely extensive with voice overs, information and pictures in what is basically an interactive encyclopaedia. The scenario mode has objectives that you must complete and has a very strong roleplaying element as it also comes with background information on what has recently happened. Sometimes you are trying to find food for your three cubs who trail around behind you whilst you yourself struggle to keep going, other times you’ve been cornered by a group of hunters and must quietly slip away without being shot. The gameplay is varied due to these objectives and also pretty challenging. When you’re starving hungry, unable to find water anywhere and desperately need to sleep it’s extremely difficult to keep going and the sense of urgency that comes with it is highly immersive. 

The scenario mode and the simulation mode are both played from a birds eye view of the area which I prefer over ‘over the shoulder’ type cameras as this way you can see what’s happening around you at all times. The scenario mode’s use of objectives is really the only difference between that and the simulation mode as they require you to complete the objective before time runs out or the game ends. Simulation mode strips away these time constraints and you can just go about your business which generally means resting, drinking, eating, not being killed and living a prosperous lion life. Whilst simulation mode is generally where you’ll be advancing your social status or increasing the size of your pride you won’t have to do these things for the scenario mode, unless it’s the specific objective you have been set. 

Staying alive isn’t necessarily easy however as you live somewhere between the Masai tribes and the wilderness of the savannah. You could always try stealing the Masai cattle but it’s not recommended as they have spears and they want to keep their cows. Since the Masai don’t want to share their food with lions you need to either scavenge off of already dead carcasses or hunt down your own meals, though that requires a great deal of energy. Thankfully you don’t just have to rely on what you can immediately see on the screen; you have access to a plethora of lion senses to help you survive in this harsh wilderness of a landscape. These senses can be used via either keyboard hotkeys or by using the bar at the bottom of the screen that also includes your stats and a mini-map. By using the bar the game is automatically paused so you can click around and freely use your mouse without moving your lion who is usually controlled by the mouse, not the keyboard. Hearing and scent are extremely important as they will point you in the direction of valuable resources like food and water. Some animals are far too large for you to catch on your own and are more likely to crush you than nourish you. When you’re just a single, solitary, hungry lion you need to be a little selective about which animals are worth wasting your energy on. The easiest way to catch prey by far is to sneak up on them. By using your mouse you control how fast your lion is moving and you can also make them crouch so that rather than walking up to a giraffe you’re sneaking up to them, making use of the environment’s natural cover like trees and bushes. If your prey notices you then you’ll have to sprint, full pelt, and try to slash them as soon as you’re on top of them, this is no easy task as lions have fairly low stamina. The game also employs a tally for each lion, which is basically how many animals they’ve killed that’s broken down into individual species, meaning you can see which member of your pride isn’t pulling their weight. 

Of course, all that running to catch a zebra is going to tire you out and make you thirsty. Sleeping is easy, you can sit or lay down whenever you want to though you should make sure you’re in a safe area first or else have to groggily escape from a group of tribesmen or poachers. Water on the other hand is rare, we are in the savannah after all, and you can quite literally spend days trying to find a watering hole or river. It’s an incredibly realistic representation of the struggle that African animals have to go through and, when you finally find the water, the sight of dozens of other species of animal also quenching their thirst there is not only surprising but really quite lovely. Keeping yourself fed and watered as you try and complete your mission objectives sounds easy, but it’s not and it does require a bit of practice to realize just how far you can push yourself before you become too weak to survive. To make matters worse there’s also mankind to contend with. From time to time you will encounter hunters who, if they spot you, will most certainly shoot you. They’re incredibly dangerous but fairly slow moving so as long as you’re aware of where they are at all times you should be ok. 

The simulation mode has the exact same form of gameplay only without objectives or time restrictions. At the beginning of a simulation mode you can adjust the settings for each new game such as the weather, the density of prey, the number of poachers on the map and how long the game will run for which can be anywhere between six months to infinity. You then select which lions you’d like in your pride by looking through a number of female and male lions each with their own strengths and weaknesses in the fields of endurance, hunger and strength. These lions are all named and have backstories to make things a little more immersive. In simulation mode you have greater freedom and can try and improve your own social status if you like. That means for male lions starting your own pride or taking over a pre-existing one. You can find and then try and overthrow the leader of another pack before mating with others and having some cubs. You can then raise those cubs; keeping them safe, fed and watered so that they may grow up to be lions themselves and to keep your pride going strong. There are not many games that require you to take on the role of a hungry lion who is desperately trying to impress a lioness in order to mate with her, but then again there are not many games like Lion.

Overall

If you’ve ever fancied trying out what it’s like to be a lion for a bit then you may as well give this game a go. The graphics are reasonably attractive with highly detailed animals and some nice little features like vultures above carcasses and scrubby bushes. Whilst they are just normal VGA and nothing spectacular the game still looks fairly appealing, nicely coloured and detailed enough to do the job. The transition between day and night is brilliant with sunrises and sunsets whilst the change in weather adds a much need variation to the otherwise dry and yellowed landscape. Though I find the simulation mode a little boring due to the repetitiveness of gameplay I found the scenario mode interesting and varied enough to play through a couple of times. Since I kept dying I can only assume I’m either a terrible lion or the game is actually pretty challenging but it’s still a great game that you can get a few hours play out of before it loses its initial edge. Overall though this game is such an old gem that it’s instantly appealing for those who like a good simulation game or who just really like animals. 

The Good:

• An actual lion game! Where you're a lion!
• Varied objectives and levels
• Very customizable sandbox level
• Lovely, quaint graphics
• Suprisingly challenging
• Responsive, intelligent AI
• Scoring system adds in competetive play
• Very detailed use of lion senses

The Bad:

• A little difficult to control your lion
• Could do with a greater variety of sounds
• Sandbox mode becomes boring after a while

The Score: 7/10 

Last thoughts: "I never knew animal simulation games could be this well made, I wonder if Wolf is just as good..."

The Stanley Parable - Quick Review ( + Intro video) (PC game)

The Stanley Parable is a fantastic, intelligent and highly amusing indie game that puts you in the role of a man whose entire life is about to be turned on its head, and at the same time, it won't be.

Developer: Davey Wreden (mod), Galactic Cafe (Davey Wreden and William Pugh) (remake)
Genre: Adventure
Release date: October 17th 2013
Platform:Windows and OS X
ESRB: Not rated

It’s very difficult to write a review about the Stanley Parable because so much of what makes it brilliant as its ability to surprise you with its multiple routes and endings. With this in mind, I’m going to keep this review very short so as not to spoil it but believe me when I tell you that you have to play this game, no really, you have to.

The Stanley Parable is an updated version of a Half-Life 2 mod and has been made into a standalone game with a new, HD look. The game plays almost entirely in first person perspective and is beautifully crafted with tight, smooth graphics and one of the best narrator’s I’ve had the pleasure to listen to in a long time. The story follows a man named Stanley who’s entire existence involves pushing buttons on a keyboard as he receives orders on his monitor, the orders dictate to him how long to press the button for, which button to press and so on. One day, when he’s sitting at his desk at work, he realizes that no orders have come through on his monitor all day and, now that he thinks about it, the room outside his office door is completely silent. You will take control of Stanley and follow the story, or not follow the story, or if the mood takes you, try and find your own story in this explorative game of choices, or not choices, or half choices. There's bucket loads of replayability and it is guaranteed to keep you entertained for hours because, all in all, it’s simply a fantastic game. The story is introspective and entertaining and focuses strongly on the way a game is narrated with plenty of wit and humour. You’ll constantly be questioning yourself and the nature of what you’re going through but every step is both innovative and memorable. Truly, this is a game worth playing over and over again just to see what else you can find and what else you can do. When you think the game is over, it's not, there's still more to be found and more rules to bend, break or follow. Oh and if you want to watch the intro of the game to get you started, check this video out:

Find out what all the hype it about by grabbing it here whilst it’s still on sale on Steam. 

The Good:

• It's amazing.
• It's hilarious.
• It has the best narrator ever.
• The graphics are perfect
• So many options.
• Stop reading these, go play it now.

The Bad:

• I want more of it and there is no more. 
• I cannot write a proper review because it would spoil it.

The Score: 9/10

Last Thoughts: "I'm suprised at how genuinely hilarious this was, I found myself doing pointless things just to see the reaction of the game."

The Sims 2 Castaway - Full Review (PS2 game)

'The Sims 2 Castaway' broke away from a home life based game and introduced the completely new concept of managing your shipwrecked crew as they try and survive on a series of islands. 

Developer: The Sims Division
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Life simulation
Release date: October 22 2007
Platforms: PS2, Nintendo Wii, PSP and Nintendo DS.
ESRB: T - Teen

'The Sims 2 Castaway' is a spin off title from 'The Sims 2' but all the elements of a life simulation game still exist, though in new and interesting formats. The game includes features such as having to collect resources, create a tribe, find collectibles and most importantly, find a way to escape the island paradise you’ve been stranded on.

Gameplay and story

You start out by creating a crew of between one to six crew members and, in this game, the initial character creation is extremely poor with limited editing of a Sim’s face and very few clothing options. Something which is interesting though is the ability to select what your Sim’s industry was prior to the whole, boat crash thing, choosing from several career options including chef, ranger, mechanic and doctor. The job picked has an effect on what skills they start out with but, of course, these skills can be raised over time. After you’ve selected your crew you get to pick a starting crew member then watch as, through a series of photographs, the boat they were cruising on encounters a terrible storm that ultimately capsizes them all. When you awaken, as your chosen Sim, you find that you’ve washed up, alone, on a sandy beach. With nothing on your person except a sleeping mat, knife and toilet paper you’ll have to work out how you’re going to build a new life for yourself on this seemingly uninhabited island.

During the game you have an increasing number of objectives that start out simple and become more and more complicated with the overall end goal being to find your way off the island. In the meanwhile, whilst you figure out how to do that, you have to get used to your new island lifestyle and adapt to the many challenges it poses. Now, it’s very easy to criticize this game from the off because there are many prevalent issues that cannot be ignored but, despite this, I do sincerely love this game so don’t take my criticisms too harshly. Before we launch into the numerous issues with the game however let’s look at the actual gameplay. 

Quite simply, the gameplay is very similar to the original Sims games in that you control a Sim and are responsible for his or her wellbeing by keeping their motives raised and giving them a home to live in. As you follow the objectives you’ll encounter your crew members, provided you made them at the beginning of the game, and from there you can build relations with them with the ultimate goal of forming a tribe and assigning everybody jobs. Skills are still present within the game only now they are increased in more obscure ways such as creating clothing from flowers, vines or leaves to raise your creativity skill or by harvesting ingredients for your cooking skill. Unlike previous games your motives, such as hunger, sleep and fun, are only discovered by doing certain things in the game, hygiene for example does not become an issue until you meet another Sim, which says a lot about the developers’ opinion on bathing. The ways in which you raise your motives in this game are admittedly quirky, inventive and resourceful and, away from the creature comforts of home, more of a challenge. Whilst later on you can construct yourself a functioning shower you start off by raising your hygiene motive using the old fashioned method; swimming in any bodies of water you come across. Initially, alone on the island, social can quickly become a problem for extroverted Sims but fear not for you can always create yourself an imaginary friend out of a coconut shell, berries and a whole lot of sand. Alternatively, you can always talk to the resident chimps or just track down your crew members and be done with it.

On the three islands you’re confined too you’re not going to have much trouble fashioning yourself a comfortable retreat as resources are varied and bountiful. As it turns out you washed up on possibly the best trio of islands in the whole Caribbean as the sea is full of clams and fish, the jungle is full of every single fruit, vegetable or nut you could possibly think of and there’s even the potential for chicken or boar meat, should you know where to look. Everything is very well integrated into the way you play and generally there are many things that can be done to continually enhance your island life. You begin, for example, by building a very simple fire pit and fire by collecting up washed up driftwood and once your fire is lit you’ll use it to cook food, keep warm and tell stories, when that fire eventually burns out, you can collect up the residual ash to be used for your own private farmland later on. Whilst you may start with just your sleeping roll beside your tiny fire pit you’ll eventually build up a complex mansion using harder to obtain resources such as metal ore and glass that was forged within the very heart of a volcano. No, really. Once you’ve got your basic survival down you can aim to live much more comfortably as is quite standard in a Sims game. Whilst house building and interior decoration is usually easy to muddle through when you have access to the build tool and a plethora of furniture items but here, on the island, you’ll have to make everything from scratch whether that’s the individual wall segments of your house or a pre-shaped layout that ranges from a scrubby little shack to a flamboyant wooden mansion. 

Something which I detest in games has made an appearance in this one and that’s the build limit, you may remember my fury at its presence in the console edition of ‘Zoo Tycoon’ but, for once, it’s not so bad in this game. A built limit restricts how much you can place down in any given area and is measured by a bar at the side, when the bar is full you can put nothing else down until you remove some things. Looking on the bright side of things, there are plenty of areas where the limit starts off as very low, it varies from section to section, allowing you to build your perfect mansion and, since it’s an island with very different content in each section, it’s quite understandable that you cannot put much down in a place consisting mostly of cliff face and jungle compared to a huge open plain with fruit frees and a pond around the outside of it. 

An undeniable problem with the game revolves around one of the primary gameplay elements and that is the gathering of resources. At later stages this involves a lot of grinding as it takes a fair bit of time to find and gather all of the materials you require for higher tiered objects. Resources are often used up very quickly too; vines are used for almost everything so you’ll frequently be hacking away at them in the jungle, constantly trying to replenish your supply. There’s also, sadly, a lot of lag in this game and the loading screens tend to be long and frequent, often leaving you frustrated with the slow pace of the game. Whilst I personally can cope with the length of the loading screens the worst crimes of this game is most definitely the horrible lag which will cause delays in selecting actions, turning the camera and waiting for your Sim to do anything. If this is not already bad enough, the camera is terrible as it often gets stuck on the environment leaving you staring awkwardly at plants or the hills that border the edge of an area. When placing an item sometimes it will appear well away from the area of play, as though it were on the other side of the map, leaving you to guide it slowly back into the placement grid. The houses too suffer from the poor camera as, whilst you can lower the walls, it’s annoying to have to do that just to see partially into a home and, even with the walls lowered, you’re still stuck looking at the supporting beams.

Graphics and environments

When playing this game in 2014 I was unsurprised to find the graphics a little harsh around the edges with plenty of blurry moments and a fair bit of choppy, razor sharp edges on things like hair and the leaves of the trees. What I was surprised at was how little it bothered me as, despite the obviously inferior graphics, the game has gone to great lengths to keep everything rather picturesque. Having gotten over the initial jolt of a low-end 2007 PS2 game I began to appreciate the detail that had gone into the design of each individual resource whether it was cucumbers, chicken feathers or fish as they swam visibly beneath the surface of clear, tropical waters. Nothing is beyond recognition and even tiny objects like different shaped shells or messages in bottles that you can pick up on the beach are noticeable from a distance so the frustration of searching through poorly constructed environments is thankfully not present. That said, the Sims look terrible but it’s mostly because of the lack of customizability, particularly of their faces, that has annoyed me. No matter what you do to the lips of women, for example, they’ll always be stuck in a wide, toothy grin so in that sense you’ll have your work cut out for you making each Sim look unique especially when, after enough time on the island, all their hair will grow to an identical shaggy length. Thankfully, a variety of clothing designs and the ability to trim your hair and beard back helps you keep track of who is who.

The environments in general are nice and varied and the fact you can freely venture between all three islands, using a fast travel option on the map if it suits you, is really notable. Deep, dark caves, lush jungles, sandy beaches and interesting places like an ancient forge within a volcano or a crystal strewn cavern. It never feels as though areas are repeating on themselves and you’ll spend a good portion of time carefully selecting which place will be where you finally settle down and build your ultimate home.

Overall

At its very core 'The Sims 2 Castaway' introduces a really interesting concept of surviving, either alone or in a tribe of people, on tropical islands. Everything is very well integrated from the way you raise your skills to the way you satisfy your Sims motives and there’s lots of curious elements such as quick-time fishing and making furniture out of resources. Primarily, the game suffers from terrible lag and a painstakingly awkward camera with little annoyances such as grinding for materials and the inability to have proper romantic relationships not helping its case. I particularly like the inclusion of objectives and a sort of story mode with the option to just play at your own pace and relish the island life should you feel like it. Overall, this is a great simulation game that is very pleasant and original so you can look past its low-tech feel and poor construct then you’ll likely enjoy this deviation from the classic Sims game.

The Good:

• Variety of tasks and objectives
• Open ended gameplay
• Original survival premise makes for interesting gameplay
• Ability to build everything up from scratch is really rewarding.
• Very well intergrated way of raising skills and motives.

The Bad:

• Lots of time is spent on gathering resources.
• The camera often gets stuck on environment.
• Sims relationships are limited.
• Character creation is boring, Sims all look very similar.
• Build limit a little annoying.

The Score: 6/10 

Last thoughts: "I wish this game wasn't so blurry and with such a terrible camera because, truly, this is a really addictive game and there's nothing out there on the market like it."