View All (5)

The added tools and features will give you a reason to dust off that sim family you may have forgotten about.

Unless you have been living under a rather large rock or are completely unfamiliar with PC gaming, you will know that The Sims are the most successful game franchise in the history of the platform. There have been millions of copies sold around the world and it, along with the various expansion packs, continues to top the best sellers lists. Now comes one of the latest incarnations of The Sims empire, The Sims Deluxe Edition.

If you happen not to know anything about The Sims, it is basically a people simulator that lets you design, build, and maintain a household of people or “sims” through the purchase of possessions and the construction of homes in a simulated environment.

The goal of the game is to basically play God as you endeavor to keep your sims happy and expand their lives as much as possible through work, play, and relationships with other sims. Either that or you can simply let them go and see what happens. The open-ended approach allows you a great deal of room to manage or mangle your sims’ lives to your whim.

This version of Maxis’ popular people simulator bundles The Sims with the first expansion pack Livin’ Large, along with a sim creator and some extras available only in the Deluxe Edition. These added elements give you more features and abilities to design your sims’ lives and homes, along with the freedom to make more realistic and detailed sim families.

The Deluxe Edition contains features like expanded furniture and decoration choices, as well as 5 new career paths for your sims. You can also use the sim creator feature to design your sims down to the finest details, even placing your own face on sims for that extra touch of realism.

These additions are a fun enhancement over the original game, but do have a draw back. For some reason the game’s designers have chosen to include some relatively strange and mostly useless items for purchase. Several of the new items are rather tacky and bizarre styles of flooring, wallpaper, and furniture that will make homes look like something out of a John Waters movie.

There are also several design and furniture options for building what looks like a mad scientist lair, complete with the scary mechanisms, imposing brick facades, and thick, nasty looking wood plank doors. There are really no practical uses for these building options with a normal sim family. It would have been nice if they could have included a bit more practical options for furniture and accessories, but it can be fun for adventurous players to see what can be done with some of these more bizarre selections.

The Sims Deluxe Edition is relatively unchanged from the original, as far as the core game goes. It retains the same look and feel as the initial release. The original status bar system used to monitor emotions and relationships is still there. Sim characters still chatter about in their own little “simlish” language to no end, and all the same relationship options remain.

Your sims can continue to fall in love, hate with a passion, and buddy around just like they did in the original game. For those of you who own the original Sims, you will not have to be inconvenienced with backing up and uninstalling before playing The Deluxe Edition. The game installs directly over the original, leaving all your sims and their homes intact and available for updating with the 150 new items.

While improving a great deal over the original version, The Deluxe Edition still suffers from some of the same problems and annoyances as the original. Dealing with sims can become difficult and down right tedious at times, particularly after their initial creation. Having to constantly remind them to go to the bathroom or take a shower is a nuisance, especially considering the fact that you are supposed to be dealing with adults.

It can also be difficult to maintain your sim’s emotional levels or trying to cope with sims who don’t get along. It is very easy to get bogged down in trying to improve these issues related to mood and family to the exclusion of all other things.

Time passes much faster in The Sims world, meaning that you have little time to complete all the things you need to get done and yet still have time for entertainment or personal improvement. This feature was obviously intended to give the game an extra touch of realism, but can duplicate reality a bit too closely. You may begin to question why you are playing a simulation of people with hurried lives if you are dealing with that phenomenon in your own life.

The Deluxe Edition holds something enjoyable for old fans of The Sims and those new to the franchise. With even more possibilities at hand, new Sims fans can feel free to take chances and experiment with a sim family as never before. The added tools and features will give you a reason to dust off that sim family you may have forgotten about and give them a new life and a more detailed look.

Reviewed by Kevin B, PC Gameworld.