I spent hours watering plants and finding the right objects to craft an easel out of discarded pieces of wood, and I got an odd sense of satisfaction for doing so.

These elements are missing from Castaway, and yet I still had the urge to keep playing.Īs boring as it sounds on paper, foraging for berries and collecting pieces of driftwood to fashion into Swiss Family Robinson-style objects is actually very addictive. In previous Sims titles, my attention span lasted long enough to build and decorate the house before trapping my Sim between two toilets or being incredibly mature and naming Sims after my friends and making them gay. The most entertaining part is in discovering the island's mysteries, rather than decorating your living area, and yet the game remained eminently playable, which confused me to no end. This is not a traditional Sim game, as it is far more of a point-and-click adventure and looks a lot like the offspring of Monkey Island, if the characters inhaled gasoline fumes until they forgot how to speak properly.

I suppose the ability to dress up rocks with pretty lights and makeshift ornaments is Sim-like, and even though the game doesn't specifically demand that you help people and accomplish objectives in a linear fashion, if you don't, you will just sit around doing nothing until you or your Sim dies of boredom. In an odd sense, the game is fairly linear since the standard Sims elements are absent (house, job, etc.), and progression can only really occur by helping people in order to get new items that can help you explore the island or decorate your shelter. You weren't the only one with less common sense than a dish cloth, as others have also accidentally washed up, so you start to build a society around helping people get food, building shelters and essentially keeping yourself happy. The concept is simple, mainly due to expositions being a trial to narrate because Sims sound like babbling mental patients when they talk, and most gamers aren't fluent in 'crazy.' Your Sim is knocked into a crate, put on a cargo vessel that encounters a storm and washes up on the shores of a mysterious tropical island. As a result, Castaway for the NDS may not be a good selection for Sims veterans.

Thankfully, the title actually lands in new territory for the Sims, although it introduces the problem of altering the franchise's tried-and-true formula to bring some variation to the gameplay.

As the Superstar expansion pack coincided with the success of 'American Idol' and its UK equivalent, 'X Factor,' it was with dread that I imagined the latest stand-alone game, The Sims 2: Castaway, would be a 'Survivor' knock-off. The Sims have had what can charitably be described as 'interesting' lives: They've been pet owners, movie stars, millionaires, rock stars and been on more vacations than most Hollywood actors.

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