Payday 12 January 2006

Pic of the day: It has arrived!

Sims2 PSP first looks

I don't just destroy old games, although there has been a lot of that. I occasionally buy a new one too! Well, actually I bought The Sims 2 for Sony's PlayStation Portable mostly out of loyalty, and some curiosity I guess. It is not like I have time to play it, really. I am still moving – in the final days of it as usual – and I already have Animal Crossing – Wild World for my Nintendo DS, not to mention the original (and best) Sims2 for the PC. But I still took somewhere around an hour out of my busy day to install and test this game.

Comparing it to the PC game is just not fair. Despite the same name, the games are very different. Sims2 for PC is a generational game spanning neighborhoods of families. You can create any number of them, or breed new ones from existing stock. You buy or build houses for them and guide them (as much as you want to, at least) through more or less ordinary lives until the logical conclusion of their existence. It is, as the press loves to write, a "people simulator".

In contrast, Sims2 for PSP is primarily an adventure game. The stats are described in Sims2 format, and you retain the idea of aspirations, fears and wants. But in addition to fulfilling these, you also have to reach goals, which are determined by the adventure aspect of the game. And you play one single Sim for a limited part of his or her lifespan. So it's not like you get the PC game to go. Far from it. That said, it looks like a good adventure game if you like those.

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The controls are fairly intuitive. You can move around with the usual motion keys, and rotate the view with the two shoulder buttons. The X button is the activate button as usual. The one thing that seems weird is that you back out of menus and such using the triangle rather than the circle button. Don't ask me why. Most nifty is the Select button, which opens a stat screen. Actually at least two stat screens, you can shift between them. And here you can not only see your current goals, but also the need bars. If you have played Sims2 (or even The Sims) you will know the need bars. If your Sanity Meter falls too low (this plays the role of the green diamond in the original game) you can here see at a glance whether your Sim is lonely or just needs to pee. By tucking this away, precious screen estate is saved. This comes in handy, as we'll see soon. But having it at hand at all can really save the day. I missed it so much in Sims2 DS, it was a main reason why I quickly stopped playing. (If it is there at all, nobody ever explained it to me. Here you are taken through a long, detailed tutorial.)

The graphics are good, very similar to the PC version, but of course the play area is limited. The designers have chosen to limit the visible area rather than zooming out to a stick-man point of view. This, and the lack of a handy quick map, makes it a bit hard for those of us who easily get lost. As one of those, I dearly wish there was a map like some games have, where you can see at a glance where you are in the world. Still, the game is pretty.

This beauty comes at another price too, or perhaps it is something else that does it. The game loads almost all the time. Move about? Load. Talk to someone? Load, load, load. Almost no matter what you do, there is a brief pause as the game loads. This cannot possibly be healthy for the UMD drive. Hopefully it will last for the duration of the PSP, though. It is not like we will still be playing games on it five years from now. There will either be a PSP 2 or 3, or it will be left as bleached bones by the wayside. Evolution is a bitch sometimes.

The immediate problem is that the constant loading slows the game down. I've read a few reviews and it seems reviewers are not happy about it. I can understand that, especially during the dialog minigame, where time is of essence and the load time is taken from the time you have for response.

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Oh yes. The dialog minigame. In the original Sims2, you just talk to neighbors and the interests of the two parts determine how long they talk. The longer they talk, the better the relationship boost. Well, no more. You have to be on your toes, or rather your thumb. You can choose one of three purposes for the dialog: Chat, flirt or intimidate. But the procedure is the same. The neighbor says something in the form of one of their interest icons. You have to click one of three buttons that are assigned relevant symbols. At the easiest level, when you have just met someone, you can get away with just feeding their own words back to them. Just pick the symbol that matches their own, but do it before they move on. Soon it gets more difficult, as you will have to pick a related symbol. For instance a movie reel is related to a TV but presumably not to a toy plane or an astronaut. (I can think of reasons why it would be either, but don't get too creative.) Also, things can go pretty fast after a while. More importantly, in some environments the load times are such that you have perhaps one tenth of a second to respond. Your best hope is to guess one of the three buttons and mash it. This is a killer design flaw and will probably throw off a large number of playerS. If you can get over that though, it is a fascinating idea.

The good news is that while the dialog game gets harder over time, you can do something to make it ease up. If you raise the relevant skills, such as charisma for chatting, the game will reward you by making that part easier. So raising skills is no idle hobby. Supposedly it also helps if you keep your sanity meter high (fulfill needs and goals).

The point of the dialog minigame is to get secrets. The type of secret depends on whether you chat, flirt or intimidate. The number of secrets depends on how successful you are. The better people like you, the more secrets they will give you. You can sell secrets for money, but then you must expect your relationship with the Sim to plummet accordingly. Luckily there are other minigames to get you money too.

You'll need it, because you soon have a home of your own. Unlike the Sims2 for Nintendo DS, where you lived and worked in a hotel, here you get your own house again and have to furnish it. I haven't come far enough to say anything about that, though.

So far, I see no reason why this game would take playing time from Sims2 on my PC. But it will definitely replace Sims2 for the Nintendo DS, for me. In part because I now have a better game in my DS, Animal Crossing. But also because Sims2 on the PSP is prettier, easier to play, less confusing and simply more "simmy". I don't expect to play it even halfway through though, because of the load times that make many everyday tasks impossible. Shame about that, but it's still a pretty game with great humor.