The Sims Social on Facebook
By technojay, 21st Aug 2011 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutReviewsTechnologyGames
We've all played The Sims 1,2 and 3 as well as there counterparts but here we take a look at 'The Sims Social on Facebook' where gamers who have loved the series can play whilst using their social media websites.
- Build a house, build a sim, build a life....
- A whole new world
- Tutorial complete
- Back to the point
- Overall
Build a house, build a sim, build a life....
We are first shown this title whilst the game is connecting to its servers via Facebook and the first thought I encompass is: "Why do I need to build a life? Surely I am living mine"
I think the main appeal of 'The Sims' is that it can be used as an escape from our own realities and briefly ignore anything that is currently going on in our own lives.
Although I understand the above paragraph will draw people to argue my statement but it has been proven via scientific experiments, that these types of ‘games’ are used by people who 84% of the time are attempting to take their attention away from something that they do not wish to face in their own lives.
So within the remaining 16% of people who play this genre of games we are left with people with addictive personalities, although from the previous 84% there are similar symptoms of addictive personalities.
Now I am not for one second questioning should these types of games be allowed on the market because I believe they are helpful to some people and simply enjoyable to others like me. I wish simply to show people the statistics involved with this genre of gaming whilst reviewing the game itself.
A whole new world
We all start as equals within ‘The Sims Social’ as we are all presented with a standard avatar, house, garden and the introduction tutorial from our neighbour Bella.
As with most games on Facebook as I’m sure you are all aware, there is an ‘energy’ bar and a ‘level’ bar which restricts our gameplay as we run out of energy whilst attempting to perform tasks within the game.
These two bars have proved a successful tactic by social game developers to entice people into parting with their real money in exchange for game tokens or currency (usually at an over the top price).
The reason this works so good is because it allows the user enough time to get drawn into the game and eventually addicted enough so that when they run out of energy they wish to continue playing. So as the user wishes to continue playing, they will need to pay and it won’t be long before this addiction takes a turn for the worse becomes a vicious circle of continue to pay so that the user can continue to play.
Tutorial complete
So we’ve all gotten used to the controls of the game and we all understand the mission of levelling up, increasing our skill levels and making some in-game money. The real question is; why do we continue to play once we’ve reached this point?
We all know it’s going to take us days, if not weeks to reach a high level and eventually we get to breaking point where we all start to think: Where does this game end?
The answers are simple:
1. We continue to play because we’ve become addicted (very rarely we continue because the game is ‘fun’)
2. The game will never end because it’s online; the developers can continue to add features, extras and more on a daily basis.
Back to the point
As I first said, this is a review of the game and as such, I’ll continue with an objective review of the game itself, its features and more.
Gameplay
In terms of a social media online game the gameplay itself is surprisingly good compared to copies of the game within Facebook.
The developers have managed to bring graphics, interactivity and the general building blocks from the mainstream games into the social media version.
Although, it is quite obvious that they were going to be limited into what they could bring as well as limiting the amount of freedom the user has within the game when compared against a selling title.
So in terms of a social media version of ‘The Sims’ retail version, I would give the gameplay a 7/10 simply because they’ve managed to implement a feel from the retail version into their effectively ‘free’ social version.
Storyline
Quite simply, there is no real story line here as you are in control of this section. You decide if you want to be friends with your neighbours, enemies or maybe even have a relationship with them.
It is within these decisions that you create your own storyline as you play the role of storyline editor in this genre of games.
Life Time
As with all social media games the appeal of playing these social games for extended periods of times across weeks and months rarely happens.
However, due to the nature of this game I think the developers don’t need to worry about this aspect as they currently have over 7 million people playing and that number doesn’t appear to be going down in the slightest.
The game itself has the user coming back time and time again, simply because they’ve been waiting for their in-game plants to grow or the energy bar to refill.
My personal opinion for the life time within this game is 4/10 but I think a widespread opinion may be much higher.
Graphics
The developers have managed to have one of the social media games that have pleasant graphics to look at, compared to many of the poorly designed games available via our social networks today.
Admittedly, the developers have a much higher budget than the standard bedroom designer and a much larger team to develop the game itself.
None the less, the graphics have been developed nicely and the added in feature to reduce or improve the graphics quality in-game is extremely helpful for users of the game who have lower spec computers and overall I would rate it 9/10.
Overall
We’ve looked briefly into why we all play this genre of games and the challenge of bringing a retail game onto the social platform, whilst reviewing the generic details of the game.
I think it’s safe to conclude this game won’t being disappearing into the social media games graveyard anytime soon unless its 7 million+ players find a much improved version sometime soon, which is not likely to happen within the next 12 months.
Overall rating: 7.2 out of 10.
Comments
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