The Sims Vacation
Score: 80% ESRB: Teen Publisher: EA Games Developer: Maxis Media: CD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Simulation
Graphics & Sound: The Sims Vacation is the newest add-on for The Sims. This add-on, like those before it, breaks no new ground in terms of graphics. The visuals are nice, but they aren't any better than they were in the original game. Having said that, the animations and presentation of the graphics overall is very good. It can be quite involving to watch the Sims interact with each other, and use their personalities and initiative to further relationships and perform activities. Vacation does provide new music, including Caribbean tunes played while waiting for the island vacation to load. Since load times are lengthy, you get to hear them for quite a while. Also, the Sims speak new phrases, which makes the game a little less monotonous. Last and most importantly, each neighborhood now has its own vacation island to visit. This is a densely populated area with lots of shops, games, hotels, restaurants, and other activities to engage in.
Gameplay: The Sims Vacation offers three basic modes of play: Build, Buy, and Live. When in Build mode, you can construct houses, create landscaping, or, if on the island, build shops, hotels, and other vacation type buildings. In Buy mode, you can purchase items for your home or vacation structure. When in Live mode, you can interact with your home and neighborhood, including any of the people who you either directly control, or who you visit with. Live mode is the heart of the game, and with the Vacation add-on you can interact with people and objects, and you can also buy stuff. The focus of this particular add-on is taking the family or a friend on vacation to have a good time, so besides new objects, new sounds, and new music, there's the island area where you can find lots of cool things to do. At any point in the game you can call a cab to take you on vacation, and there you will find souvenir shops, games, restaurants, hotels, and rental shops, as well as lots of people to interact with. When you travel to the island, the game world just stops while you are away. If you have the money, there are plenty of new items to purchase while you are away. If your family stays in a good mood while visiting the island, it is even possible to get super souvenirs! The number of interactions people can have has been greatly increased. Now you can deal with people in brand new ways, whether it's flirting with someone of the same or opposite sex, bragging about yourself or offering others compliments, there seem to be dozens of new selections to choose from. This seems to be similar or identical to the new functionality presented in Hot Date. In addition, you can also build your own shops and restaurants on the island. The same building tools that allow you to create homes in the neighborhood allow you to build on the island. All of the island objects are available, as well as many of the ones normally available when creating a new house.
Difficulty: Vacation doesn't provide any sort of difficulty levels. The game is very easy to pick up and play, although to really move relationships along takes a big investment in time. If you are looking for a game that is quick to play, that gives you lots of satisfaction for a small investment, then you might wish to look elsewhere.
Game Mechanics: The user interface hasn't changed at all in Vacation, although things are categorized a little differently when in Build or Buy mode. The basic point and click nature of manipulating the game is the same, though, where you can select a person, click on a place for them to move to, or click on an object and then select an action for the person to perform on the object. When starting the game you still have to create a family, where you can create one or more people, and choose their gender, hair color and style, as well as the clothes they start the game with. You can also customize their behavior, and as you play the game you can modify the behavior in interesting ways. Even if you are only a casual fan of The Sims, you might want to check out Vacation. It really does add some cool stuff to the game, with snow boarding, dart games, archery, camping, and many other activities. If you are a dedicated fan of the series, you won't want to miss this one, as it does make the game far more interesting, and provides lots of new stuff to play with.
-Gordy, GameVortex Communications AKA Gary Lucero
Minimum System Requirements: The Sims, Windows 95/98/XP, 300MHz Pentium II, 128MB RAM, 700MB hard drive space, 4x CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive, DirectX 7 compatible 2 MB video sound card   Test System: Windows XP Professional, 1 GHz Pentium III, 384MB RAM, GeForce 2 Ultra with 64MB RAM, SoundBlaster Live! Value, 32x DVD-ROM.
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