 "Slow progress" | 2008-05-27 |
| - Reviewed By russelkn1 |
| This game was pretty fun I thought. The biggest down fall is that it takes place in real time. So when you build something new in your hotel you have to wait 8 actual hours. This limits the how much progress you can make in a day. It makes the game a touch boring. Other the the time issue i loved it. Its also pretty easy. |
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 "To Buggy" | 2008-05-21 |
| - Reviewed By alhambra_ttp2 |
| Fun at first but freezes at the worst time, and just before you save after complete a chunck of the game, very annoying. DS sucks anyway. Get PSP. |
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| "Didn't last" | 2008-04-17 |
| - Reviewed By kthoward2 |
| I was disappointed in this game. It didn't last very long. I also couldn't move things in the hotel like I had wanted. The casino had one game in it and more never came. I did like the caracters, but some of them didn't do much at all. It was alot shorter than I expected and I couldn't do what I wanted in the game. |
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 ""That animal was on the verge of ruining all my DEVIOUS PLANS...to watch television"---Optimum Alfred" | 2008-04-16 |
| - Reviewed By mwreview |
I started this game two weeks ago and just finished it (you can continue the game after finishing the missions by pushing "Select" during the credits). It is awesome! I had also finished Sims2 for Gameboy Advance (three times!) and, if you're not sure whether to get the DS version too, definitely get it! It is a completely different game. All the characters are there like Tristan Legend, Giuseppi Mezzoalto, Sancho Paco Panza, Frankie Fusilli, the mummy guy, Lord Mole and even Emperor Xizzle but, instead of acting in a reality show, you run a hotel.
As hotel manager, you check people in and they'll call you on your cell phone with complaints and requests and you run around to cater to their every whim for tips. You also build attractions for your hotel. My favorite is the art gallery. You get to create actual paintings to put on display and sell. You can draw some pretty funny stuff if you know what I mean (nudge, nudge, say no more). You'll get calls on your cell phone from Sims who've bought your works. I've often run back to the art gallery to find out which painting was purchased. You can also save a favorite work of art and hang it in your room.
Another cool thing you can do is create music. In the lounge there is a keyboard with several songs already installed. You can use the keys, sound effects, and mixers to create your own song, record it and play it back! How cool is that! Other neat features in this game are the vacuum cleaner and metal detector. The vacuum is used on dust bunnies throughout the hotel which sometimes include valuable items you can grab for Simoleons. The metal detector is used in the desert to find spaceship parts, silver, copper, and gold bars, and other items you can cash in.
Sometimes you have to use a super soaker on aliens (led by Emperor Xizzle) who are invading the area. This takes patience as I've found the best strategy is to stalk them out and target one alien at a time before they can inform the others of your presence. It can be pretty challenging. The alien autopsy game is also a major challenge that I'm still trying to figure out. You also get to play a superhero, though I'm not sure about that rat suit!
The graphics are awesome! It's in 3D. The communication is better than the GBA version. You react to the body language of the Sims so it's not a guessing game to raise your social levels. One thing that could be better are the items you can buy. Sims games have never repeated the variety of things you could buy in "The Urbs: Sims in the City." Also, the skill levels, save for one, don't seem to have any effect on the game unless I missed something. Anyway, I won't give away too much stuff. The missions are easy to follow with just a little bit of thought. If you have Sims2 for GBA, here's a hint: insert the GBA cartridge in the system in addition to the DS. It will open up a game in the casino. |
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| "Good in concept." | 2008-04-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2G52WA00MCUFD |
| This game has a lot of aspects that are enjoyable and when it was running it was fun to play. There are quite a few glitches in this game that cause it to freeze and when I tried to access the options menu it blacked the screen having to be reset. If you play this game save often, otherwise you spend most of you time doing the same missions over and over. |
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 "Fun but not the best" | 2008-03-27 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1GZQTVU5Y6TYE |
The title of this review pretty much says it all. The game is pretty fun but it certainly isn't on my favorites list.
Basically you're stranded in Strangetown and are keeping a hotel clean / making the people happy, which honestly is very repetitive. But somehow it stays pretty fun. Everytime I play it I pretty much do the exact same things that I did the last time I played. Normally that would make a game boring, but somehow this game doesn't get that way.
Although, I do really wish there was more character interaction. All you can do with the other characters in the game is check them into a room, let them boss you around, and get them to stop throwing a fit. You can't really become friends and there's not much of a romance system. When another character wants you to, you can kiss them but that's pretty much it. Wow... kissing. How exciting -_-
Overall I'd say it's worth buying, but I might suggest that you get it used or renting it first, just to be sure. |
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| "An Amazing version of The Sims for the Nintendo DS" | 2008-03-18 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3SKMWPVR5CO1H |
It would be assumed that "The Sims 2" for the Nintendo DS would either be like the Urbz which was released last year, or the Sims 2 for the PC. Well, its neither. In fact, it loses all the unique features of the Sims series. If the title screen didn't says "The Sims 2," I'd swear that I was playing a game called "Hotel Tycoon DS." They have replaced the relationship building system with a new, extremly stupid one, they have REMOVED the "needs" (such as hunger, bladder, sleep, etc) system, and they have taken away a lot of the free roaming abilities that were present in the Urbz. However, that being said, the Sim's 2 does what it does extremly well. Let me now break the review down into categories:
Graphics: 8/10
Compare the graphics on this game to the same game on the Xbox, and you'd wonder why I even gave it a one in this category. In fact, in terms of todays standards the graphics are quite terrible. Blurry, pixelized, and unpolished. But considering this is a Nintendo DS game, the graphics are pretty amazing. A fully 3-d world, with a 360 degree camera that can be rotated to any angle at any time. Sure, they are kind of blurry and pixelized but I would rather have a so-so 3-d world than a 2-d world such as that present in last years title "The Urbz."
Audio: 5/10
The Sims do in fact speek "Simish" their wierd language, however EA only look the time to record 2 lines. One for male and one for female. So every time you walk past a person you are hearing the same noises over and over again. And remember those terrible sounds from the Urbz? Well guess what? They're back, however to make things really wierd, many of them have been switched. For example, the sound of a fire burning in The Urbz is now the EXACT same sound as the refregirator running. And the annoying eating drinking sounds are back as well. And the music is terrible. ALL of it. On the upside, the sounds they took the time to record just for this game are extremly good. The vacuum sound is awesome, as are a lot of the walking and door opening sounds. Would you beleive that depending on which room you walk in, your footsteps sound different? They put so much time into these things, and ignore the more important things such as the in game music. I can guarantee you will have your speakers off after about 15 minutes of purchasing the game.
Gameplay:8/10
Everything is done wonderfully here. You get to clean your hotel with the touch screen, deal with upset patrons, add rooms, fix broken things, find lost items, and many more things you would expect. Although you can't actually build the rooms, the item placment is EXTREMLY awesome with the touch screen. You get a blue-print like view and you drag and drop each item where you want it. You can immediatly see the result on the top screen and change it if it doesn't work. This feature is so nice, I wish there was more incenvite to use it. My only complaint here is that their new time system runs off the real time (as you gave it to your DS when you set it up). So when they say it will take 8 hours to build a room, it will take 8 real hours to build it. And when a guest says they are staying until Sunday, they really mean 6 real days. This feature is very annoying at times, but it makes goals extremly easy to deal with. For example, your goal may be "find Pete's cell phone before 3:55 PM on Saturday."
Controls:8/10
The camera system is EXCELLENT. Its amazing what they have done with the DS. However controling it is a different story. It is physcially impossible for a left handed person to control the d-pad, use the stylus, AND control the camera with the L and R buttons all at the same time, and it is NEAR impossible for a righty to do it. However everything else is PERFECT in this category. The menu's can be controler ONLY with the touch screens, and there are a ton of touch screen only in-game tasks that are extremly fun to do. This section would have gotten a 10/10 if they had included a feature that automatically rotated the camera instead of you having to ALWAYS do it manually.
Overall:4.5/5 (not an average)
Although this really isn't a Sim's title, it did turn out to be an excellent game. Even though none of the categories got a 9, the game is just so fun and addicting it makes up for the lack of work in other areas. Just to sum it all up, here are the major pro's, con's, and ?'s
+'s:
-Great graphics considering this is a DS game
-Great use of the touch screen
-Great for people who don't have a lot of time. About 10 minutes every day is all you need to put towards the main goals, but you can play for an infinite amount of time doing hotel tasks, if you so choose.
-'s:
-Removal of the "needs" system
-Terrible audio
?'s
-What was EA thinking when they removed the awesome relationship building system from their past titles, and replaced it with a "match the persons action to the corresponding counteraction" feature?
-Who chooses songs for EA games? EVERY EA game has terrible songs.
-Why not include a free roam mode for after you beat the game? |
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| "The Sims 2 DS" | 2008-02-26 |
| - Reviewed By marmon47 |
| It was an okay game, I havn't been able to beet it because i got bored and lost it, but it is very entertaining for a while, but unless you wait a couple days, you have to play this retarded card game to make money to run the hotel. And if you don't play it like at least every other day all your customers go away bedause you need to clean it the hotel, check in and out customers, and stock the furnace. |
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| "Addicting!!" | 2008-01-09 |
| - Reviewed By User: A124DL0D1SW5EG |
| Very easy to learn to navigate, very addicting. Bought this for my daughter and I play more than her!! |
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| "Not bad, not awesome either" | 2008-01-05 |
| - Reviewed By alyssie |
I have to say that while I was addicted to this game, what I didn't like about it was the fact that it was in real time. This means that instead of most sims games like the castaway one (which I enjoyed more than this but was done with in like four days)or the computer version, where it is daytime for only like 15 minutes to an hour, this one actually runs on YOUR time..meaning you could literally play it all day long. I'd turn it on at 8am and get a mission I couldn't do until literally 8pm my time. So i'd play for a little bit, interacting with the charactors, cleaning the hotel, earning money and then turn it off until right before 8 and do my mission. It took me two days to do my last mission because I needed to get three more mechanical symbols. That really annoyed me because once you get those symbols you just fight the robots and once that is done the game is over. I have to say that in that two days I got really bored interacting with people and looking for their cell phones. Except for the times I would find them in the desert or right outside the hotel, I could never find them. Overall it was a good game, just not a GREAT game. I think it would have been more enjoyable had it not run in real time.
Also LOL man that cop in the town is NO help whatsoever. Of course he arrested ME the one time I fell asleep on the floor of the bank but he ignores everybody else.
As someone else pointed out too, my Mayor disapeared sometime during the game. I also didn't like how you had to wait literally 8 hours for Tristan to build a room. Also for the person that asked about killing the mole, you don't actually have to. He isn't really that bad of a guy, it's the robot that is the bad dude.
ALSO what really annoyed me is that even though you were supposed to be on friendly terms with the alien and trying to find blue prints, he still came in and did invasions and zapped you! I hated how if I jailed two aliens and then the third one zapped me and I ended up back in my room, walking in my room like I had been anal probed, I had to capture them ALL over again. Or if I captured the two other aliens and the main alien flew away, the only way to get him back was to step into a room for a minute and then stop back out again and he would be back. But so would the aliens you just captured sometimes. Frustrating.
At the end when I only had two mechanical symbols to collect, I found myself with like 100,000 dollars and really nothing to spend it on but furniture but there was really no point. All my rooms were built, no one was asking for anything, etc. It was really boring. I found myself just wandering around seeing what I could find in the desert. At one point they said to find a chest in the desert by 8pm. I searched that whole desert five times and found no chest. Only to step back into the hotel and have Penelope call me and say"I just found a large chest in the desert. Hope no one was searching for it." I was like you witch LOL |
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