Simplify your laptop buying
-
Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
2.0 stars
"Intriguing but plagued by bugs"
Pros: Lots to explore and numerous parallel goals
Cons: Software bugs and limited Sim interactivity
Summary: While I was excited with the prospect of playing the Sims on my Wii, that excitement was soon dampened by the many bugs that plague the game.
For instance, while one goal of the game is to get chimps to collect resources for you, chimps would often leave these resource packages at the edge of a portal to an adjacent level/area, making it impossible to pick up the resources since any approach would whisk you off to another part of the island empty-handed.
Another frequent bug also involved collecting resources (which is really the central activity in the game). While the option to collect a given resource would often appear, upon selecting the option the Sim would often shrug as if there were some barrier between the Sim and the resource. This error occurs frequently near walls and other objects and required frequent and annoying repositioning.
Yet another oversight involves interacting with structures. While the game encourages you to gain the skills and resources to build a bungalow and garden, you soon learn that having numerous structures in a single location results in a fire hazard. This would be fine except the usual ability to extinguish fires is hampered by the way the Sims interact with their surroundings. While in the PC version of the game you can point at objects to get your Sim to interact with them, in Castaway you have to walk up to objects. This means that when a roof catches fire you have to run around in circles hoping the game will give you the option to extinguish it. Similar interactivity problems occur when trying to repair weather-worn structures like walls, windows, and doors.
However, by far the most frustrating bug involved Sim relationships, an albeit secondary focus in Castaway. At seemingly random intervals, particularly after saves, and especially later in the game, my main Sim's relationship status with other Sims would go from the 90 or 100 I had achieved to zero.
A final shortcoming is the fact that the game provides only one save slot on the Wii. For a friend to be able to play the game they would either have to use my file or delete it to start a new one.
On the upside, the numerous parallel goals set out by the game always gave me something to do or look for. The islands in the game also provided a reasonable amount of terrain to explore and the map function was a useful shortcut to previously explored areas.
Overall, the game was promising but a shadow of the Sim 2 PC version.
Where to buy
The Sims 2: Castaway (Wii):
$18.99 - $19.99
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
|---|---|---|---|
|
$19.99 | See Site |
|
|
$18.99 | Yes |
|
|
$19.95 | No |
|
%20user%20review%20and%20rating%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/wii-games/the-sims-2-castaway/4864-9993_7-32462758-3.html){kind=small}