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A laptop-friendly, Sims 2 offshot. The Sims: Life Stories is a new standalone series in the Sims franchise that was designed to run on low-end PCs and laptops in particular. It is not an expansion of either The Sims or The Sims 2 although the gameplay is largely the same.
Life Stories can be best described as The Sims 2: Lite—a mixture of The Sims 2 and The Sims 1. The core gameplay is largely the same: you control a Sim or a family of Sims in a house that you can build and furnish. The adult Sims can even have kids, and in a feature taken from The Sims 2, will age. However, you don’t get all of the features and depth from The Sims 2. The lots that you can build houses from are noticeably smaller in this series and you are limited to four neighborhoods instead of a much larger number in The Sims 2.
However, the game also tosses in some features from the console games with its Life Stories career mode. The mode actually includes two different plots although both of them are fairly standard. Nonetheless, they do walk you through the ropes and give you some objectives in the game.
Visually, the game uses The Sims 2 engine, so it looks considerably better than the original Sims. The character models, lots and houses are full 3D. The game has fairly decent lighting and effects although they aren’t nearly as impressive as those found in The Sims 2. The same can be said of the shadow system which is pretty good but not great. In terms of sound, Life Stories sounds like a Sims game. The sound effects are standard but acceptable and the game’s characters still speak Simlish.
The Sims: Life Stories is aimed at people who grew tired of The Sims but don’t have the necessary computer hardware to upgrade to the full version of The Sims 2. If you’re in this group, The Sims: Life Stories serves as a nice middle-step, but you’ll be better off upgrading to the full-on Sims 2. -- Jake Wilson, PGNx Media
---- Mar 18, 2007
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