There’s something comforting about playing any installment of The Sims – it’s the one game franchise that largely hasn’t made any concessions to changes in trends games have seen in the past decade.
Case in point: The Sims 3: Showtime is the first Sims game I had played since the first one, but I instantly picked up the basic gameplay mechanics. The interface hasn’t gotten any less cluttered and the Simlish language is just as indecipherable as before.
As the title suggests, The Sims 3: Showtime is an expansion pack. It’s not a complete overhaul of the formula, but rather a revision. To The Sims 3‘s refined gameplay, Showtime adds new swag, a new city and a new goal – to achieve stardom and fame for your little digital people.
But even with these additions, Showtime plays out pretty much like a Sims game. You start out by making your own mini-me. I took the theme of this expansion pack to heart and birthed Frank Allens, a hipster-prick wannabe singer who is secretly afraid of children and a massive coward.
Skipping past the tutorials, next comes the main rags to riches portion of the game. I dropped Allens into Showtime‘s approximation of Hollywood, shoved him into the cheapest hovel and started working his vocal chords.
The formula introduced in The Sims and further polished in Showtime has stood the test of time. Showtime‘s approximation of real life strips away the ambiguities, nuance and uncertainties of real life, leaving only cause and effect.
It’s comforting to know that sending Allens off to do some low-level singing telegram job won’t, say, cause him to get run over or catch colon cancer. Yet, the degree to which The Sims has sanitized its world has also impeded my ability to care about any of the game’s characters.
Everything in the game exists only to be conquered – the houses are all there just to be bought, the non-player characters there only to become “friends” or “lovers,” i.e. a statistic or an achievement.
Playing Allens through to super stardom doesn’t really bring about any catharsis. I created him and gave him a personality, but he and his world just feel so fake, so plastic-wrapped. Showtime and, by extension, The Sims tells you to make your own story, but the games don’t provide sufficient material to spin interesting tales.
I stopped caring about Allens around the third house, disheartened by my apathy at seeing him rise up in the world. Some games get you to feel about the avatars you control. The Sims 3: Showtime does not.
A new feature, however, does add some value to the expansion pack. Through SimPort, you can now send characters across to other players’ computers, Animal Crossing style. I didn’t get a chance to test the feature, but it should add a neat twist to a strangely lifeless game.
chzhang@umdbk.co
