Review: The Sims: FreePlay (Xbox Live)

Score:
77%

Author: Electronic Arts

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There are two elements of this title in The Sims franchise that make for an appealing title. The first is the cost, and the second is the characters.

Let's start with the latter, because that will set the scene for the former. Unlike the previous Sims titles on Windows Phone (The Sims: Medieval and The Sims 3) where you create and take on the persona of a single character, The Sims FreePlay gives you control over the entire town's population, not just one character - although you start with one, once you start building more houses the population will increase, and you'll be monitoring all your Sims health, watching the goals, and managing the expansion of the town.

That's a lot to watch over, but you have one advantage on your side... time.

The Sims: FreePlay takes place in real time, which means that if you have a Sim falling asleep for an hour, it's going to be an hour before that task is completed. Send them to sing in the shower for 45 minutes, and they'll chatter away until all the time is up. When you have a large population to manage, these long time periods become very useful, allowing you to work round everyone and gain a lot of experience.

Thankfully, each of the basic life tasks also has a shorter time option, so when you start out with just one Sim, you can go for the fifteen second task, and move on to something else relatively quickly (but scoring less experience points).

The two core mechanisms of a Sims game are here. The first is keeping your 'life meters' charged up - keep yourself fed, clean, interact with other Sims, don't get too tired, and remember to go to the toilet!

Mixed in with the day to day life management are the tasks that are given to you. These help drive the game forward by forcing you to grow the town, bring in more Sims, have them interact with each other, build businesses, propose, have children, and everything else in between.

It's actually a fascinating system, which sets goals and propels you through their life. Although it takes place in real time for the tasks, it doesn't take long to fall in love (or qualify as a fireman [does the latter help the former?! - Ed]), so when things need to be accelerated, they are.

Beyond the tasks, though, this is a pretty open ended game. You can decide to rush through the tasks (and there are a lot of them, so you won't run out in a hurry), you can choose when to do them, or there's nothing wrong in simply ignoring them altogether and living your life, finding a partner, settling down, and starting a family.

It's up to you, and the game engine will accommodate you.

There's a good graphics engine at work in here as well. It might not need to handle a third person shooter, but you'll be zooming in and out of the 3D views of the houses and buildings, as well as using two fingers to spin the viewpoint around. While you will see walls and objects disappearing, this isn't a dodgy bit of code, this is the code taking away the walls so you can see your Sims in action. It's a very nice effect, helped by some objects (such as door frames) remaining in view to act as reminders on where things are.

I suspect the amount of 3D graphics being used is one of the reasons why The Sims: FreePlay is restricted to Windows Phone 8 devices with 1GB of RAM.

That said, it is an app which is gorgeous to look at, and with so many options to build and furnish each house, there is a huge variety of graphics for your Sims to interact with.

In terms of gameplay and pace, this version of the Sims sets a gentle pace where the challenge is relatively low, but it sits in the background for days, if not weeks, of play. If you have the discipline to set your own long terms goals then The Sims is going to be there, quietly letting you know another task is finished and a Sim is waiting for instructions.

And it's at this point that I'll bring in the second major element of The Sims: FreePlay. It's free (to download) and it's free (to play), but if you want to speed things up, then you'll need to start spending some credits. Typically to knock one hour off a task, you need to spend one lifestyle point. These can be earned very slowly in the game, but for any major use, you'll need to buy them with real cash through an in-app purchase. A mid range purchase of 200 lifestyle points will cost you £14.99.

The other currency (simoleans) flow more freely in the game, but you will run out and need to grind out earning them through jobs, or selling crops from your garden. Or again you can buy some. A mid range bundle for 30,000 is £10.99 in the UK Windows Phone store.

Here's the thing though. Electronic Arts have got the balance point set in the player's favour on this one. If you just dip in and out of The Sims throughout the day for a few moments, then you never really feel the need to accelerate the development for a few lifestyle points. Which means never going near your wallet.

It's only if you want to shortcut the process that it will cost, and that's only after you spend the lifestyle points slowly earned in the game.

Given that EA released The Sims: FreePlay on other platforms some eighteen to twenty four months ago, I'm going to assume they've already found the sweet spot for earning money from players of the title, and this is it. It does feel rather generous, but I'm not going to be complaining. This is freemium done correctly, with a decent game that doesn't try to cheat you out of your money.

Ultimately, the issue with The Sims is the same that dogs many freemium games that are based on the "action - timer - result - next action - etc" model. There comes a point where it all suddenly feels futile, and you ask why you are bothering. I've not hit that point yet, but a quick check with some friends who have played the iOS version and it does happen, but it takes a lot longer than in the average freemium game.

I can imagine this is down to the wealth of options that work alongside the timer system for tasks, from the sense of building a house and trying different layouts, and to keep your Sims in the best of health.

So there are some caveats, but I'm enjoying the slow paced nature of the game over the last week, it's not punishing at all in terms of in-app purchasing and advertising the benefits, and it's both smooth to handle and looks wonderful. It's worth a look, and you can play through until you've decided if you'd rather delete it, keep playing, or throw some cash at the developers.

Reviewed by Ewan Spence at 6:42 UTC, September 19th 2013