The Sims Series Review (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Mobile & PC)

I remember it all too well: the feeling of being able to ‘play with life’ in the comfort of my own home, almost like a child with a god complex. Suddenly, there were no barriers to quell my creative curiosity, and there were no right or wrong answers — just a blank canvas, a moldable family with free will, and opportunities to build without the usual restrictions. The Sims opened a door to a world that I had never seen before—a place where I could incubate astronauts and burglars, start families and ascend the culinary arts simultaneously. Without a linear system to follow, the opportunities quickly became apparent, with each new soul having its own unique tale to tell and message to transmit. EA and Maxis found gold, and I, like so many others, couldn’t wait to see how deep its mine would go.

It was during the turn of the millennium when I first launched a career in The Sims. At that point, I could barely scrape the tip of its iceberg—the opportunities that it would openly serve to me on a silver platter; the careers, personalities, home builds, and the occasional voyage into another neighborhood. But then, the more I played, the more I began to think of other things that would elevate the game. In a stroke of luck, Electronic Arts acted on those desires, as by the time I mopped up the first era, that standalone affair transformed into a booming hub of expansions and original DLC. House Party, Hot Date, Unleashed, Vacation, and Superstar were introduced, and just like that, a small neighborhood pivoted towards a recreational universe with millions of avenues to explore.

Two Decades of Life Simulation

Suffice it to say that, of all the life simulation games on the market, The Sims is one of the few that has influence and stability. From its humble beginnings as a one-piece innovation to its modern-day iteration as a booming sandbox with hundreds of expansions and spin-offs, the series has, as a result, evolved into one of the most beloved franchises of all time. Dated, yet still with the weight of a timeless creation suite, fans of Maxis’ posted child of life simulation have infinite access to a world with oh-so-many possibilities. And the best part is, it still has so many more stories to tell.

In addition to its open-ended structure and its swathe of customizable components, The Sims is in receipt of numerous branches that effectively provide a plethora of different experiences. It’s a dating sim, a burglary exploit, a vacationing game, and above all, a love letter to freedom. It is, in short, an ode to virtual fantasies—a celebration of mortality and luxury, exaggerated realities and moral dilemmas. And it’s somewhere in the middle of all of these mantras that we, being the weaver of worlds, have the power to shape our own destinies. The Sims has always had that perk, true, but it seems that, at least with each passing year, it finds a new way to make it feel just that little more apparent.

Worlds Beyond the Walls of Time

I’d be lying if I said that you could spend a hundred hours with The Sims and experience all that there is to see and do. Frankly, with the amount of content that the four-piece series has (we’re also taking the Stuff Packs and standalone expansions into account here), you could quite simply lose half of your life to toying with its universe and tweaking the finer details. Heck, there’s even an achievement for keeping a family alive for twenty-six generations—a feat that can only be accomplished by spending hundreds, if not thousands of hours with the same household. And the weird part here is that, contrary to popular belief, you can shape each individual into an original character with distinct career paths and personality traits. Even then, you still wouldn’t see everything in The Sims’ toolkit.

Thankfully, The Sims can be anything you want it to be. Say, if you want it to be a hub for realism and local sob stories, then you can ultimately opt for a liminal homestead with all of the disadvantageous elements that you could dare shake a stick at. Likewise, if you want a celebrity-centric experience with all of the red carpet debuts and vacation homes, then you can make exactly that. And that’s something that no other life sim could ever match: the amount of depth in the world-building process. There are solid alternatives, for sure, but Maxis clearly has the weight of an entire genre on its shoulders, and not to mention the keys to an endless tapestry of expansions that could span dozens of different iterations and themes, activities and career choices, skills and hobbies.

To be honest, there isn’t a need to formally introduce The Sims, as its vast successes speak for themselves, and have been for over twenty years, to be fair. Even today, there are still plenty of corridors left for Maxis to pivot into, thus making the franchise an evergreen experience with the slack to withstand the test of time — and then some. Will it eventually run out of steam? Maybe. For what it’s worth, though, it’s still as equally compelling and as entertaining as it was back in its early years. The point is, if it can still amass global recognition after quarter of a century, then clearly EA and Maxis have done something right.

Verdict

The Sims fortifies its place as one of the most iconic and innovative sandbox franchises of all time, with its seemingly infinite bouquet of expansions and spin-off chapters representing an iron backbone that, frankly, no other series in the world could ever quell. With a quarter of a century in active development beneath its belt, the chances of it losing momentum and being forgotten are slim to non-existent. Not that this comes as much of a surprise, mind you, given its extensive fan base and continuous involvement with the world of life simulation experiences.

Say what you will about The Sims, but at the end of the day, there’s just no denying the fact that it’s one of the few game-changing franchises in the history of video games to truly pivot the concept to a new era of storytelling and nonlinear gameplay. Timeless, fits the bill here, I think.