One of the elements that
many game players dislike most about RPGs (role-playing games) is the grind. You
know, where you have to endlessly repeat a task to grind up the skills to
achieve bigger rewards. Heretofore – when it came to its PC counterpart, at
least – the Sims 2 franchise was about micromanaging a life, but while it might
have been a grind, it was a cleverly disguised one.
Unfortunately, The Sims 2
Castaway is not that clever. It is a grind from the get-go, a never-ending
pursuit to level skills, to survive and create bigger and better objects, that
you will try to leave behind as you island-hop and try to get one step closer to
rescue.
Is it a bad game? No. Is it
a complex game? No. Is it redundant? Terribly.
You begin the game by
creating an avatar, or crew of them. Should you choose to make more than one,
you can assign jobs to each later. Creating a character requires a little more
thought than flying through the limited customization options. There are seven
professions to choose from as you begin the process (ranger, teacher, mechanic,
executive, doctor, musician and chef), and these give you your base skills.
Every one is low and you have to work up your skills, but with limited resources
on the first island you are on (and yes, there is a wide range of materials that
you have to explore for and discover), this will take some time. But don’t
worry, there are monkeys about to satisfy your need to socialize. They work for
bananas, literally. You entice them with bananas, graduate up to chatting,
responding, entertaining and hugging them, and in return, they keep your social
meter happy and will, on occasion, bring you gifts.
As for the classes of
characters, don’t expect much commonsense assigned to the careers. A ranger
would know better, but still, when you come across an unidentified plant, they
insist on putting its fruit in their mouth. If it doesn’t cause them to vomit a
neon green substance, then it must be Ok to eat. If it does, it might have other
applications, so harvest anyway.
The initial life meters are
the essentials: eat, sleep, bathroom and comfort. These will soon expand to
include social and even an icon that roughly translates to room appeal.
Where the game takes a bit
more of a turn is in unlocking new plans. You begin the game on First Beach, and
it is there that you can set up a work bench. The work benches are important as
these are the crafting stations. Opening the crafting station will show you the
list of available plans – each is assigned to a general tab. Each plan has
resource needs and some have attribute needs. You may only be able to craft
something if you have +2 mechanic, or +2 creativity. Unless you have the
necessary skill level, you will be unable to craft up. This even includes
finding the pier that would allow you to craft a raft to move to the next area.
If your skill level is not high enough (which is understandable), you can’t
craft the raft. This is a formula that ensures players spend time in certain
areas rather than advance too quickly to the end-game.
There is a tutorial, but it
is not much of a help. Most of this comes down to the mechanics gleaned playing
The Sims 2 on the PC. While accessible, the controls have been crammed onto the
PS2 controller, yielding a menu system that will take a few minutes to figure
out. Once done, you will be cruising through the menus at lightning speed.
As mentioned, you begin on
First Beach, which is where you can lay down your tiki torch and establish a
home … well, if you had the skills to build walls and such. In the meantime,
until you can build a shack and furniture, you have a sleeping map. Go into your
inventory and equip it, then you get a pop-up option to sleep.
The initial part of the game
involves eating, sleeping, harvesting, making friends with the chimps, and
occasionally going to the bathroom. The latter means equipping toilet paper and
then hitting use on the pop-up menu. Wherever your sim is, a curtain will rise
up from the ground to create a roofless port-a-potty.
First Beach will give way to
Deep Jungle, which is not so deep, with access points to Pier Beach and
Shipwreck Beach. Icon floating above the path into the jungle will indicate a
new area, and more load time. Traveling out of First Beach will have you go
through a bunch of brambles, which will tear your clothes, necessitating making
new clothes out of available materials.
And so it goes.
The graphics are similar to
previous iterations on the PS2 console. The right thumbstick is the camera,
which does rotate and zoom, and can get caught up on environmental elements. The
sound is what one expects from a Sims game, but you can go in and enable or
disable selections on the song list.
Also worth noting … Younger
girls tried this game first and didn’t play for too long, citing a lack of
adequate information to move forward in an enjoyable manner. When the game was
restarted and a new character was created, the game stated that creating a new
character would overwrite existing saved files.
Understandably, the tenor of
this review may not make it seem that Castaway is a title worth playing, but
that is not necessarily true. For die-hard Sims 2 PC gamers, it might be best to
avoid this console title. For those looking to escape into a world where
resource gathering and surviving is the primary goal, then this might prove an
interesting diversion. But this is still a game that is tough to recommend
simply because of its lack of diversity.
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Gameplay: 7.0
The game has an easy
learning curve and the dev team did a good job of cramming a lot of
functionality into the PS2 controls.
Graphics: 7.2
The engine may be
old, but it still does a decent job on the PS2 console. Clipping problems
abound, though, and the camera can get hung up on the environment.
Sound: 6.8
Nothing unexpected
here.
Difficulty: Medium
Concept: 7.5
A decent idea that
does always make sense at times (like rangers – those who have grown up in with
a knowledge in wilderness survival – taste-tasting strange plants), but still
the game has taken the Sims concept and boiled them down to their essentials.
This is a pleasant diversion, taken in smaller doses.
Overall: 7.0
The Sims 2 Castaway has its bad moments and its good. Getting to the point to
build that first raft and move along is a definite sense of achievement, but the
game does have a lot of repetition and load times as you explore segmented
islands. Die-hard Sims 2 fans might do well to avoid this, while those looking
to enjoy the challenge of surviving on a deserted island – and who do not mind a
bit of redundant tasks – should find this a decent escape. In any regard, it is
recommended that you rent this one before you buy it.
