The Urbz: Sims in The City (Game Boy Advance) Review

So, the Sims have ventured into the city and transformed intro wonderful urban creatures called Urbz. That's not to say they've forgotten their heritage though, many aspects of the game remain ultimately intact from previous versions. You will start to feel very close to your little Urb in no time at all, even when they're annoying the hell out of you, just like real-life family members in some ways. You kick start the game by creating your very own Urb, first you choose from a limited number of physical appearance options (clothes, hair colour etc). Then you answer some simple questions that will determine which social group you are initially intertwined with, (Artsies, Nerdies, Streeties or Richies). Although you will be labelled as whichever option you choose to begin with, you aren't limited to stick with that group for the duration of the game.

Once you're into the main adventure you are presented with a few basic tasks to complete which introduce you to various gameplay features. The include having a conversation with your friend, playing a quick mini-game and interacting with various items as well as building up some of your earliest character skill points. It will also introduce you to those ever-so familiar requirements to keep your Sim/Urb up and about all day long. You know the drill; sleeping, eating, keeping clean the lot. All of this takes place within the massive King Tower where you are a cleaner earning a measly living and trying to get on with your life. You then discover that the owner has just sold out to stupidly rich Daddy Big Bucks who wishes to turn the entire city into a massive amusement park! In case you haven't worked it out already, you take it upon yourself to stop this terrible commerciality from descending upon your fair city.

Starting your way up from the very bottom is thankfully easier then it would be in real life, but still no mean feat. You must build up your reputation amongst the city's various inhabitants who generally belong to one social group or other. It is here that the game takes an interesting twist from normal Sim games (with the exception of Busting Out), in that it becomes almost like a proper RPG title. As you work your way thought the game you increase your stats by interacting with lots of people and objects. For example talking to a Streety for long enough about a subject that they find interesting builds your relationship with them and eventually leads to your affiliation with the Streeties going up by a notch. Likewise having a rocking-out session on your Electric Guitar will build your creativity up. There are numerous categories to advance in, each of which will affect certain aspects of the game, such as which mini-games you are able to participate in and at what level.

Seeing as how mini-games are the main source of income it is important that you are able to reach the higher difficulty levels (one through five) as they hold the key to more money, which in turn allows you to buy more items, which you guessed it; allows for bigger increases in stats. Unfortunately things aren't always quite that simple as there is significantly more depth to the game, as you will discover when you play for prolonged periods of time. First off the game relies on a simple time monitoring system, with one second of real time being equal to a minute in the Sims world, with the exception of sleeping which speeds the time up so you don't have to sit watching your character sleep for hours on end. The time of day dictates various factors which you must be aware of to progress successfully in the game. For started shops and buildings will usually only be open for a set amount of time each day, mini-games work in the same way and can also only be played once per day.

You may well find yourself setting up a regular routine which you stick to pretty specifically each day, if only real life was so easy to organise! Let us give you an example; the first mini-game you have access to is a basketball simulation that relies on well timed button presses. It is available between 5am and 5pm each day and takes about 2 hours of game time to complete. It also costs results in various status points decreasing; cleanliness, tiredness and the like, which must be replenished by returning to your cosy flat and crapping, showering and sleeping your way back to those full green status bars. Once you've done this you might just find it's almost been an entire day and the basketball court will be opening again any minute, so off you go again. And so the process repeats, the Urbz doesn't really require that you play in any specific way, and this particular method has its advantages and disadvantages, mainly that of getting lots of money but not increasing character stats. At the end of the day it's all down to what you enjoying doing most. Although the game does set you some main goals which must be completed in order to advance to new section of the city and further the plot, there is still a great deal of freedom in how you approach things, which after all has always been one of the biggest attractions of the Sims series.

The main drawback with the game is the similarity of events, day in and day out. To build up your reputation and relationships with various individuals relies on a simple conversation system where you pick a subject to talk about. If the opposing character finds this subject interesting then your relationship metre with that person jumps up a certain amount of percent. However the choice of conversation options is quite limited and you will often find yourself able to guess what the stereotypical characters will find interesting and what they won't, Enabling you to quickly button bash your way through building up your relationship with event Tom, Dick and Harry, so that you can progress further into the game. This is unfortunate as many titbits of info concerning the plot amongst other things are stashed away in these conversations and you often find yourself skipping over some vital detail that you can't get back. The biggest part of the game after reputation and relationship building is that of keeping your character clean, entertained and the rest, 24/7. Although this does help to spread the games other features out as you are limited to how much you can do before you must return home and 'fuel up', it all gets rather monotonous after a while. For these reasons the game is definitely best played in small chunks, given how boring certain elements can get its not the type of game you want to play for repetitive hours upon repetitive hours. Rather a quick 20 min blast every now and then can be great fun, especially seeing how immensely addictive the game can get.