Title: The Sims 3 Collectors Edition
From: Electronic Arts
For: PC/Mac

I’ve got to be up front and admit that I’ve never played any Sims game longer than the time it took to learn enough to review them. Once the review was written I never went back to them. Now that’s not because I didn’t like them, it’s because I was afraid of the consequences of liking them too much.

You see there’s a very good reason that for the last decade at least one Sims game has been present in every gaming top 10 list – they’re incredibly addictive.

Sims fans will feel right at home with the latest release – The Sims 3 as the basic premise remains exactly the same. Make a character and, well, just live their life.

Electronic Arts have taken a proven formula and given it a well deserved upgrade without going too crazy and overhauling the whole thing (hopefully leaving some goodies for eventual expansion packs).

To begin with, the whole world is on a grander scale. There’s more to do and see and you can sit and watch other Sims go about their day to day business. There’s also advanced design options for decorating your Sim’s residence.

The whole game just has a more polished feel to it, especially in terms of performance. There are little to no framerate issues even when there is a screen full of animation. The graphics aren’t a huge leap from The Sims 2 but upon closer inspection the character models are smoother and the attention to detail in the world around them is visually stunning.

EA haven’t reinvented the wheel here, but have clearly laid down some solid foundations to take the series forward. There’s so many directions they could take The Sims, it is after all simulating life itself.

The Collectors Edition costs a little more than the standard version but comes with a 2GB USB drive in the shape of a green jewel with a matching carabiner. Your character is also gifted with a sports-car. They’re nothing spectacular in terms of extra value, but any true Sims fan will get a kick out of them.

Score 90%

Title: Spore
From: Maxis
For: PC or Mac

Spore is a game of life and you get to control it every step of the way. As a comet crashes into a planet, scattering bacteria far and wide. You take control of one of these cells and swim around in your primordial ooze. This stage takes the form of a top-down view arcade game as you swim around eating and avoiding being eaten. As you eat more and manage to survive, you also evolve and eventually sprout legs and venture out onto the land.

This is called the Creature Stage. Here you also have to fight for survival, but also learn to interact with others. You have two options; be aggressive or be friends, which is a theme that runs throughout the game. The Creature Stage itself becomes a bit of a repetitive chore which has to be completed to evolve to the next stage – the Tribal Stage.

In this stage the focus is on building communities, primitive buildings and once again making friends with neighbouring tribes or trying to eliminate them. If you choose the aggressive route then you’ll need to make weapons to do so. This stage is a real-time strategy game and as you eliminate other tribes you will earn enough points to move onto the Civilisation Stage which is much of the same thing, but on a grander scale and with more evolved technologies and social structures.

When you take over enough of the world in the Civilisation Stage you then discover space travel. The Space Stage, while it does have a finishing point, is completely open to do whatever you wish. Colonise other planets and terraform them, destroy other species or move them around – the choices are as many as the stars in the sky.

Once you finish the game you get to start at any stage you wish, which gives the game a solid lifespan.
Spore had an enormous self-created hype to live up to upon its release and all to often when this happens, the game is a let down due to over promotion. This reigns true to some degree with Spore but it’s still a remarkable feat of game making.

Score 85%