Sims: Castaway Stories
This is a stand alone game so you don't need Sims 2 to get it.
Having played Sims2 Castaway on PSP and thinking it was the best xmas PSP game, I thought I would try this PC version. It is the same idea but not the same game at all as I feared it might be.
You start off being washed up on a 'deserted' island and have to make a shelter and a fire and search for food. Then you begin to explore the island, befriend chimps, gain skills, build more elaborate amenities for yourself and you inevitably get guyroped into following the story of the game.
I won't spoilt it, but surprise surprise you don't turn out to be alone on the island, in fact there are blooming loads of people on it, from fellow survivors of the cruise ship disaster to native tribespeople and even a mad professor. The plot is reasonably elaborate with double-crossings, ancient magical temples and even a love story. It didn't take me long to get through the story, about 6 hours I reckon, but once you complete it you open up a load of cool items for a further, more traditional Sims environment.
The second part has plots to buy and move families into, build up their skills and jobs and communal areas for them to meet everyone else, just like Sims and Sims 2. This saved the game for me, as although the story part was really good fun, I was really pissed off for a minute thinking it was the end of the game.
The system requirements to run the game are almost farcically low, you don't actually need a graphics card to run it, but that also means that if you have a ball-swinging beast of a rig, then it won't really speed it up much or make the graphics look any better. Still the graphics are not bad, enough to do the job with some nice touches.
The camera can be a tad on the annoying side if you play in windowed mode, which it was apparently designed for, because there is no edge scrolling and WSAD movement doesn't seem to combine well with holding shift for rotation. So I just used the swivel buttons at the bottom left.
Anyway quite fun if, like me, you always wanted to be stranded on a desert island. And you get to have sex so something for everyone.
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Linear Mode
