The popular life sim washes up on a deserted island.
For The Sims: Castaway Stories, I believe we can dispense with the usual introductory summary of an add-on game's core title. If you don't know what The Sims is, and haven't seen any news or features of it since it debuted in 2000, then you really need to quit your job and start reading IGN more. The Sims: Castaway Stories is the newest game in the long-running franchise. It's a stand-alone game, needing neither The Sims, The Sims 2, nor The Sims: Life Stories to play. It's built on the The Sims 2 engine, although this is the first Sims game that truly feels different despite the coattails it is riding.
But before we tell you about the new features, we need to discuss the intention of the game. The Sims has always been a rather resource-heavy game that drained the life out of many a processor, especially when the series switched to an all-3D graphical appearance with The Sims 2. The myriad of expansion packs and "stuff packs" just made the game (and its technical requirements) that much higher. Personally, my Sims save folder is 1.11 gigabytes large, and that doesn't include the backups I frequently make.
So early last year, Electronic Arts came up with a solution: make a modified version of The Sims that is slightly dumbed down so it can run on machines that are below the gaming curve, especially laptops. To that end, The Sims: Life Stories, The Sims: Pet Stories, and now The Sims: Castaway Stories all succeed. We ran the game on a couple different machines, including a low-end rig that barely met minimum requirements, and it ran without a hitch (provided you keep the graphical settings low). So far, so good.
With the technical issues out of the way, what is there of the game itself? Naturally, The Sims is all about taking care of your little virtual people as they live their virtual lives, while you either play God by ordering their every action, or watch them act on their own accords with the Free Will option turned on. Again, nothing new, and nothing you haven't heard before.
However, what makes Castaway Stories different is the setting. Rather than housing your Sims in houses while they juggle work and family crises, your Sims now find themselves on a tropical island with no escape. Jobs in the game are replaced with survival options: you can tell your Sims to work as hunters, gatherers, or crafters. This will make their "job" on the island to go out and find food and the generically named "resources." The latter gives you the ability to buy items, and the former gives you the ability to avoid staring into the Grim Reaper's beady undead eyes for at least another few hours.
Strangely, despite being Sims players since literally day one, we were rather amazed at how very different the changes felt even if they, strictly speaking, were only name changes. That is, whether a shower costs 600 Simoleons (in the core game) or 480 resources (in Castaway Stories), you're still exchanging Item A for Item B. This isn't exactly the miracle feeling that will convert non-Sims fans to pick up the game, but regardless, there was something extremely appealing about the concept.
And in fact, that is what your Sims' entire virtual lives will be comprised of: going out into the wilderness, getting food and resources, converting the resources into useful objects, trying to maintain their mood meters so they don't die, repeat. There is no real "end," there is no rescue ship that you can summon after so much time. You're stuck on this island forever, baby.
To break up the monotony, and to stick with the idea of "stories," the game ships with a single scenario that tracks one Sim and his or her adventures on the island. After choosing your alter-ego, you find that your Sim has shipwrecked on the island. At first alone, your first hour of gameplay or so will simply be a test of survival as you encounter angry orangutans and poison-spewing statues. Later, more Sims will be found, and your little avatar will find itself in the middle of an evil plot involving magic staves and a possible fountain of youth.
The story will certainly not win any awards for originality or depth, but it does serve its purpose well of giving your Sim something to do as you learn the game. In fact, the early chapters of the story are basically an extended tutorial. The interface will always show an icon representing the next story goal, which can be clicked on if you ever need a hint on how to proceed.
There is enough variety in the goals that even the typical "fetch quests" that inhabit so many role-playing games these days are explained away sufficiently. You'll never feel like your Sim is wasting its time doing a quest, as every item he or she needs to grab will in some way fix a predicament. And as in the sandbox nature of the series, once you finish the story, you can continue to play the game freely using the Sims involved in it.
There are indeed problems with the story, however, mostly on the execution side. For one, it's far too short. Players with any amount of Sims experience will finish it in 10 hours; expert players will be done with it less time. It could be because the island is so limited, and unfortunately the entire game takes place within its confines. That is, of course, an unfair argument (it would be like saying that it's unfortunate Mario is confined to the same Mushroom Kingdom throughout Super Mario Bros.), but there could still have been more sights and secrets to discover that maintain the island motif.
Also annoying is the fact that your Sim decides to refuse your orders occasionally if he's feeling down with one of his mood meters. This isn't annoying in and of itself, but there is a glitch relating to completing story goals if your Sims refused an order. For example, say the goal of the story is to chop some wood, but your Sim is completely exhausted. If you order him to chop it anyway, he may cancel the order himself and protest. One time, he canceled the order but chopped the wood anyway; the result is that the log disappeared, but the game did not recognize we accomplished the goal. We had to restart the game, as the story could not be moved forward.
Of course the solution here is to simply make sure your Sim is always in peak condition when trying to accomplish story goals. This process is, however, far more annoying than it needs to be. Sims' energy depletes far too fast, and you'll frequently find yourself having to stop your story progress in order to have him take naps and showers. If you didn't have stop so often, it wouldn't be bad; as it is, you'll probably spend a solid man-hour of time interrupting yourself just because the Sim's energy couldn't hold out a bit longer. It's hard to maintain momentum on the story (especially the parts that are supposed to feel time-critical) when you're breaking for a snack or nap every other story goal.
The frustration you will feel from this frequent stop-and-go action is low compared to the frustration of the freeform mode. Quite frankly, with the whole "deserted island" motif in full-force, there simply is not enough variety in the objects and decorations you can buy for your castaways. The Sims series has always been about the customization and vast options to mix and match décor. While some sacrifices had to be made to make the game laptop-friendly, the sacrifices were just too great for the whole game itself. Again, perhaps this is an unfair argument, but it really removes a lot of the appeal of playing the game once the story is completed.
Even worse, in order to play freeform mode, the game requires you to play the story at least halfway to pick up several items such as a hatchet or a phone that cannot be acquired any other way. This means that if you decide to play freeform, you essentially have to start over and kiss your Sims from the story goodbye. It's a catch-22: do you play Story Mode and waste five hours simply to get the necessary items for freeform mode, or do you play with the same Story Mode characters after the story completes and ignore the freeform mode?
At least working in the game's favor is the music, which is extremely catchy, even catchier than all the other previous titles, including the core games. The island theme will get you hopping and put you in the mood for some survival adventures, and the ambient noises of the jungle will make you want to explore the island deeper.
The graphics don't fare as well, simply because we're working with an engine that is clearly showing its age. Also, the areas of the game are quite a bit more cluttered and larger than their counterparts in the core games, meaning you'll see a drop in frame rates if too much action is going on, even on decently powered systems. The sand and wild grass is a nice change-of-pace from the aluminum siding and cheery gardens of the other games in the series, but the stuttering caused by two dozen decorative trees on-screen at once is too great to ignore.
Closing Comments
The Sims: Castaway Stories is the first game in the entire series that really feels different despite being based on the same engine and principles. It shows the series still has plenty of room for growth, and that perhaps the endless expansion packs are not bad things.
Still, more (much more) could have been done with it, especially when it is compared to the core games. If your computer can handle The Sims 2 and its expansions, that is a much better buy, especially with the release of The Sims 2: Free Time just around the corner. Unlike Life Stories and Pet Stories though, Castaway Stories might be worth a glance if you're a huge Sims fan who just cannot get enough, simply because the island theme is a genuinely different environment than anything previously seen in the series.
I suppose it comes down to a cliche. Castaway Stories is very much like the island it portrays: great for a vacation, but you won't want to live there. After giving it a little bit of your free time, you'll be more than happy to return to the homes of your Sims in the core games.
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