The Sims: House Party Expansion Pack (PC)

...on familiar territory. This is the second of the expansion packs made for The Sims. The first was Livin’ It Up (Livin’ Large in the US), and since I don’t have it, I can’t review it, so straight on to add-on pack number two.

For those people who haven’t played The Sims (or read my op), here’s a brief explanation of how the game works. If you’ve read my other op, I apologize for this blatant ...
...Recap****

In the game, you take control of a household. You can create your Sims, decide whether they’re adults or children, choose their gender, skin tone, face and clothes, give them a name, and determine their character. Once you’re happy with them, you decide whether there are more members in the family (maximum 6), or whether they live alone.

The main game screen is an overhead view of the house and ... more

Are you nosey? Do you like to meddle in people's lives? Do you like to push people around, tell them what to do, who to talk to, what music to listen to, how to decorate?

Haven’t I said all this before?

Yup, if you’ve read my Sims op, you’ll be on familiar territory. This is the second of the expansion packs made for The Sims. The first was Livin’ It Up (Livin’ Large in the US), and since I don’t have it, I can’t review it, so straight on to add-on pack number two.

For those people who haven’t played The Sims (or read my op), here’s a brief explanation of how the game works. If you’ve read my other op, I apologize for this blatant and wanton plagiarisation, but it is brief, so please skip onwards to **** Yeah, so what’s new? ****

****Brief Recap****

In the game, you take control of a household. You can create your Sims, decide whether they’re adults or children, choose their gender, skin tone, face and clothes, give them a name, and determine their character. Once you’re happy with them, you decide whether there are more members in the family (maximum 6), or whether they live alone.

The main game screen is an overhead view of the house and garden. There are three modes: play, buy and build.

In play mode you can select your Sims, and decide what they do by clicking on objects or people. The options available will be displayed around a little picture of their head. If you do nothing, the Sims will act autonomously, but not always in their best interests.

They are like Tamagotchi, and you need to keep them happy. Their mood is affected by eight Needs: Hunger, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social and Room, and their actions change their moods. Eating a meal will decrease your Sim’s hunger need, but increase their bladder need. Going to the loo will decrease the bladder need but increase their hygiene need, and so on… All the needs increase naturally over time and keeping your Sim happy will require juggling the various activities available.

Your Sims can also interact with the other Sims in the neighbourhood. Relationships are rated out of 100, with 0 being “stranger” and 100 being “intimate friend”. The rating will increase the more they interact, and the more friendly they are, the more interactions are available; from talking to kissing and even to proposing! Yup, Sims can marry, have babies and even die, if you’re careless.

A smiley face indicates a fellow Sim is a friend, a heart indicates that your Sim loves that person (who can be of the same or opposite sex). Generally, a person becomes a friend at around 50 points. Relationship points seep away slowly as time passes too, so friendships need constant maintenance.

When a neighbour visits, they will stay until they get bored, tired, hungry, jealous, or if it gets too late (after 1am). If you’re fed up with them, you can always ask them to leave, in which case they’ll say their goodbyes, and go home with no hard feelings.

Your Sim will need a job, and there are several career tracks to choose from. They might start out as a security guard and eventually work up to being chief of police, or as a hospital porter and wind up a brain surgeon. The further up the ladder they go, the more they’re paid for working fewer hours, but they need skill and friends to get there.

Sims possess six skills; Cooking, Mechanical, Charisma, Body, Logic, and Creativity, which can all be increased through study or practice. Different career paths require different expertise; a scientist is expected to have good mechanical skill and logic, for example.

If your Sim goes to work having satisfied the skill and friends requirements for promotion and in a good mood, they are certain to be promoted, but be careful! A Sim can miss work for a day, but if they fail to get to the car in time two days running, they will be sacked, and will have to start a new career path at the bottom again!

In buy mode, you choose items to furnish your Sims’ home. All items have ratings out of 10 regarding their effect on the eight Needs; Hunger, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social, and Room. Different objects reduce different needs by varying degrees, and some objects reduce more than one need at once. A bath will decrease both hygiene need and comfort need, whereas a shower will only decrease hygiene, for instance. Generally, more expensive items reduce need faster, and if you run out of money, or just get bored of something, you can also sell it.

In build mode you can choose the layout and decoration of your Sims’ home. You can raise or lower land, add water features, walls, decoration, stairs, fireplaces, plants, floor coverings, doors, windows, and choose the roof.

Basically Sims like large rooms, lots of natural light, they like it to be kept clean and they like it to contain nice stuff.

Minimum spec is 233 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 4x CD-ROM, 2 MB Video, 300 MD Free HD space, but I think that’s probably pushing it to the limits, and your PC will definitely have go slow moments.

So now you know all about the Sims, right? Well, it’s time to learn about House Party, the second of The Sims expansion packs.

**** Yeah, so what’s new? ****

Well, the House Party expansion doesn’t change the game much at all (unlike some of the later expansions). You play it in exactly the same way as before, and most of the changes are simply new items, characters and options. So is it worth buying? Well, yes, I think it is. I will try to explain.

First things first. You have to have installed a copy of The Sims, before you can install the expansion packs, which makes sense, since you have to have a copy of the original to play it. Also, if you have Livin’ It Up (Livin’ Large in the US) you need to have this installed first.

This is a good rule of thumb for the expansion packs; you have to install them in the order they came out. Unfortunately this is a bit of a faff if you buy an earlier expansion and want to install it after a later one (another reason I don’t have Livin’ It Up) since you’re supposed to uninstall the later expansion packs and re-install them in the correct order. I don’t know what happens if you don’t do this (most probably nothing) but I haven’t tried it, so for all I know, the result could be global thermonuclear war.

You use whichever CD is the most recent expansion to play the game, and it won’t play with any other.

The first change you will notice is that on the neighbourhood screen there is a number in the top left corner with arrows beside it. This is because there are now several neighbourhoods you can create and move between. Your Sims can still only interact with the other Sims in their own neighbourhood, but this is especially helpful if more than one person is playing the game, since your actions will not conflict with those of the other player(s) if you use different neighbourhoods. If you want, you can copy families and houses from one neighbourhood to another too.

You may have guessed that the main idea behind this expansion is to throw bigger and better parties? Well, the phone has an important new option; Throw Party. This speeds things up enormously. In the original game, if you wanted to throw a party (which is anything over 5 guests, by the way), you had to phone everyone up one by one, and you were usually still on the phone when the guests arrived.

With this option, you get a seemingly random selection of neighbours dropping by. In some ways this is quite helpful, since people you don’t know so well drop by, but if you’re particularly hoping to see one or two people you’re probably better off ringing them individually. Of course, you can choose to “Throw Party” several times too, and pretty much everyone will turn up. Beware, though. The more people you have in your house, the better you PC will have to be to cope without becoming unbearably slow.

Now, if you’re going to have all these guests over, you’re going to need to feed them, and catering for large numbers can be a real pain, so there’s a solution: hire a caterer! You will need a buffet table or a punchbowl (or both) for the caterer to fill, but once he’s there he will continue to refill them and clear up plates until it gets too late and he clears up and leaves. He’s not cheap, but well worth it if you’re planning a bit of a ‘do.

What time of year is your party? Is it to celebrate a special event? You can decorate your house with pumpkins, or maybe buy a turkey, which everyone will gather around to watch you carve. If it’s a birthday celebration, you can buy a birthday cake. You can choose one of your Sims to blow out the candles, and everyone will don party hats and come to watch too!

Your guests will need entertaining, so there are some wonderful additions to the list of items you can buy.

Try the mechanical rodeo machine for example. At 4,500 simoleons, it’s an extravagance, but you can work out your body whilst having fun too, and a crowd will form to watch and clap.

There’s a campfire. Light it up and your guests can sit around, tell stories, roast marshmallows and sing songs like “she’ll be comin’ round the mountain” (in simspeak, of course).

For the perfect disco, you can buy DJ mixing tables, huge speakers, flashing lights, dance cages, and the icing on the cake; a coordinated light-up dance floor. Now your Sims will dance according to the music playing, and there are more music options too; Disco, Country, Beach, Rock, and Rave, and you can still bypass them by adding your own MP3 files. Country dancing involves lots of do-si-dohs, Beach is hula, and Rave means they do that Pulp Fiction v’s across the eyes dance, amongst others.

The dressing up trunk is fantastic fun. Now you can have themed parties! Will it be a black tie affair, or will your Sims be dressed as cowboys, in togas, or fancy dress perhaps? It’s particularly great if you’re planning a themed wedding.

For a special (adult) event, you can hire a cake dancer. “Eh? What’s a cake dancer?” I hear you ask. Well, it’s one of those dancers that pop out of a huge cake, isn’t it! You can choose a male or female dancer to titillate your audience. Presumably if titillation is your aim, you’ll choose the woman, but you know what I mean. The dancer will even hang around for a while to mingle among the guests.

New group activities come in the shape of the pool table, bubble blowing machine and others. According to the box sleeve, there are over 100 new items to choose from, so I’m not going to go through them all, but there are also new floors and walls – how about bamboo floors and wallpaper to match your Hawaiian themed party?

You will know if your party is going well or if it’s a catastrophe. If the mime artist turns up, things are looking bad. He will start hassling the guests in his attempt to liven things up, and if he stays to long he nicks your stuff!

Gatecrashers may also turn up (they’re the ones dressed like punks). I haven’t worked out if this means your party is good, bad or mediocre, but I ask them to leave in case they trash the place and nick stuff.

If your party is really hot, you may receive a visit from a celebrity! I have only ever had Drew Carey turn up, but I believe there are other celebs. They will drive up in a limousine, everyone will crowd around to watch them get out, and the celebrity will start to mingle and talk with the guests. Sims will talk about the celeb too – you will see their face in the Sims’ speech bubbles, and that night in bed they may even dream about meeting the star! After a while, the VIP will thank you for a good time and leave.

As with the original game, if your party continues too late into the night the police will call around to warn you about the noise. If you don’t ask everyone to leave pronto, they will call again and fine you for disturbing the neighbours, even if everyone in the neighbourhood is at your party!

There are new heads and bodies to choose from, and also new career paths to try; Supernatural, where you start off as a psychic phone-a-friend and work your way up through tarot card reader, psychic, and the like, and Computing, where you start as a data processor and graduate to computer programmer, hacker, games designer and so on in your bid to own a multinational software empire.

One thing you do have to remember is that having a party is exhausting and will wear your Sims out. They still need to get up in time for work at least every other day or they’ll be sacked.

Parties aren’t really ideal for making friends either – one on one time is less complicated as they won’t get so distracted. Parties are just a chance to show off and have a laugh really.

Most important of all – make sure you have plenty of toilets! All that eating drinking and dancing will have quite an effect on your Sims and their guests’ bladders, and they will undoubtedly all want to use the loo at the same time!

All this adds quite an interesting new dimension to the game, and I’d certainly recommend getting it. There are so many new items to interact with and some of them, like the dancing cages, are truly hilarious the first, second, third and even fourth time you use them. Especially if it’s the staid old granny from lot number 4 who’s rocking along with the best of them. Who knew she was such a goer? 

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