I have to say I absolutely hated the Sims games for Xbox I thought they all seemed really pointless and it wasn't a game with any sort of objective. My sister bought this for DS along with a few other Sim DS games, she convinced me to give it ago and when I did, I was completely hooked on this for weeks. The objective of this game is that you move into a run down seaside resort town, you have to do up the town by doing favours for the mayor, and making shop owners happy, by doing this you encourage more people to move to the town and open up shops and eventually you get tourist's coming to visit.

Game Play.

Starting this game you have to first off design yourself, such as clothes, eyes hair etc, this can be quite fun as you can make yourself look like a really cool kid or the geekiest person if you want this can take as long as you want to spend going through all the features of this, it is very basic and sticks to - skin tone, eyes, clothes, hair, and colour of eyes and hair. This is fine because this doesn't have to be really technical
you just want to get started on the game.

Once you have completed the first step you are automatically in the mayors hall where she is briefing you on how bad the town is and what she wants you to do, all the way through the game if you have completed your last task, go and ask the mayor and she will give you hints and tips about what to do next.

Through this game,you have to help the flower shop by planting flowers in all the flower beds all around the full resort to make the place look brighter and pretty rather than dull and boring like before, also you have to help help by making "lei" this is like a mini side game for you to get bronze, silver and gold medals in, she then will give you a free one every time you complete one, once tourists start to come, you can speak to them and cheer them up and give them presents, the "lei" is classed as a present, this makes them really happy.

There is the clothes store and the gifts store that open up, both are feeling very down so you need to talk to them all the time to eventually find out what's wrong and help them cheer up, the local police officer also asks you to do something for him which is just to take some picture for him. The young boy in this, keeps asking you to play racquet ball, you need to do this on all the courts, once you get great high scores, all the tourist are attracted to see the best racquet ball player in the town (you) A cake shop also opens up and you have to buy the cake to distribute to all the tourists to make them happy.

Once the town is almost complete, different parts start opening up such as the forest, highlands and the mountains, also the ferry starts to arrive to take people over to the other island where you can buy a house and you also have some tasks to do there.

Some of the tasks throughout the game are decorate the highlands, mining in the mountains for money and gems, feeding the animals in the forest to attract the wildlife back. while doing all the tasks there are mini games you have to complete such as hand gliding, scuba diving, fishing, and skydiving. All these are really fun to play and yet frustrating when you can never beat your last score, but entertaining non the less, you also get money for all the side games you play which is how you earn your money.

Additional.

You level up through the game with gold stars, that's how you know fi there is something you still need to do, or someone you still need to speak to if the gold stars are almost but not quite completed, you can furnish your house with items from the shop in the forest, I didn't really bother with this,I just bought a bed and I bought a wardrobe and some new clothes so I could change, you can buy lots of cute dresses, I also wore a black flowered dress with big ear phones on and bright pink hair, this was a cool look for someone helping a full town and resort in my opinion. this is mainly touch screen so you use the stylis almost all the way through this, you can walk, but I'm inpatient and that's to slow for me so I always ran around, the bus eventually becomes available again where you can go to all the different areas which was handy because it took ages running every where.

You have a suitcase with you, you click on that and that opens up your items, you can have several pages of 10 items, this allows you to buy lots of cake or collect lei's and once to give to 20 or more tourists at once, or when catching the fish it allows you to catch and carry loads at once to save you going backwards and forwards to log them and sell them. You get money for doing pretty much everything in this so you never have to worry about having to earn it by doing extra things.

Graphics.

This isn't like the other Sims games, this is very cartoon-y as it is aimed at the lower ages so it isn't human like and the characters seem slightly squared, I think this is great because I detest the other Sims games so this to me makes it bearable to look at, this is very brightly coloured which is a great attraction when picking up the game in the shop. The scenery isn't the most detailed but you can tell what is water and you can tell what is the rock mountain side and that to me is all that matters, this isn't slow and it doesn't lag even when running around everywhere or when you have 50 items carried around with you so that is brilliant.

Replay value.

I have played this a couple of times since completing it, it is very addictive I find and takes a good few hours to complete this, possibly around 20 hours or more depending how much time you spend getting gold in all the mini side tasks which I can't stand not getting all the achievements in the game so I spend a lot of time on this. This is a really fun game to play and I get excited over the little things like finally seeing dears running around the forest because you put all your time into feeding all the cats and dogs. Very enjoyable game and one I will play again this winter in front of the fire all cosy.

This is aimed at children of course, but it doesn't mean adults can't play it either, although they may find it a little to easy if they already play Sims but honestly this is a great game and I think I'm going to start playing it again now. You can but this these days really cheap usually just over £10 in any games shops, or you can even do a search on ebay and see if any come up.