Nintendo DS - The Sims 2 Castaway Review

The Sims 2 Castaway begins the usual Sim way: create your Sim, pick the hair color, hair style and clothes, name it and off you go. Except this time, your Sim fall into a crate which is nearly instantly transported aboard a cargo ship. In the middle of a storm, the crate goes overboard and the unfortunate Sim ends up in a deserted island - or is it?

It's time for you to know how Tom Hanks felt like in that movie and put your survival skills to the test! The game is controlled with the stylus, while the D-pad is used to move the camera around the area you are in. One of the trigger buttons will fast forward (depending on whether you are left or right handed), and since your Sim won't be running around, this does help.

The microphone also comes into play in a few activities, for example to light a fire, play an ocarina or blow into a conch shell.

As usual, your Sim will have the six basic needs: hunger, hygiene, social, bladder, comfort and energy. Obviously, it won't be as easy to fulfill these needs on a desert island. The first thing you should do is find shelter and search for food. Then look everywhere to see what else you can find, because even the most insignificant things can have a purpose: sticks, shells, leaves, rocks, even broken glass bottles. Simple things become luxuries in this island.

As you explore, you will come across other survivors. Each of them will also be able to help you, but you must help them first. If you do their little "quests", you will receive useful tools and even be able to trade for new items.

There is a fairly large area to explore, and you eventually will be able to reach a second island once you get the canoe. You will find many shrubs you can harvest for berries, trees you can shake for fruit, a nest where you can find eggs and of course, there is plenty of fish around.

Spear fishing is one of the mini-games you can play. You can do it on the beach or in fresh water, and depending on the time of day and weather conditions, you will find different fish swimming around.

Bug hunting provides you with some yucky but needed food. Look under a heavy rock and tap away at the bugs on the screen. If you get them all, bonus bugs will come out. Bugs can be used in cooking, to make or dye clothes, and to paint. If you fix the easel, you can use the bugs as your watercolors and paint whenever you want.

Crafting is actually a very in-depth component of the game. There are hundreds of items to discover, and plenty of recipes to turn them into useful things. Need to make a rope? Get some vines. Want a water carrier? Combine some coconut shells with sticks. It's a very creative system that makes you hunt for what you need, either by foraging, digging, exploring or trading.

As you discover new places, you can visit them later by tapping it's location on the map (like teleporting) making your life a lot easier and wasting less time if you want to harvest some fruits somewhere, bathe in the springs, wash your clothes near the plane crash site, or if you find an item that is needed somewhere else.

Overall, the game doesn't look too impressive. The graphics are ok, but Sims themselves don't have much detail and seem a lot like in the original The Sims game. However, the landscapes look quite nice and all the artwork for the items you collect is very well done.

The music is barely inexistant, but you have the constant sound of the waves, jungle animals, crickets, birds chirping, thunder, rain, etc. which make the experience more natural.

The Sims 2 Castaway is a great game. I didn't expect it to grab me the way it did. There is plenty to do, and even if you feel like you're stuck sometimes, ideas and solutions will eventually come to you, even if just by the passing of days. It can be really serious but also very humorous in some occasions.

This is one Sims game I would recommend to anyone, Sims fan or not.

Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text, screenshots and trailer at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=sims2castaway