Game Review – The Sims2 Castaway

NAME: The Sims2 Castaway VERSION: 1.0.8 COMPANY: EA Games PLATFORM: JAVA GENRE: RPG SIZE: 457 KB TEST PHONE: K800i RATING: 6/10 DEMO:

Welcome to The Sims2 Castaway review. We like the Sims series games in general and although the first Sims2 games for the mobile we tried wasn’t the breakthrough we where expecting we where still happy to give the latest release a go.

The scenario for castaway is shown in a few slides at the start of the game of how you go to the island, essentially thrown off your sailing ship where you where having a party with others due to some sort of natural disaster. I didn’t quite catch the name of the ship on the life ring but I sure it had some corporate significance. You wash ashore and have to start fending for your self.

There are several versions of this Castaway game, namely for the Nintendo DS, PC and so forth. However this mobile version plays quite differently compared to the say – the DS version. The Sims2 Castaway for mobile phones gameplay although ties in with the other versions in that it involves collecting food and any other items lying around so we can use them later, it’s obviously less complex play.

The story is all about how to get off the island and back to civilisation.  All the sub-quests lead up to this ending.  The quests are very simple, collect this item from that person , play mini-game to accomplish and so forth.  The locations are: The Bay, Waterfall, Beach, Cave, The Cliffs and your Camp.  Throughout the game you’ll meet the characters on the island,  Mike the geek, Sandi the snobby cook, Higgins the hid pea in the pod monkey, Leyla the fashionista and ‘So you think you can dance’ wannabe, Crazy Carl the cave and psycho treasure hunter dweller, Jeff the surfer guy, the local monkeys, and of course the Pineapple man.

Although a reasonable game to play it doesn’t have the character development of say the Stranded game.  The games characters are supposed to represent stereo types but it just doesn’t work.  For example the surfer guy isn’t stereotypical or chilled out he comes across as sly, like wise the geek isn’t vaguely geeky, he’s just w….er hermit.  Sandi the supposedly snobby character is actually helpful.

The game controls are easy enough to master, the game music is the usual MIDI and graphics, current industry standard. See the Larry game for one of the better graphics in a mobile phone game.

To conclude Castaway reminded us of our favorite desert island game ‘Stranded’. However Castaway is not as good. For example, the lack of a proper introduction like in Stranded amongst a variety of other things, disappointed since this one is made by EA. You can choose to leave the island at the end of your tasks or continue to wonder around the island completing all the optional mini-tasks.  It’s a good game but spoiled by poor characters and lack of a sub-plot or interesting story line.