What Parents Should Know
This is an adult world (the dating world here includes the
opportunity to engage in casual sex and extramarital affairs),
and there's really not much that's appropriate for or of
interest to tweens and young teens. The expansion pack does
monitor your friendships at both a superficial and deeper
level, and you might want to ask your teens if these dual
levels exist in real life: Can someone be fun to hang out with,
but not there for you when you really need them? You might also
want to discuss the realities of the modern dating world and
the severe consequences of engaging in casual sex or
affairs.
Common Sense Media Review
With this inspired expansion pack, players leave their
suburb and head downtown. Locales include a beach and a park
for frolicking, bars and nightclubs for meeting new friends,
shopping malls for buying gifts, and restaurants for wooing
your sweetie.
At first glance, Downtown looks sprawling, but once you zero in on the locations, you'll find a lot of repetition. That's easily overlooked, though -- with ice cream counters, gambling and disco dancing, there's lots of fun to explore (you can even develop real estate and build your own date destination). As the title suggests, the subject matter here is mature -- or at least as mature as a bunch of adults whooping it up over mechanical bull rides and slot machines can be. Kids don't even make it downtown.
Of course, the real joy of THE SIMS: HOT DATE is in the interactions among your virtual friends. Here you'll find increased demands on the art of conversation as you work to meet new people or deepen the relationship with your current partner. The icons that represent dialogue play a much bigger role in the game, revealing the interests of the Sims you meet and giving you clues about the best way to bond with them. This emphasis makes the building and maintaining of relationships much more difficult, and changes the main goal of the game from conspicuous consumption to social engineering.
It's worth noting that by advancing the game play so much (and so well) it is kind of a drag to return to the old neighborhood. The home is still inextricably connected to the game -- you've still got to go to work, sleep and shower -- but you can't help but feel constrained by the four walls once you've relaxed at the beach. All of a sudden, your regular Sims life of watching TV and taking out the trash doesn't seem so interesting.
HOT DATE is not for the kids who play the other Sims games such as SimCity 4. It's suited for the advanced, mature (and upwardly-mobile) player. Not only is the game play more subtle, but the downtown life eats up your cash like this creative game eats up your time -- with wild abandon.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
