The Urbz: Sims in the City [PS2]

The Sims franchise has traditionally been about building homes and nudging your little virtual people toward eventual overall happiness, in a sort of ever-evolving, hyper-spatial suburban Skinner box (where everybody shops at Old Navy). The Urbz; Sims in the City, on the other hand, is set in a sprawling (and almost desperately "funky") urban landscape, and gives players a much more hands-on approach to... well, getting Urbz of various stylistic "sets" to like their characters.

The game, like its simulated citizens, tries hard to impress -- ironically, this is the one thing any real urban dweller would tell you not to do. Having just moved to the big city, you're tasked with building up a reputation, winning friends, and influencing people as you form relationships with the city's colorful characters.

There's a thin story that eventually gels as you make your way into the game, but the vast majority of the time is spent repeatedly interacting with other Urbz, endlessly decorating your character and your "crib" with material goods, working jobs, and using an ever-present cellphone/PDA gadget to manage goals, relationships, and inventory (so yes, it's mildly realistic in that respect, despite the zany, colorful visuals).

A dozen distinct districts are home to different social cliques: Tattooed punks, artsy culture-vultures, Tokyo-style neon ravers, Diamond Heights movers and shakers, the thrasher skaters of Kicktail Park, the night-life, fashion-conscious cosmopolitans of Cozmo Street (oddly, this is where the game's in-game guest stars, the Black Eyed Peas, can be found in their Urbish form)... you get the idea.

Once you choose the district to start your new virtual life in, it's time to go nuts with the character customization. It really is a cool creation system, and just about every aspect of the character models can be fiddled with and fine-tuned to your liking. Don't get comfy with any one look for too long, however -- yours is not to uniquely express, yours is to chameleon around from look to look in order to curry the favor of others. Eesh!

Your stylin' Urbz have a set of basic needs, like their less-outgoing Sim cousins. Here, the basic needs are sleep, hygiene, food, fun, and the call that every city-dweller must answer -- the call of nature. Each is tracked on an easy-to-grasp meter, and when something starts flashing, it's time to address it. Few of them need attention paid to them very closely, but if left alone for too long, they all have potential negative consequences that could put a dent in your social standing.

Each district you're in will have more or less analogous goals to be achieved -- but first and foremost, it's always about the networking and socializing. The networking "commands" given to your Urbz are called "socials," and these are essentially the moves and lines you lay on prospective new friends/admirers. Everything from flirting to making physical threats, dancing to taking photographs, horsing around to seriously bonding is available. Even the ones that are always guaranteed a "negative" response, like threats, can be useful to scare away would-be bullies, criminals, and the like.

As you get better at making friendly with the various natives, your "rep" on the street will increase; so much so that, with time, you'll be seeing your own superstar mug on posters and billboards. And the ultimate compliment -- seeing your personal style reflected in the clothes of people on the street.

Directly controlling your Urbz at their jobs takes the form of mini-games; the degree to which they're performed is partly on your reflexes, and partly up to the skills you've acquired. Jobs have different levels of prestige, so it's possible to "move on up" and become a better chef, line-worker, bartender, or what have you. You'll also be able to outfit your apartment with purchases made in the various districts.

There's a nice sense here of the virtual world being a living place with its own ebb and flow -- certain jobs (or parties) don't happen until certain times of the day or night (you know the ones we mean). The designers have gone to great lengths to present a vibrant, cartoony extreme example of urban hip, and everything's got a funky sort of fluidity and dreamlike irreverence to it. It's all wild hair and exaggerated clothing styles and swoopy edges and mix-and-match fashion scattered higgedly-piggeldy to the cardinal points.

Urbz: Sims in the City is fun for a while, and the customization is quite compelling at first, but before long the innate repetition, linearity, and ultimate emptiness really begin to grate. You could play this game indefinitely -- whether you'd want to is a personal matter. And while the underlying message of video games is usually a non-issue, there's something queasily off-putting about the forced, oh-so-urban vibe. To put it all another, more urban way: Why are the pretty ones always so dumb?