The Sims2: Castaway

In my quest to find non-violent games for my PSP, I came across Sims2:Castaway.

In the past 2 months, I have been playing this game non-stop and have really enjoyed the alternative reality of living on a quirky, deserted island.

Freyashawk, after hearing that I had purchased the game, was intrigued, and being the kindly soul that she is, proceeded to write up a guide for the game. Although she wrote the guide for the Wii platform, the game guide is relevant for the PSP platform (and probably other ones too) aswell. Thanks Freyashawk! :-)

Initially Freyashawk discovered that the PSP version seemed to have inherent bugs in it causing the game to shut the PSP down. This may have been the reason she wrote the guide for the Wii platform. What happens is, that during loading from one location to another or during the save process, the PSP seems to become overloaded and it shuts down. This causes you to lose all your unsaved info. Quite a frustrating experience. I also discovered the bug, it happened to me 3 times, very early on in the game, but I persevered, and the bug did not return.

I have now almost finished the game, there is only one more goal that I have not completed and that is to catch a chicken and harvest its eggs. I will need to make and set more traps! The game itself is really nice, perhaps that is a weak adjective for the game, but I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in the game during my daily train commute. The realistic graphics, although they sometimes don't render properly, go a long way to adding to the enjoyment of the game. Another aspect of the game that I really enjoyed was the randomness of some of the events or items. Picking up and reading the messages in the bottles that wash up on shore provided many amusing moments. The fact that you always have soft (dry) toilet paper with you is another! The discriptions of many of the items in your inventry are also very funny.

The play-ability of the game after you have reached all targets is another bonus. You can continue to create new outfits and new furniture for your houses that you build if you choose to remain on the island after being rescued. You can fish to your hearts content. This makes me very happy and there are many fish types that you can catch. I absolutely love the fact that you can catch a shark that is almost as big as you are, if not bigger, and that you can catch this with a small whippy rod that looks like a fly-fishing rod!

On the whole a very nice game that follows a very linear storyline, but that still allows you to follow your own adventure as you go along. If you get the chance, get and play this game!