Impact
Site Admin Joined: 01 May 2004 Posts: 3258 Location: Pinecrest, FL	Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 10:42 am    Post subject: PC Game Review :: Singles - Flirt up your Life Demo   Produced by Rotobee Realtime 3d Full Game Release Date: May 24, 2004 Introduction: For all of those that thought The Sims didn't put enough emphasis on relationships, Singles - Flirt up your Life might just be for you! The graphics are better, the 3d engine more robust, and most of the emphasis is on building a relationship with the other person you are living with. Computer Specs (Impact): Processor: AMD XP2100+ cooled by a Koolance Water-Cooling System Memory: 512M DDR PC3200 Motherboard: ABIT NF7-S with onboard 10/100 LAN Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster 5.1 Live! Power Supply: Antec 350 Watts "SL350" Primary Monitor: Generic 17" CRT Speakers: Altec Lansing 5.1 Video Card: 64mb Geforce4 TI4200 Hard Drive 1: Western Digital 80gb (8mb Cache) Hard Drive 2/3: 2x Western Digital 80gb (8mb Cache) Striped in RAID-0 DVD-RW: Sony 8x CD-RW: 52x24x52x Operating System: Windows XP Professional w/SP1 Main Thoughts: If you are not familiar with The Sims, now would be a good time to read our review on it. This review will compare The Sims and Singles - Flirt up your Life quite a bit. The main focus of Singles is to build a good relationship with the other person you are living with. This means you must talk, spend time together, and get to know each other. In the demo you are stuck in a small apartment with 2 people of your choice (choose them as the game starts). Your choices include a few men and a few women, each with a short profile about the person. The graphics engine in Singles is far superior to the graphics engine in The Sims. Singles allows you to rotate the camera, zoom in and out, and slide the camera through a full 3d house. This allows you to get right up close to the action and see your character's every move. As you go through the demo, your singles gain skill points by doing different things. Just as in The Sims, they are able to gain skill by doing a particular action (fixing a broken toilet will raise their ability to fix things, cooking helps their cooking skill). You can also help raise their skills by using skill points you earn in one of many categories (see screen shots). While I am not completely sure what warrants a skill point, they were fairly easy to come by. To create a better relationship with the other single you are living with, you must use four menus to communicate (see screen shots). As you talked to each other, your relationship with the person (in that category) went up and allowed new options to be used. An example of this is: At the start of the game, all you can do under the "Sensuality" menu was "Flirt". After a few days of talking and flirting you were able to use more options like "French Kiss", and "Cuddle". You could rate your progress in each category by the menu showing bubbles that would fill as you progressed. Now don't get the idea that all you do is talk to each other. There are still other issues, just like in The Sims, you have meters rating your characters needs. These change just like in The Sims. You must use the bathroom, take showers, brush your teeth, eat,and sleep to live. You are also supposed to go to your job every morning at 9:00... When I played I didn't see a reason to, your boss never seemed to get mad... This allowed me more time to work on my Singles relationships. I played the game for about 2 hours and was able to get a fairly good relationship going. By the end of the first hour however I was using the "Warp Speed" button (there are four speeds to control how fast things go) quite a bit. [page] Screenshots: Quote: Four forms of talking to improve your relationship. Quote: Your Singles need to eat. Eating together helps them form a better relationship. Quote: Fix things that break. This allows you to use the item again, and gain skill in repairing things Quote: Your Singles have basic needs, such as using the bathroom. Quote: Talk to each other to build a stronger relationship. Quote: The options in the "Sensuality" menu. Notice some are greyed out, these can't be accessed until you built a better sensual relationship. Quote: A scale to see how your relationship is progressing in each area. The bubbles fill as you communicate in each category. Quote: Meters show what your single needs. Conclusion: The graphics are better than The Sims. I like the fact that you can rotate the camera (very smoothly) around your singles. While the gameplay isn't much different from The Sims, it does offer a new view on it, and a new focus. If you enjoyed The Sims, but want a more adult version, focusing more on building relationships, this might be a good download for you. If you would like to give Singles - Flirt up your Life a try, you can download it here. Rating on a scale of 1 (absolutely awful) to 10 (jaw-dropping) Gameplay: 6/10 - Nothing particularly new, just a new twist on The Sims. Graphics 7/10 - Graphics weren't bad, much better than The Sims. Sound 5/10 - There are no real words, just like in The Sims, it is a garbled language. The background music wasn't bad, but it didn't impress me. Replay Value 6/10 - Rotobee gives you a whole bunch of different characters, and the option of having homosexual couples. Should provide a good amount of versatility Overall 6/10 - If you enjoyed The Sims, this might be worth the download. Links: Rotobee Realtime 3d Official Website Singles Demo:Download All pictures are the property of their respective owners, in this case: Rotobee Realtime 3d.
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