The Sims 2: Castaway

Pros:
Interesting storyline
Variety of objectives
New maps and hidden areas to discover
Moderately challenging puzzles to solve
Different patterns to collect and craft
Traditional Sim "motives" to keep a sim happy
Make your own home

Cons:
Clunky controls and interface
Bugs still present in published game
Repetitiveness of gathering can become pretty tedious
A little too short for overall playtime

I'm an avid gamer, so when I heard about the Sims Castaway game, I was pretty curious to try it. I pretty much really liked this game, despite it's flaws. Overall playtime: 15-30 hours (took me less than a week).

I discovered a few bugs while playing. My pointer arrow disappeared randomly and I couldn't do anything to get it back. I searched online and found out you can press "1" on the wii-mote and use that to save and reboot. I also had a bug where one of the sims in my tribe became invisible, other sims could talk to it, and there'd be floating food and things, but you couldn't select it. Rebooting didn't help, but after going to another map, my invisible sim eventually came back.

Some of the controls were a little clunky. For example, you can only craft one thing at a time, so if a recipe calls for 20 rope, you open up the menu, select the the submenu, select the rope, select craft... repeat 20 times. There really should be a way you can say "craft 20 rope".

In spite of all that, I actually enjoyed the game very much. I just wished the plot lasted longer, or at least had more side quests, collectible patterns, etc.

I've enjoyed playing this game. It takes a little bit to get used to it on Wii since i'm used to PC Sims but I like it.

We have the version for the Wii. It's a lot of fun and challenging. You have to develop skills and collect things in order to go on to more advanced buildings and tools. I have re-started the game 3 or 4 times trying different senarios (either solo or with other characters). It's worth getting.

The Sims 2: Castaway I own The Sims 2: Castaway on Nintendo Ds, Wii, and computer game. The Wii version of the game is fun, challenging, and what you expect from the Sims 2. The graphics are great, the music is good. The challenges, and goals are just right. They are challenging goals, but not to hard. The biggest disadvantage of the Castaway is that you can build your home, but you are extremely limited on where you can build it, and the lot's are so small. I was disappointed with this aspect of it. However I was extremely pleased with the beaches, and scenery. A great game that you, and your family will enjoy.

I think that having played The Sims 2 on the PC, I was not the target audience for this game. The title has very little at all to do with the actual Sims 2 game, and comes away as a highly stylized version of the popular game whose name Castaway borrows. Unfortunately, it misses the boat.

Being used to playing full Sims 2 households, I started off with 4 Sims in Castaway. The game quickly describes a shipwreck and you wake up on a deserted island. Finding a book, you are given a series of tasks to complete to help you survive and explore the island.

You spend a lot of time gathering materials. If you are a veteran of RPGs you should be familiar with the need to stuff your pockets full of anything you come across as you explore whatever you can.

You also spend a lot of time talking to chimpanzees, the only other occupants of the island besides you and your other sims who don't turn up until you reach the second island.

After two days, I had reached the third island and made it back to civilization, making for a rather short game. There are no really difficult puzzles involved - the tasks you need to achieve to get out are all easy.

Minor annoyance: EA Games has this thing now about naming Sims titles in a very confusing manner. Castaway has about as much in common with The Sims 2 as those chimps do with your sims. The Sims 2 is a far better game.

Major annoyances:
Unfortunately, there is only one save slot, and no option to avoid overwriting an existing game. If more than one person in your household wants to play, they will just have to wait.

The relationships between the sims are just weak. Often, and for no reason that the game shared with me, my sims would become very angry with each other. I'd be doing something at the Home site and the sim I controlled would stop responding to commands and instead march across the clearing to another sim they previously had a 100% relationship with and get into a chest-poking argument. Relationship score would tank into negative numbers, and the social motivation would take a huge hit.

There was never any explanation for this behavior, and it happened repeatedly.

The build tools are somewhat limited. After having built several structures, I encountered a limit to the number of objects that could be built on a site. The game never tells you what that limit is and doesn't mention it until you are about to hit it. I wish it had earlier so I could have built differently ahead of time.

If you've already built something, you can move roofs and rearrange where they are placed, but not walls - you can only delete those, losing the resources you used to build them.

I guess I needed to play a console version of The Sims 2 for my own curiosity, but I think that Castaway has cured me. I'll go back to playing the PC version after this - I find it much more enjoyable.