The Sims Social is Like Crack: Addicting and Ultimately a Letdown

With the ever-growing popularity of Facebook comes the ever-growing popularity of Facebook games. These games are not to be confused with console games which devour hours of time with button smashing. These games instead prey upon the bored who are then required to either pay cash or add possible Facebook stalkers in order to gain energy to continue playing.

I must admit, the game is addicting. I find myself checking The Sims Social multiple times a day. I add random people who can probably steal my identity from my Facebook page. I put off obligations just to get a new room in my house that's already huge. I like how the game forces me to "interact" with others. While these interactions are just merely click prompts like "chat" or "flirt". . . at least I'm trying to be social, right?

Wrong. This addicting quality should not be confused with genuine quality. Between the horrible loading speed, constant refreshing, and bugs, I spend a good third of my game time just trying to get the game to work. Not to mention the redundant and constant asking of people to click your request to full-fill a new Sims quest. There is little to do, if anything at all, between the 5 minutes it takes to load energy which is required to do almost everything in the game.

And just when I thought that this game finally made something decent, the developers took it away. A few days ago there was a patch of sorts to The Sims Social. They decided to take the holiday drinking caddy and make it only restore hunger when it used to be able to restore social points as well without using precious energy. As many Sims Social players know, you need all six of your stats maxed to get Inspired, which in turn earns you more money in the game. Also in this patch, many players who had rooms in storage lost said rooms. Some players had stock piled extra energy in the separate storage bag just to have it taken away.

Basically, what I am saying here is this: The Sims Social is fun. You can make a pretty cool house and create a fancy character, but in the end, you will run out of things to do and find yourself slaving away for nothing. You will become that person who wastes their day waiting for energy, or you will be like me and keep adding random people to Facebook just so you can play more. Either way, the game does catch its audience, but it fails to be a truly decent game. The loading times, glitches, and constant changes make the game unstable. The different quests become redundant. The dating system is flawed considering a lot of requests ask you to flirt or "do romantic things" with multiple Sims players. If I didn't know better I'd think the Sims is really promoting promiscuity.

So before you log on to The Sims Social head my warning. This game will suck you in. You will want a huge house. You will want the fancy dress. And you may even not care that you have 15 people from Cambodia on your Facebook just to have extra energy. However, when a gang of Cambodian hit men show up at your door, don't say I didn't warn you.