Rating: - 2 quick points
1) SimLife runs fine under WinXP if you run it in "Windows 95 Compatibility Mode";
2) If this sim intrigues you, you really hould dig up a copy of the Official Strategy Guide from Prima; it explains the underlying science in a clear and entertaining way.
Rating: - "The Genetics Playground"? You bet!
Hiya, I'm StoryMaker. Today, I decided to play SimLife because I remembered playing it when I was quite young and, from what I remembered, it was interesting and you got to make new animal species and stuff. My sister, Chocolate Dog, said that it wasn't very good, but I gave it a try. I also noticed that the disc subtitled it as "the genetics playground". Turns out, that's exactly what it was for both me and Chocolate Dog. In other words, you've got lots of animal and plant species that can be modified, frequently eat one another, and are constantly mutating, often spontaneously deciding to mutate so they can fly or swim or eat nectar or make fruit...and the list goes on and on!
You can choose Tutorial Mode, Experimental Mode, or one of several scenarios. I kind of like Experimental Mode a lot, though I admit I don't remember what happened the last time I played a sceanario. Tutorial Mode will constantly make window thingies pop up, sometimes giving you help and sometimes annoying you. When you do a sceanario, you have to accomplish such-and-such. You can do anything you want in Experimental Mode - anything from trying to kill off everything to trying to make a certain plant flourish to just fiddling around.
I find it pleasing that you can alter animals and plants, often beyond recognition, creating entirely new creatures. I've always liked designing imaginary animals, so this was always a great feature for me. You can design the looks of the icon that will represent it (unfortunately, you have a small pallette of colors) and can choose if they eat fruit, seeds, general plants, nectar, meat, or microscopic organisms. You can also choose their intellegence, if they have few or many children, where they live, and their regular mode of transport (flying, walking, etc.). This is talking about animals. Somehow, the way you design plants is less memorable. One fun thing to do is model a plant or animal after a cartoon, video game character, or a character from virtually any other type of media. You can fiddle with animals, constantly modifying them. They will often evolve. (Don't worry if you don't believe in macro-evolution. This is only a game, and after all, some minor evolution DOES exist.) It is pretty funny how sometimes, say, a humpback whale evolves to fly or lichen evolves to make fruit. You can also use rocks to make corrals for animals and you can put magic grocery carts all around. The possibilities are practically endless in this addictive genetic playground! Always remember to regularly save your game - those illegal operations always sneak up on you. :P
With all the possibilities, this is a fun, addicting game. A few things before I conclude: I don't think this works on Windows XP, I believe it dates back to 1992 so, naturally, it's not going to have fantastic graphics or anything like that, and the reason why I gave it 4 stars rather than the full 5 is because, well, it's nothing outrageously fantastic. Overall, I recommend this, but I won't guarantee you'll love it. Signed, StoryMaker. "Gotta trust the kid's review!"
Rating: - Great concept makes up for really old graphics
If you're a fan of cutting edge graphics, action-packed game play, and seeing modern day gaming technology used to it's fullest, do not buy this game. The graphics of this game make it obvious it's from the early 90s. However, I am a firm believer that the concept behind a game is what makes a game fun, and pretty graphics just add to that base.
Simlife is a god game, allowing you to create and manage your own microcosm. Almost everything is controllable, from the physical attributes of the world itself (like temperature, humidity, and elevation), to the genetic attributes of the lifeforms. The number of variables at work is overwhelming to say the least, but you don't have to worry about them if you don't want to. You can choose to play as a micromanaging god, adapting and adjusting each individual. Or you can play more as a spectator, populating the world and then watching to see which species survive, which ones go extinct, and which ones adapt and evolve on their own.
It's an old game, and by today's standards most people would probably not be impressed. I however haven't found any other game like it. Although it's impossible to make a completely accurate computer representation of all of life's interactions with itself, this game is the closest that I've found.
