Product Description

Help your Sims survive and thrive on an uncharted island.

The Sims 2: Castaway Features:

• Stay Alive! Help your Sims meet basic needs to survive.
• Explore beaches, caves, lagoons, jungles, and volcanic mountains.
• Develop tools, build shelters, craft furniture, create clothing, art and more!
• Catch fish, trap animals, grow plants, collect shells, scavenge and decode treasure maps.
• Build a life of comfort on the island, or find a way to escape back to civilisation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1086 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2007-11-02
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: Sony PSP

Amazon.co.uk Review

With still not a peep out of The Sims 3 on PC, Electronic Arts are certainly keen to keep reinventing the franchise on consoles. This all new game is not for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 and, as you might guess from the name, involves you being shipwrecked on a desert island. The concept is basically the same as Konami’s Stranded Kids/Lost in Blue series although you start off completely alone with each of the different sims you create washed up on a different part of the island. Obviously your first task is to find something to eat and drink and a place to sleep, with the initial parts of the game recalling the early episodes of Lost (except without the smoke monster).

Soon enough you’re fashioning fish harpooning spears out of bits of bamboo, planting edible plants, weaving your own clothes and making giant tree houses and huts that would shame the average holiday camp. Most importantly you can train your very own monkey butlers to perform your every menial task for you (up to a point). Soon enough your fellow strandees turn up and the game’s more traditional social elements come into play as it becomes less Lost and more Survivor. Once you’re living in some degree of comfort you can then venture out and explore the island and try and find a way back to civilisation (or stay where you are – the game leaves it up to you). In fact it’s probably the most interesting thing to happen to The Sims in years.

Customer Reviews

Great game.
OK I've finished it and I love it so I would highly recommend it - it's the best Sims for the PSP yet.

BUT
This is the third time I've played it. The first two plays I abandonded it due to fatal glitches. So be warned NEVER put your sleeping mat down and then build a shelter over it - the game won't recognise your sleeping mat and you will be bedless and have no way of recharging your sleep meter (unless you are well on in the game and can craft beds).
Also if you chose all the crew option do not make your base dark cave as all the other castaways get stuck on the slope and die where you can't reach them to revive them - you can't reach or pick the flower on the grave.

I was just about to list this on an auction site when I thought oh well perhaps another try and I've finished it - all be it with just one castaway and it is brilliant.

There are lots of goals but you can amble along doing your own thing. The game also is not strictly linear so don't worry about those suspicious shaped map areas you can't reach - you'll go back to that part eventually.

There are some genius bits like the sand buddy so you don't have to talk to the annoying monkeys (who are extremely irritating - they wander off when they should be giving you something).

It deserves its 12+ rating because of the dubious facial expression of the Sim sitting in the hot pools!?

Overall it's very well done - lots of collecting, exploring, getting lost, crafting items and dodging rainstorms. The difference between night and day is outstanding and the gameplay is so much easier in the daytime.

The graphics are brilliant and I found the gameplay a lot of fun even the fishing. No worries about earning money or careers. The skill building wasn't as in your face or distracting as other sims games. None of my sims possesions caught on fire because of over crowding issues so it didn't feel restricting.

I refused to be rescued twice - once from my catamaran and once from my SOS message as I was having too much fun on the island. My Sim finally left the island minus one leg in a pirate costume leaving behind a lovely bungalow.

HOW TO SOLVE THE CRASHING PROBLEM
I understand that most people are finding that this game constantly CRASHES. Meaning you have to save every ten minutes to stop from having to start all over again.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS UPDATE YOUR PSP FIRMWARE TO THE NEW 3.80 VERSION AND THE PROBLEM WILL GO AWAY.

Please spread the word, this is such an awesome game and needs it's full potential! I was going to return my copy until I found this out. I'm afraid everyone thinks this game is glitchy.

Another Sims adventure
This new adventure follows the same tried and tested format as the others: exploring, keeping Sims happy, completing their goals, etc. If you love Sims you'll love this too.

The plus points are:

- A fresh new adventure to explore
- You can control different Sims within the adventure (up to six can be set at the start)
- You can save progress at any time, so it's ideally suited to the PSP if you've only got 10 minutes to kill
- It's as entertaining and absorbing as always

The minus points are:

- The graphics - whilst they're cute and detailed, a lot more care could've been put into them. You often find yourself climbing up invisible trees or disappearing off screen while harvesting. When you swim towards the edges of the area you even see your face through the back of your head. Overall, there's no sense of a 3D world as a lot of the objects cut through each other, like you'll see your elbow through a rock even though you're standing behind it.

- The load times - even on a PSP Lite, with its supposedly faster load times, you wait half a minute when you move between areas, or when you save your progress.

- The motives - once you unlock them all, you'll spend half your time just keeping your Sim happy. This does detract from the flow of the game. Plus it takes far too long just waiting for them to finish sleeping, even with fast-forward.

- The interactions - once you tell the Sim to do something, it takes a few seconds for the software to catch up and actually make them do it. And seeing as the whole game is about interacting, it adds up to a whole load of waiting.

- Oh, and there's the free-will option, where if they're left alone for a while, they'll start wandering about doing their own thing. The only problem is it doesn't work: I got a phone call and when I finally got back he'd died!

In a nutshell, still an enjoyable game, despite long delays and some flimsy graphics.