The Sims has been available as a Facebook game for quite some time, but it has received precious little attention in the Sims online-ish communities. This is no doubt partly due to the laws of physics (at any given time I can either play Sims 3 or Sims Social, but not both) and I think partly due to outright snobbery.

 

I should know, because frankly, I was pretty snobbish about it for a long time. It was just a Facebook game, how good could it be? I envisioned it as a Sims-skinned version of Cow Clicker. I had heard about the iPhone game, which by all accounts is ridiculously awful, and I assumed it was similar.

A friend lured me into giving Sims Social a try this week. She said she enjoys playing it because you can play it for just a few minutes a time, and you can play it throughout the day. Not that I'm advocating people play Facebook games at work or school, mind you. I'm just pointing out that you can. And with the long load time for Sims 3, it's not the sort of game I want to play when I stop working for a few minutes to eat a sandwich.

 

My first impression was, "This sucks like all EA software." It took many tries over several days to get the darned thing to work. I would say "to install" but I'm not sure that's the right verb for a Facebook game. Suffice it to say, the loading screen got stuck and eventually I got bored and clicked away.

 

Sounds about right.

 

When the game finally loaded, it dumped me to the Facebook version of Create A Sim. I was charmed by the cartoonish appearance of these Facebook Sims. I chose her appearance and outfit by clicking the "randomize" button a few times. I named her Rachael due to this Tweet from the official Sims 3 Twitter team, and because - to my undying shame - I had watched a Friends re-run earlier that evening. Finally I chose her one single trait, which was "Artistic."

 

The game dumped Rachael and I into what seems to be the default starter home. I guess it has a construction area in the back where you can eventually make another room. I couldn't really tell, because if there's a way to rotate the camera, I haven't figured it out. It took ages before I could work out how to move the screen. There is no pause button. Stuff is bleeping and blooping and sparkling all over the place, and it was all massively confusing. My first play experiences can be summed up by, "WHAAAAAAT IS HAPPENINGGGGGG???"

 

Tomorrow: Actual game play!