The Sims: Hot Date Expansion Pack (PC CD)

The first addition to the Sims universe is the downtown area. This is where your sims can go to hang out and buy dating-related paraphernalia. There are several restaurants ranging from the diner style to the more upmarket fish place, as well as a beach area, memorial park and a couple of malls.

Here you have to find a suitable sim and start chatting them up. To help you out there are over 40 new interactions and "interests". These are like the "skills" cooking, mechanical etc and are listed in a new menu denoted by the speech bubble. Here you can see exactly what your sim is into and will talk about. You can improve these by making your sims more well read with magazines bought in the Mall.

Once you have charmed your opposite number, it's time to ask them on a date. There are now two relationship meters, one for your long-term relationship with this sim and one for that particular encounter. How high these are will determine whether you get knocked back or not, but if you do manage to get their phone number when you return home you will see that you are able to call them and invite them downtown for a date. If only reality was that easy.

In terms of new furniture-related and decorative items, themed around the downtown area. For the Casanova sim, there is a heart-shaped hot tub and of course some new skins so that you can introduce new faces into your town.

You can also edit the downtown area by creating your own buildings. You have free reign to create a dating arena extraordinaire as there is no budget. On the not-so-positive side, the game still suffers from freezing up for several seconds when there is a high level of detail on the screen and there isn't a massive amount of new stuff here if you have already played the sims to death, but having said that The Sims is really is one of the best and most addictive sim-games out there and this expansion pack is definitely better value for your simoleans than any of the others have been. --Kristen Bowditch