The Sims (PC Games, 2000)

This is a great game, and is a good base, because you can buy expansion packs for more items, jobs, etc. if you like this game.

If you aren't familiar with Sims, this game allows you to control the lives of a Sim (simulation) family. You can have them get jobs, or have them stay at home. You can have them married, or remain a bachelor. Whichever course you chose, you have to make sure you have money to keep the fridge full, and pay your bills, or a collector will come and start taking your furniture!! Between robberies, deaths, and social activities, this is the absolute best game for the casual or intense gamer.

First, you make or chose a family of your choice to control. There are great sim builders so you can make the sim of your choice (including clothes, face and hair, gender, child or adult, and skin color.) Next, you move your family into a lot, priced according to size or buildableness. Since you start off with little money, you buy cheap items and slowly upgrade them as you make money. The better the items, the more benefit you will get from them.

Along with all of your other responsibilities, you have to hone the skills of your Sims, including building their charisma and creativity skills, etc. With these skills, you can receive promotions in your job, or do things like painting or woodworking at home to make money. If you work your way up in a job, you can become an executive, criminal mastermind, or astronaught. Friends are very important to your job. Creativity will make you good at painting or the piano, which is just fun to LISTEN to your sims improving on their skills.

Each sim has their own personality. You can make them nice, outgoing, or energetic. Whichever personality you want to make with your alloted personality points. The only downfall is that you don't start off with much money, but that can be fixed with the right cheat codes.

You can have children and adults, and the children must get good grades in school or they will go to boot camp. Between the personalities, house construction and decoration( the better your house is set up, the happer, more energetic, etc. they will be)jobs, and all of the other features of this game, it is truly well built and has endless opportunities for new things to happen to your sim family.

You hold the key to your family's future. What will you do with it? You can either make your sims' lives prosperous, or ruin them completely. Overall, an awesome game and will give you endless hours of fun and enjoyment.