Review by: Troy Goodfellow

The Sims is a big game about small things. Just as life is made up of tiny moments that add up to years, Sims the game is made up of little tasks whose completion make your character or family a more skilled and talented citizen of Simsvile. The ambitions of your little computer people were always well tuned to the ambitions of the game; as the series expanded, EA worked hard to keep the aspirations and abilities of your Sim in line with the new content.

Historically, however, consoles have chafed at this bigness. Sims games on the Playstation or Wii were more likely to take the form of stories you were told as opposed to histories you composed. The control systems weren't as friendly as the old mouse/keyboard combo and the charm of the Sims was stifled. EA is taking a new tack with Sims 3, bringing the core game with all of its love and laughter to consoles and handhelds.

The DS version of Sims 3 raises a host of problems for a reviewer. Easily the most successful of the current generation of consoles, the best games for the DS integrate the stylus and twin screens in interesting ways, accepting the limits of what is a small and low powered machine. But The Sims 3 is a big game, almost too big for a machine that limits you like the DS does when it insists on aping the original.

For example, in the character creation you are limited to making a single sim. You can't make a family to start with, so you are locked into the single income household until you find true love and woohoo your way to marital bliss. The sim you make will be unbearably ugly too, the bastard child of the Elephant Man and Quasimodo. The resolution on the DS is simply too blocky to make anyone in Sims 3 remotely cute, so forget about courting the cute girl next door; in the land of the hideous, the least deformed is beauty queen.

The game itself is your core Sims game, only smaller. You still find a job, expand your house and try to meet all the goals you set for yourself. You can set new tasks at your job so those hours aren't a complete waste of time, but for the most part this is Sims 3. Meet people, start fights, improve your skills.

You will fight the UI the whole way. Though the stylus is designed for dragging and pointing, simple things like placing and rotating an object often requires multiple tries before the orders take. You can't zoom out to a very comfortable level, and there seem to be fewer viewing options than in classic Sims. Designing your own home is, therefore, much less fun than it should be.

It is still The Sims though, and it's remarkable how durable the core experience remains even on a small screen. You miss the options that aren't there, but it's great to finally see the family building simulation come to life for console users. It probably requires a bit too much of your attention for a DS game – The Sims is a poor choice for commuters – but if you have some time to fight with the camera, you might find some of that old Sim magic coming back to you.