The Sims 2 (PSP)

The town and the people are strange in the latest Sims adventure.

Herald rating * *

By now you'll know the deal with The Sims. You construct your virtual self, join society, then flirt, work and consume your way to a happy life. The series has notched up huge sales since its debut in 1999 because it gives us what we don't always have in real life: perspective.

The PC is the true home of everything Sim, and while the consoles did justice to The Sims 2, the game's migration to Sony's handheld gaming device, the PSP, is less successful.

What kills this favourite on the PSP are the frequent and annoying loading pauses. A blue screen appears regularly and the game disc whirrs as the next sequence is loaded.

There's even pauses between sentences during dialogue scenes, as if the PSP is struggling with the choose-your-own-adventure type of gameplay The Sims has mastered. Eventually, you dread talking to your fellow Sims because conversations are so drawn out.

Despite the decent graphics and the game's considerable depth, The Sims 2 is tedious, which is a shame because great efforts have been made to create a style and storyline exclusive to the PSP.

It involves you arriving in dusty Strangetown and being compelled to stay after your car breaks down. Strangetown is straight out of the Twilight Zone, and after the crazy Bella exchanges her sprawling mansion for the fistful of Simoleans in your pocket, you're officially a resident.

A good dose of the supernatural diverts you from the drudge of feeding and cleaning yourself and the 20 settings mean there's plenty to see, new people to meet.

The tweaks to the gameplay are logical, but a new system for interacting with other Sims, where you hit buttons against the clock to chat with them, is clunky. It becomes a game of Snap, where you try to stay on the same wavelength as the person you're talking to. You have only a few seconds to "push the right buttons".

Almost mockingly, the PSP version introduces a sanity meter which must be maintained to prevent a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately, staying sane involves talking to other people and that's too much of a load to bear.12+, $90