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"Alter-Ego: The True Sims..."

Before we begin, Alter-Ego is not your average game. It's not a Jekyll and Hyde-esque story where you've got two personalities, so don't be thinking by the name you'll be playing as the Incredible Hulk. Instead, what we've got here is a life-simulator - a genre which you don't see often, and as a result, they're done well. Just take a glance at what happened to the PC in the mid 90s, as wave after wave of First Person Shooters came storming onto the market to try and push aside the success of Half Life and Gordon Freeman, and prance about with half-assed stories, glitchy gameplay and sluggish controls. Now, a life sim? That's different. It's not something which a company and kick out in their lunch break just by thinking up giant blob monsters and giving them guns, as instead, it's about plot...story...LIFE. It's something unique and special because not a lot of developers have the grapes to sit down and pen out such a idea. Maxis is probably the only company I can think of that at the moment, and that's what I love. Maxis' entire game library is Sim-titles, and each one a marvelous addition, as everybody's played SimCity, and nobody's argued against it. Their biggest success, however, came with the aptly named "The Sims." A title which plotted the day-to-day life of a Regular Joe, as he got up, brushed his teeth and went to work. That is, if you wanted him to work. He could sit at home all day, watching TV, or working out on a gym set. Or you could trap him inside the house, set fire to the place and watch him run about, screaming for help. The problem was that you were a set age, either a child sim, or an adult sim. No ageing took place, no childhood to adult life took place which was soon rectified in the sequel, The Sims 2. This met even greater success to the first title, even more so than all of the expansion packs that were produced for the first game. Nobody, however, seemed to remember Alter Ego - the true Sims, predating it by a good 15 years.

Now, Alter Ego takes you from the early years infancy to your senile old age, presenting you with tough daily challenges, experiences and questions, each one as important as the last, as they can all effect your day, the week, or even the rest of your life! You could choose to play the game as a way live your own life, making your character's personalities like yours, or perhaps play your dream life - that hillside mansion and blond bombshell wife, eh? Hell, play as anybody's life! And what's great is that there is absolutely no danger of screwing it all up - it's a game, silly.

The game is purely text-based, with a couple of coloured dialogue boxes and a mouse cursor. The graphics are non-existent, but this game isn't about gorgeous frame-rates or animations. No, it was all about sitting there trying to make a decision about where your life is going, so who cares about the character models and whatnot? Sure, The Sims took the basis of Alter Ego and placed it inside a 3D world and it turned out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but we're talking about 1985 here, just a few years after Nintendo's trademark mascot Mario made his first appearance as Jump-Man, chasing after Donkey Kong to rescue his beloved girlfriend. If you've seen the graphics for that, then you'll understand why the graphics for Alter-Ego aren't a problem...

To start out, the game will ask of you some basic info. Age, gender, etc, and then it'll zap you straight to where your answers determine you to be. It's *that* simple. The game may just sound boring for you and could be completed by randomly clicking the first box on the left again and again, but that's not the case. As time goes by and you age in the game, the challenges and questions you're presented with increase in difficulty and the consequences could seriously damage your persona.

Think of the game like Lionhead's Fable. In that game, if you steal from a shop and caught, people will know about it, and look at you in a whole new light, maybe even whisper "Thief." The same stands with Alter-Ego, as if you do a bad thing, such as steal from your best friend, you'll lose Trust Points. See? So, in turn, if nobody trusts you, you'll be the guy who has no friends left, and the game gives you a whole new branch of gameplay to think about. Plus don't forget, it's not just you that your choices affect, as the whole world of Alter Ego revolves around those choices, too. If you don't care for your wife enough and she'll probably leave you, or even take the kids with her.

If you think the game seems daunting, then you need to play the game, as Alter-Ego is not hard in the slightest, but it's addicting nonetheless. There is no charging into a swarm of flesh-eating dragons, hammering your magic attack button - it's all choices. Pick a choice. It's not hard, but you've just got to think first about what may result from it. Anyway, the addiction. Imagine you've spent a couple of hours planning your perfect life; from an adorable, cute little baby to a happy, healthy, dancing old man. Are you happy with that? Well, yeah! It's a great result, but you want to play again, don't 'cha? Instead of that nice baby, how about becoming a really evil baby? Turning into an aging criminal mob-boss? The game can be played again and again and it'll still seem fresh each time.

Put down your Fable. Put down your Sims. Put down your Morrowind. *This* is the original sim life-game. It's a tough little cookie to find nowadays, and it's certainly is dated by the games I just ordered you to put down, but they say a classic never dies. At least consider having a play through, as the novelty value is great to slip away into a fantasy world away from your own for a few hours.