Pros: Over 100 new objects, new people (Townies), new social interactions.
Cons: Highly addictive; play this after you get all your work done!
The Bottom Line: I recommend Hot Date because it is fun, adventurous, and filled with opportunities galore. Buy it and you will be entertained for an exceptionally long time!
huggle_bear's Full Review: The Sims Expansion: Hot Date (Mac)
Well, the folks (okay, geniuses) over at Maxis have done it again. This time, their brilliant idea is "Hot Date", a game where your beloved Sims get to wine and dine for a night on the town! They can also dance at clubs, buy many items, perform new social interactions, and perhaps fall in love, downtown.
New features: Downtown
As I mentioned earlier, your sims can have quite a lot of fun in the new Downtown. Downtown adds a whole new dimension to the Sims, allowing them to actually leave the house for an indefinite amount of time (until they get tired!). How do they get downtown? Click on the phone and choose, "Go Downtown". It costs $50 for a cab, which picks the sim up from their house. Each sim can also invite another downtown, and if that sim accepts, both of them go together. However, you can only control the one that invited the other. If your sim meets another Downtown, there are several different new social interactions possible. They can now ask another sim to "hang out" or "go on a date". When either of those is chosen and the sim accepts, they will follow your sim around for the rest of the night, letting him pay for everything.
What is in Downtown?
Imagine a small town. It has restaurants, shops with formal wear, lingerie, and swimsuits, a beach with hot dog stands, ice cream shoppes, a park, libraries with magazines to buy, gift shops with candy and stuffed bears, and flower shops. Your sim can buy anything his little heart desires, and when he does, it is added to his inventory. If you want to add to your sim's interests, have him buy a certain magazine, and after reading it, he will have an increased meter on that subject. If he needs new PJ's, let him try them on, and if he buys them, they are automatically used when he changes for bed. If your Sim has a loved one, he can buy flowers or chocolates and give them as a gift, or he can take his girlfriend to a fancy dinner at the expensive restaurant.
Buildings
All of the buildings in Downtown are built by Maxis. If you don't like one of them, you can build or change and add on, much like building a house, by clicking the Downtown button on the neighborhood screen. In this mode, there are no Sims, all you can do is build and add items. Among the Downtown items are cash registers, a new cook's stove, new lights, a hot dog and ice cream stand, and booths that your sims can cuddle in (these are ONLY for Downtown, not houses). Any time you add one of those items (except the booth), employees are automatically added in gameplay mode as cashiers, chefs, and janitors, so you don't have to worry about doing all of that, too.
Other items
There are over 100 new items, so I will mention just a few. Cuddle Couch: allows sims to sit close to each other and cuddle, kiss, or hug. Fish Pond: let your sims feed the fish or play with sailboats. Lover's swing: for a couple in love to swing at home or Downtown. Picnic Basket: have a picnic in the park with a blanket, food, and a little bit of passion. The "Heart shaped hot tub" is one of my favorites. It is for two people, and they can spend hours sitting in there talking or doing other things. They can wash each other, cuddle, kiss, or play (which involves one that quickly plunges underwater and dunks the other one). Sims usually must be very comfortable with each other to do more than talk, though.
Social interactions:
I mentioned a few Downtown interactions earlier, but there is more. Before Hot Date, Sims could do basic hugging, kissing, greeting, and conversing. Now, each interaction has sublevels of intensity. Hugging includes "Friendly" and "Intimate", kissing includes "Suave" (kissing the hand), "Peck", "Cheek", "Passionately", and "Fiercely" (grabbing the other and bending them like in a tango, and kissing). Conversation is much more interesting. Sims have around 15 categories of interest (fashion, food, hollywood, sports, exercise, etc.) and they will talk about what they like, or don't like. When talking, you can make your Sim change the topic by clicking on him and choosing "Change Topic". You can also gossip, brag, primp, tease, and entertain with a puppet (this is quite funny). In total, there are over 40 new social interactions.
Cons
There is nothing I don't like about this game. It is not very expensive ($30) for the amount of time I spend playing it. Sometimes I wish that Maxis wouldn't create games that are so addictive, but then again, it is great to get away and have fun sometimes. This version is an expansion pack, which means it requires "The Sims" original version to play ($40). None of the current expansion packs are stand-alone.
Conclusion
There are many more features to this game, which makes it highly worthwhile to buy because it provides hours upon weeks of entertainment. Most games are exhausted within minutes or days, but this game has so many options and sims to control (and up to 8 neighborhoods) that the possibilities are endless. If you liked the Sims, or any other Maxis products, you will like Hot Date. So get comfortable, because you will be playing for a long time!
Take your Sim Downtown, and meet up with other Sims you can ask out on dates Create fun places to take your date -- movies, clubs, parks, and more Kee...More at Amazon Marketplace
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