I have somewhat of an addictive personality. This is something I’ve known for years and have dealt with by not participating in actions that are easily addictive. This includes a lot of games. Until The Urbz: Sims in the City, I was able to keep away from The Sims line and not obsess over small sim-people and their daily lives. Those days are over now, and The Urbz for the Nintendo DS is just as easy to get into as any other Sims game or spin-off that has come out yet.

The graphics of The Urbz is similar in style to the rest of the Sims line. The camera is locked at an isometric view so that you can see all of the details in your sims clothing as well as the decorations in the surrounding environment. The models themselves are easily distinguishable. In fact, the amount of detail that you can make out in the handheld version of The Urbz seems to be almost equivalent to the detail found in the original Sims game.

The PDA (the menu system that lets you do basically everything you need to) is on the lower screen and allows you access to all of your street-sims' controls at the touch of a thumb.

The music comes in a variety of styles. You will hear tantalizing jazz from a street performer, several different selections from jukeboxes, and the normal background music has a nice, urban, inner-city feel to it. And what Sim game would be without the use of their language, Simlish.

From what I can tell, The Urbz: Sims in the City for the Nintendo DS is almost a direct port of its GBA counterpart. The only major difference is that Griptonite Games has moved the PDA (the menu system) off onto the touch screen.

You start the game off as a janitor for the King Tower, but when Daddy Bigbucks buys the place and Mr. King disappears, you have to find a new place to hang your hat. Throughout the rest of the game, you work your way through the various parts of Miniopolis and attempt to run Bigbucks out of town. The Urbz is broken into five missions that starts off at the tower, goes to the urban life, then the waterfront, the bayou, and finally the downtown area where you get to go up against the big man himself.

There is also a sixth mission that involves finding plans to a secret island where you get to create your own pets in a fashion not quite entirely unlike Jurassic Park.

Just like in the other Sims games, you’ll have to monitor your character’s moods. As you run around the city, you’ll have to feed, bathe, entertain, and rest your Urb. You also need to earn Simoleons (Sim currency) by playing mini games (jobs). These jobs consist of Squeegee Clean, Doctor Max Stat!, Moogoo Monkey, Amber Extraction, RNA Splicing, Street Artist, as well as five or six other mini games. Once you have unlocked a game, you can go to it at any point.

One of the major aspects of Sims in the City is your rep and where you stand in your Rep Group. There are several reps groups including nerdies and streeties. Where you start off is based on how you answered some questions at the beginning of the game. You climb your way through the ranks of the groups by talking to and impressing various people. You will also earn beads called Xizzles. Since a lot of the game demands that you have a good rep -- you need to work hard at pleasing other urbz in order to progress.

The Urbz: Sims in the City isn’t necessarily hard -- I guess if you call it anything, it would be tedious, though it doesn’t feel like that while you’re playing the game itself. It’s only later when you’re doing something else that you realize you’ve spent the last half hour running between your jobs and house to complete some menial missions, only to feel like you didn’t really make a lot of headway. But on the other hand, while you’re playing the game, you feel like you’re breezing through major parts of the story.

The Urbz: Sims in the City uses the Nintendo DS’s touch screen to display your character’s PDA. With this screen, you can examine (in detail) what your various mission goals are and who you’ve talked to (and where you stand with these people). You can also look at the contents of your pocket and see just what it is you’re dragging around with you as you run from one side of Miniopolis to the other. All of these options are available to you on the fly with a touch of the stylus (or your thumb) and don’t interrupt gameplay whatsoever.

The Urbz for the DS is a somewhat fun but addictive game that you can carry with you. It is something I would recommend to any Sims fan who already owns the system (and doesn’t have the GBA version of this game already). However, it isn’t a game to go out and buy the DS for.

Well, as the Sims say, “sul sul” for now.