Product Reviews

The Sims has achieved great success but has always been too prudish to deal with the nuts and bolts of certain tasks, resorting to pixellated nakedness and immaculate conceptions. Singles: Flirt Up Your Life has no such hang-ups.

Singles is a shameless remake of The Sims, but its extra content makes for a scarily realistic mirror to real life. Chores must

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be done, flats furnished and stomachs filled, but the ultimate objective is sex. True to life, impatience isn't rewarded. You can choose Naked from the wardrobe options for instant amusement, but put two naked Singles together and they'll run off in embarrassment. However, if you persevere with compliments and flirtations, your Singles will eventually fall for each other, and you'll struggle to keep them out of bed.

The detailed graphics and free-roaming camera are a vast improvement over The Sims' 2D view, and thankfully the characters' bodies are neither hideously freakish nor grotesquely appealing, although the men vary in stature.

Singles could be more polished, with only three locations to choose from, random pauses and other frustrations such as the characters' need to stand up before sharing a joke. Still, it gave us more merriment than The Sims ever did. The only problem is that if you play it alone you may feel a little seedy.