The original games have been centred on surburbia and were a portrayal of the perfect American neighbourhood combined with all the drama of a soap opera as you interacted with virtual friends. The Urbz: Sims in the City represents a major departure in environment by taking the Sims to the harsh, glaring environment of tenament and city living. Gone are the ordered streets and neat gardens Sims players have become fond of; now they are replaced by a world of small apartments, subways and rooftops. The overall effect of this is brash and bold.

The challenge for players of The Urbz is to generate respect on the streets. You start by selecting your gender and the your home turf. You can either hang with the up market fashion crowd, the leather clad punks, the neon ne'er do wells and a host of other in-crowds. Using the character generator, you can adjust the looks and size of your character. The age is pretty much set at late teens and early 20's and this should immediately give you an idea of the targetted market for the game. This game has instant appeal for teenage girls.

Once you have set up your character you are dumped into your largely bare appartment. You have the basics of course: toilet, shower, stereo (no bed!). Immediately, you are thrown into life's hard lessons of finding a job and paying the rent and just earning enough for the basics of life. You have to monitor your characters as they need to be taken to the toilet, showered and fed at regular intervals to prevent some of the unpleasant side effects of neglect. This aspect of The Sims is, we think, wearing a bit thin. This micro management of your characters' hygeine and food requirements becomes irksome after a while and adds little to nothing in terms of the game experience.

This game is, as we said, all about gaining respect. To do so you need to hang with the right crowd, schmooze the right people, wear the right clothes and learn the right moves. The more you succeed the more you are talked about and the more doors and places are opened to you. What you are wearing (as any young girl knows) is what turns heads. The fashion spectrum ranges from Goth right through to the preppy look of the Bratz with everything in between (and some styles we have not seen before). This will define the game for a lot of players as they will be able to pursue their own desired fashion trends.

To move around you have a sort of a PDA device from which you can control your destinations and your socialising etc. It's simple to use, although the options are limited.

A new feature is being able to follow your Sim to work and controlling him at his job by engaging in mini-games. Depending on your performance, it is possible to achieve promotion in your Sim's chosen occupation, thereby earning more of that all important prestige required to claw your way up the social ladder.

The graphics are good but they soon begin to feel a bit cheesey. The exaggerated colours and animation, the lights, the glitz - all just seem to grate. Some aspects such as the dance moves are just over-the-top (and physically impossible given the tightness of some of the outfits). The graphics are pretty good for their intended purpose and are a marked improvement on the previous expedition by The Sims to the consoles. Just be sure though that you keep your hip shades handy.