You will be fighting to the death in a city spanning battle royale. Soon, you might be WSAD’ing cars off the sheer drops around your flattened lots. Otherwise, you will just see everyone else having fun. Note: You must use 3D mode to experience First Person Direct Control. Click on the game to refocus mouse controls. Press Escape to release the mouse, though opening a pie menu, dialog or chat will also do this. Press backspace to cancel the active interaction. Click on objects as usual to open the pie menu. Use WASD or the arrow keys to move, and the mouse to look around. Press TAB to switch into first person view. It’s like you’re living a Second Life, and it’s never been done before. Tell them how you feel to their (virtual) face. Everyone else will be able to see EXACTLY what you are looking at, with 32-bit floating point precision. Take the longest path you want, run in circles, this is TRUE freedom. No need for pesky “go here” interactions, taking boring fast straight lines to where you want to go.

Starting TODAY, you can control your sims directly. Else.”? More like, watch somebody else enjoy a ball pit hot tub in an extravagant mcmansion. You can’t feel like you’re committing hundreds of crimes a minute from a third person view. We played GTA Online for five seconds and immediately understood the problem.

Despite the allure of this premise, the game hasn’t garnered the millions of players it deserves. The Sims Online is all about escapism, living your life as someone else and enjoying experiences you never would in real life, like dying without consequence and property ownership.