Singles 2 - Triple Trouble

Despite its name... you're not going to find that.

Review By BinLadi.

 Yes, I picked this game up knowing what would be the focus of it. Partying and sex! Or at least I thought so... At first I expected Singles 2 : Triple Trouble to be something like The Sims with more of a focus on the aforementioned. That certainly sounds like fun, huh? Now, what I found was what I expected but it just... wasn't that good! Singles 2 : Triple Trouble is basically a clone of The Sims and it focuses on ''dating'' and getting lucky with your dates (although it isn't all that in-depth). In the game there are two modes, an extremely simple story mode and a freeplay mode, I'll talk about the story mode first.

STORY & GAMEPLAY: As you would have guessed, the story isn't that good. In Story mode you can choose either Anna or Josh (it doesn't matter who you pick anyways since the scenario is just flipped for the person) who recently broke up. After breaking up you move to another apartment and your ex coincidentally happens to be staying there... now, guess what the main point of the story is from here? Getting back with your ex! How original is that? You do objectives in order to advance the story, and that's basically that. It's pretty stiff and the only reason you'll probably be going through the story is to unlock the other areas in freeplay mode (which you can unlock with some simple editing).

Now after playing through story mode you'd think that freeplay is going to be exciting, I know I did! But, I was extremely disappointed. In freeplay mode, you choose the area you want to live in, there's the story mode apartment (which is the only one available without completing the story), the backyard (it sounds as bad as the name) and the fabulous penthouse. You choose 3 people (out of about 16 people) who are going to live in the apartment and you can control each of them and do whatever you please.

Both versions have the same gameplay. Like I said before, it's moreoreless a clone of The Sims and the controls are very similar, it'll take you about 3 minutes to get the hang of it. One thing I was really impressed with was how easy the camera was to control, most games that I've played that are like this have the most stubborn camera controls. Anyways, there are needs, just like The Sims. Hunger, Hygiene, etc along with Romance, Friendship and Eroticism. You'd think that managing these would be easy, but it's not. It's not even a slight challenge, it's just hard. Maybe it's just me, but once you full up one bar the others have most likely down already, fill up those and the other one goes down and that's how it works. If you focus on managing these you'll never be able to focus on the main objective of the game. 

It's just ridiculous, apparently some social actions need a certain amount of some of these needs to be at a certain level or the action will ''fail''. Like, in order to have sex, romance, friendship, hygiene, eroticism and some others I can't remember all have to be at least 3/8 full or you'll be ''rejected' which is just plain stupid to me since having sex raises some of these. The worst need though, has to be the ''comfort'' need, some furniture gives out a comfort ''aura'' and you have to be careful of how to place your furniture if you want to maximize this ''aura'' if you don't, your comfort level will be down and then the chaos that I explained before starts happening. That whole comfort thing just seems so unnecessary to me, WHY make one of the more simpler things so complicated? There's also a skill system that I haven't gotten the hang of even up to now. Your character also goes to work just like in The Sims and you can buy furniture too.

The conversation options are pretty shallow too. There's Friendship, Romance, Fun and Eroticism, each one of these subjects raises up the need named after them. When you click on one of these, no more than 6 options are now available (and you need nearly MAX Friendship, Romance or Eroticism with the person in order to do all) to use on the person. Another thing is that your relationships level up incredibly slow. There's this short-term relationship that affects the real, long-term relationship level (this effect becomes visible every 12 hours or something like that). For example, you talk to someone and raise up their short-term relationship to max and in 12 hours the long-term relationship will increase. Again, WHY is this so complicated? I expected this to be more casual and funner than The Sims!

If your main reason to buy/rent this game is for pixel porn, you're going to be disappointed. There's this stupid censor (the game is rated 18+, but there's a censor?) that blocks everything unless you disable it by moving around a file and editing the game's config file, but it's all fairly simple. And after doing that you're rewarded with nudity! :D

For sex, the two characters cover most of their body with a sheet and apart from that, you can't really see anything unless you're watching them shower or something. And I said in this review's title, despite its name, you cannot have threesomes. And for the curious, you can have same-sex relationships but it's really hard to make one unless you edit some of the game's data files (again).

Remember how I said I hoped that this game had partying? Yeeeah, it kinda does have it, but it doesn't at the same time. There's only one area that you can visit which is a half-dead singles bar and that's it (honestly, there's no more than 4 people and the place and it's horribly cramped). If there were more locations, the ability to have a party, a more in-dept, a slightly easier relationship and needs system and a wider selection of singles, this game could have been so much better. After sleeping around with some people, there really isn't much to do, the game itself just isn't that fun.

SOUND: The characters talk in a fictional language which isn't really that bad sounding. The bad thing though, is that every character has the same generic male and female voice and they also say the same phrases alot so it gets irritating fast. The music though, is really good! Although my brother said it was annoying but if you're into a kind of trance/pop you might like it. I honestly really loved that Let's Go Slow song that plays when you have sex (Yes, I'm serious) and it's bar remix.

GRAPHICS: For a small (and fairly dated game), I was impressed with the graphics, nearly everything looks good. Some things I didn't like though, was that the sky was static and there was no transition from daylight to nighttime, just some lag and BAM! It's nighttime!

REPLAYABLE: Unless you want to see someone in the game naked again, you most likely aren't going to want to play this again. After completing the storymode and playing around in freeplay for a few hours, you'll notice how dead and boring this game is.

PROS:

Good music

Good graphics

The concept is kind of unique

CONS:

There is only one area that's accessible other than the apartment

Small selection of datable people

Confusing, difficult and unnecessary gameplay elements

Thin story

NAME: SINGLES 2 - TRIPLE TROUBLE

SYSTEM: PC