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Social Happening
The Urbz
So, back to the action in one of the districts. And as with the districts in general, even the urbz walking around there are similar. Sure, they behave differently, and they know some different moves, but the very basics are the same. There are urbz who teach you moves, some with a 'secret mission' (which will become part of your goals), and a few general urbz who are not that important when it comes to completing the game. Every district has five of such characters in it, and others will come to visit.

A Bar Dance By socialising with these urbz, you gain the important rep you need. Social actions are colour coded, and your success depends on the colour (green, yellow or red, you figure it out) and the mood of your sim. Unhappy sims won't be able to socialise much. As you gain rep you unlock new places, or you get access to the local VIP area. By making more friends around town, you learn some new moves with which you can make more friends.
There are very many different social actions. Some of them are known from previous Sims games, but there are also many brand new ones. They are nice to see, and some of them show the typical Maxis humour they put in their games. There are also a bunch of power socials. These require you to somehow acquire a small object, so you can use them. Using these power socials you can defeat the villains, but they also help you get friends (or enemies) faster. These also work a bit differently, in that you have to press the button at the right time a few times. The smaller the marked area is, the better. All you have to do is to press the right button the moment the arrow points at it. Blastikiss

Villain in Action The villains are fairly annoying. There are three in total, so you meet each one three times. Every place needs a different power social to beat the villain. It doesn't really matter how powerful you make the social - as long as you do it the villain will crawl away from the district, never to return again. Whether you can defeat the villain is based on a bit of luck - you need to have the specific power social, which Darius will hand over to you at the party - but you also have to be so lucky that the villain pays a visit while you're there, with your power social. If they come over and you don't have your social to defeat them, or you're just not feeling like it, they will start pestering the Urbz in the district - including you.

When it comes to AI (Artificial Intelligence), Urbz are occasionally plain stupid. I've regularly had queues in front of the VIP area because some Sims wanted to get in, while one on the other side of the door was planning to leave. They'll simply refuse to step aside for a moment. This can be solved by just interacting with the Urbz in the queue (or whichever side of the door you're on), but it is annoying. Since most other places have at least two doors to enter or leave the place, I've only seen this happen near the VIP area. The bouncer will also just stand there, instead of knocking away some Sims to make room. But that's also the only major annoyance; besides that Urbz behave pretty much like Sims, and just fill their needs or socialise. You'll often see a group of Sims together socialising. Who will move first?
Become a Star
Socialise and gain Rep After beating the villains, gaining the so-called rep ("reputation") is the most important thing in the Urbz. Indicated using stars and a score near the mood bars, Rep is basically your level of fame in the city - the more rep, the more places and items you have access to, and more urbz around the city will start dressing like you. By being famous enough, your face - and with the PlayStation 2 and EyeToy your real face - will start showing up on posters and billboards around the city.

At the beginning you're just a nothing though - some unknown Sim who's trying to become a real urb. You'll start getting to know others soon, and at the beginning the rep flows in fairly easily; having a second district unlocked isn't too hard. When you have more rep, it will go up a bit slower - at least it'll be more difficult to maintain the level you're at. To keep a high rep, you'll need to visit every district regularly, to socialise with other characters. After all, that's THE way to gain the so important stars. Another effect that you can get from gaining Rep is that you can ask others to join your crew. If they do so, you gain control of the crew members whenever you like. They're a bit more limited though, as you can't take them to other districts. If you want them to go there, you'll have to take your main Urb to that place and have him call the crew member. While playing with one urb, the others will just use their free will to determine what to do, so basically your main Urb becomes one of them. Nice, but pretty useless as you need to gain rep with your main Urb, and not the crew members who of course have a different (and usual lower) rep than you.
Happy Happy Joy Joy
A happy urb will be more lucky in gaining rep. To ease the game up a bit, Maxis has made it a less time-consuming effort to keep 'green'. Just five mood bars are left: bladder, hygiene, hunger, fun and sleep. These bars go red less quick, and are easier to keep green. This way you don't have to focus on your Urb's mood all the time. All mood bars can also be satisfied in the city, so there's no need to head home. However, you can't place a shower downtown so use the sinks wisely. Unfortunately it's sometimes also a bit hard to keep the fun bar green, as real fun objects are rare. That bar probably takes the most time - even sleeping is faster. When your Urb goes to bed, the screen goes black and time speeds up. In about 90 sim-minutes to 2 hours your Sim will be fully recovered. No need to wait too long, and that's a good thing.

The bars are displayed in your screen constantly, which is not like the Sims Bustin' Out. These bars are placed vertically, next to a smiley-face. The happiness of this face tells you how happy your urb is. The happier, the easier it will be to win certain bets or games against other urbz, and earn a bit of extra money, plus it'll also be easier to make friends. If your urb is too unhappy, others will refuse to socialise, which does not help your rep at all. In the end that makes the mood of your urb fairly important, as an unhappy one isn't very useful. I Feel Good!
Careers
Making Sculptures The Urbz is the first game where you 'follow' your Sim to work. Every district has a job object, which has 3 levels. Every job requires you to fulfil some tasks, of which the main one is working on the machine. This is always more or less the same: press the buttons on your controller in the right order and your Sim will be able to work faster. Once you've completed that part of the job, there are a few other things to pay attention to, e.g. keeping a specific mood bar green. The total performance makes your total job performance. Do well, and you get paid well, plus you get access to the next job level. The Schnizzilator

However, you can't just finish all three job levels after each other. You'll need more skills. There are three skills, all of which can be trained using a special skill object. You can gain 30 points in each skill, 10 for each level of the skill object. Once you completed a level, you'll need to upgrade the object and train on. Training is done by pressing a single button repeatedly. Higher level jobs are a bit more difficult, in that there's more to pay attention to. The result is that you earn more money by completing the job. This is especially useful when you gained enough rep to unlock another apartment, as that means you have to pay more rent. Skill Statistics
Written at 00:30 on Wednesday 8 December 2004 by ChEeTaH.

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