The Sims: Makin' Magic Critic Reviews

The best Sims expansion and a must-have for any Sims fan.

And the Sims wouldn’t be the Sims without great music, given an appropriately magical theme in Makin’ Magic, and the now-famous Simlish language spoken amongst Sims populating your PC.

The addition of spells is just what the franchise ordered. It's a fitting tribute to the simulated reality that The Sims has become famous for -- and a great way for the original game to bow out.

Whether you’re trying to find rare ingredients to try that next spell on your list, testing out new recipes or just making sure your Sims crap when they need to… this game is still very capable of stealing large portions of your life from you.

A chore-saving final addition to the original Sims. Its whimsical nature is a nice change of pace from the previous expansions.

Jam-packed with cool content, quirky humor, and the most polished gameplay of the entire series.

The latest -- and probably last -- expansion pack for The Sims, Makin' Magic, is easily the most fun of the seven.

This is the way The Sims ends, not with a whimper but with a bang.

It adds a lot of fun and magic, as well as some interesting new items and jobs to partake in.

While some of Makin' Magic's more-colorful additions seem a bit out of place, this final expansion pack adds plenty of new things for you and your sims to do.

Personally, I find the magical nature of the expansion charming but incompatible with the basic concept of the series.

One great addition in Makin’ Magic is the creation of a character inventory, which allows you to keep MagiCoins and ingredients for spells and charms.

It's more of "more of the same," but the "more" of The Sims is always interesting and funny.

Given the open-ended nature of the series, most hard-core fans will enjoy investing their time here acquiring elusive ingredients and perfecting their hocus pocus, while casual fans will get a kick out of the chaos they can cause spending a few hours playing around with it.

Brings more than 175 new enchanted items, which alone justifies the purchase. These special objects can take care of the less-pleasant chores in your life, leaving you free to pursue personal happiness.

The new Magic Town, host of object additions, and backward compatibility with previous expansion packs ensures that fans will stay busy until The Sims 2 is released in a few months.

It's a ghoulishly good time for existing Sims fans.

While it still has the old “Sims Time” problems it is fun to play and offers gamers enough new objects and game variety to keep the title fresh up until next year when the whole thing will start over again with "The Sims 2."

The new additions are fun and fairly innovative, but I doubt they'll be enough to hold the attention of even slightly jaded Sims players for long.

While certainly not the most inspired of concepts, it’s still quite fun to explore, experiment and integrate the game’s additions into your Sims’ world even after the novelty of its spells wears off.