An interesting diversion from the usual.
In The Sims there is no grand story, nor ending. You control the lives and homes of families of virtual people across eight neighborhoods (which are more like game worlds than different neighborhoods). The game comes with several premade families for the first two neighborhoods, but you will end up creating most of them along with their houses from scratch.
After you create their houses you'll end up finding them jobs, so they can pay the bills and buy new furnishings, decorations, or entertainment for their abode. While that is all well and good Sims also have needs that you need to keep track of. They have a set of bars that are constantly dropping (at an amazingly fast rate I might add) giving you very little time to do anything but take care of their needs (which they can do themselves if you have free will enabled).
Those times that you do manage to get all of their bars at satisfactory levels, you can explore the places added by the expansions. You can buy pets, go downtown, become a superstar, and even learn magic. The Sims Complete lets you do a variety of things with your Sims when they aren't worrying about their mood bars. Some of these features could have been a lot better, however; Superstar's new career focuses more on guessing games, and Makin' Magic's magic system is more or less cheesy and pointless.
The graphics are good enough for a game of this type. It is basically 3D characters ontop of 2D terrain. The characters themselves range from not bad to ugly, and the terrain and textures often look cartoonish which I suppose fits with the humorous atmosphere of The Sims.
The audio is bad, I'm afraid. The music becomes annoying after a short while; as does the whining of your Sims who speak their own language called "Simish". I can't really think of any saving grace in the area of sound.
The Sims Complete Collection is a nice diversion from other games, and a good deal. If you're looking for something different then give it a shot. I still can't help but wonder why this game is so popular, and though it is a great game in its own right I can think of many better games to play for entertainment.