There is only one story to play, but you can choose if you want to play it as a male or a female. I played the female. After you finish the story mode, the freeplay neighborhood will be unlocked. To try the storymode with another character, you'd have to remove the folder from Documents & Settings..
The story mode was a bit too easy and way too short. Someone less familiar with the Sims might find some more challenge there, but for an old addict such as myself, the game was just a way to spend a few hours.
The thing that annoys me most with these Stories - games, is the definite storyline. I had no influence on what was going on and that - to be honest - sucks. For now, Castaway Stories will be the last for the Stories - games, but I would hope they'd make a bit complex story system if another Stories will be available.
The items were - again - mostly ripped from the Sims 2 too. The good thing - however - is the fact that mAxis went through the trouble of bringing Sims Castaway for PS3 to us PC owners too.
Some of the new objects were excellent and the whole concept was much more entertaining than Life Stories. Reward system was good, but I would've excepted something more "useful" such as an unlockable resource tree. Mostly the rewards and gifts were useless.
They should have added a couple more stories to play to keep the "I-got-ripped-of-my-cash-again" - bogeyman out of our minds..
I spent a happy six hours playing the Sims Castaway Stories. As with Life Stories, do not buy it if you already own the Sims 2 and you own a computer that can handle the very "heavy" game. Sims Life Stories is NOT worth the price, so you better save the money from SCS and buy the new upcoming expansion, Free Time (if you - of course - own Sims 2). However, If you own a laptop and you're not as addicted as myself, go and buy SCS. It will be some entertaining. Please take a note that the minimun requirements are a joke, it needs at least 1gig memory and a 2,8 mobility CPU. I played this with a high-end PC and sometimes I lost my nerves because I'd need a RAID system for my hard drives to make the game read stuff more faster...
NOTE: I found out that The Sims 2 compatible objects (non-expansion - that is) can be imported to the game the same way as with the Sims 2 objects are imported except for the utilities such as fridges and stuff. And there's no TV, I suppose. These objects need to be unique meshes with their own unique ID's and their recolors. The cheats are not accessible in the storymode, but some Sims 2 compatible hacked objects and hacks do work, such as Merola's Sims' Hacked painting.