Introduction
It's not exactly easy to create a full-fledged sequel to one of the most popular PC games ever created. After all, The Sims has sold around 30 million, or more, copies worldwide since its release back in 2000. Since then The Sims has seen six successful expansion packs; each adding their own unique features and new objects. But as good as The Sims will always be it has been drained dry of some of its fun and no new expansion pack can remedy this. That's where the idea of a sequel always takes place. Now with The Sims 2 finally in our grasp we can take a look at how the world's most popular PC game can get even better.
Neighbourhoods and construction
For those of you who don't know, The Sims allows you to create your own little people, or "sims", which basically become your puppets as they do everything you command. You can not only choose how your sim looks, but you can also choose their personality, abilities, and steer them through the course of their life to either bring them happiness or sorrow. It's a very open-ended strategy game that basically puts you in the role of running somebody else's life. Amazingly The Sims 2 takes all the great features of The Sims and builds on them even further.
The first thing you'll be presented with upon starting up the game is the normal menu that allows you to choose which neighborhood you want to live in. Just like in the original game you can create your own neighborhoods, but this time you can actually customize the look of your neighborhoods. This is accomplished by providing you with different landscapes and various other objects that can be added to your neighborhood. Some of these objects include trees, telephone poles, water towers, rocks and more.
Next you can choose how big you want specific lots to be. After selecting the size of a lot you then get to choose whether it's a commercial lot or a residential lot. A residential lot is the normal spot of land upon which residential houses can be built. A commercial lot allows you to build them shops where they can buy their necessities. So your neighborhood will be equipped with many homes and shopping spots, since your sims are not allowed to go to other neighborhoods. All the ideas of the Hot Date and Vacation expansion packs from the original Sims are absent from The Sims 2. So your sims aren't capable of going out to eat or going to other neighborhoods. Such limitations as these can only mean one thing: expect many more expansion packs!
At anytime you can simply enter a specific lot and start building a house or shopping mall. If you start to create a new neighborhood from scratch you can quickly populate your neighborhood by adding in some already built houses. The building features of The Sims 2 remains quite the same as The Sims. So anyone who has already played The Sims should be able to quickly jump right into it. There are a few improvements that have been added to this area of the game. The most notable is the fact that you can finally put windows and doors on angled walls. And now you can really build your sim a mansion as you have the complete ability to build up to four stories high! If you do it just right you can even make a basement. Certain elements in the building feature also allow for easier ways of creating porches and even customizing the look of your roof.
The Sims 2 also includes a wide variety of new floors, doors, windows, and wallpapers. Combinations are almost limitless as you can build your true dream house. The only thing here that seems to be a bit limited is the amount of items that can furnish your beautiful house. The Sims 2 contains a large amount of items to buy for your house, but no where near as much as The Sims and all of its expansion packs. This is just another sign that expansion packs are to be expected later down the road.
Creating Your Sims
The Create-A-Sim feature is far more advanced than what appeared in the original game. From here you can completely customize the look and appearance of your sims. This is also where you can create whole families from scratch. Anything from their eyebrows, eyes, lips, cheeks, chins, ears, hair, glasses, hats, shirts, pants, and more can be changed and morphed to create truly unique looking sims. There are so many different ways to change the appearance of your sims that combinations are endless. If you want to create some celebrities or just experiment with making some hideous looking sims then it's all possible. This is also where you also get to choose their different personality traits that will ultimately determine what kind of sim they will become. Just be careful with what you decide on, because their offspring will take on some of the same physical appearances and personality traits.
How do their offspring maintain the same traits as their parents? It's all in the DNA baby. This is perhaps one of the best parts about The Sims 2. Upon having a baby, you'll notice that the child has personality and physical traits that resemble a mix of both parents. Also depending on how the parents look you can end up with one freaky-looking kid. Either way, this whole DNA idea can lead to one huge family tree. It also leads to eventual death. Which is sort of a relief because now you won't have the guilt of killing your own sims on purpose when you get really bored with them. C'mon, admit it! Like you've never locked them in a room that's on fire or purposely drowned them before. Well now they can save you some time by dieing off all by themselves. Once a sim dies Death arrives with his trusty list and cell phone in hand to handle the matter.
Throughout the life of your sims there are six age transitions that they will go through. Each stage changes the physical appearance of you sim respectively and gives them new features and interactions in their life. The first stage is obviously a baby which lasts for three days. Baby can do absolutely nothing on their own and can only beg for food or attention. They're a nightmare for their parents as they completely destroy whatever perfect sleep cycle the parents were on. Thankfully it only lasts for three days of the sims time. The next stage is the toddler stage which lasts for 4 days. Toddlers can do a little bit more on their own and require the assistance of their parents to help them to walk, talk, and use the toilet.
Gameplay
Before you know it the toddler has now grown into the child stage which lasts for eight days. Children can now maintain their own needs of eating and going to the bathroom and this is the first stage of when they finally go off to school for five days a week. Occasionally they may bring home a friend from school and some good grades. The next stage is the teenager stage which lasts for 15 days. Teenagers like to prepare for their adult life and start some after school jobs. Teenagers can also go out on dates for the first time.
The next stage is the adult stage, which lasts for 29 days. Adults can have fulltime careers in a number of different fields and can even get paid vacations and call in sick to work. Adults can also get married and have children of their own. The final stage of a sim's life is the elder stage. Being an elder means that you can die at any second. Sure you can die in any other life stage from such things as fire or getting very ill, but elders can easily die from old age. That's why elders only live from nine to thirty-one days because they can kick off at any second. However, there is a way to live as long as possible through these last thirty-one days. That's to keep the sim's Aspiration level up high.
The Aspiration meter is another completely new feature in The Sims 2. Included on the user interface is a new wants/fears panel with a small meter next to it called the Aspiration meter. Each day your sims have different wants and fears. It's up to you to determine whether or not their wants come true or their worst fears are realized. Some examples of wants could be a parent wanting his child to get an A+ on their report card or something as simple as eating cereal for breakfast. An example of a fear could be a sim's friend winning against him in a video game or being rejected by a girl. All the wants and fears are resembled by small pictures on this panel. The reason this affects your sim's lifespan is because if you let a lot of your sim's wants to come true than your sim will be very happy, and their Mood meter will reach full and go to a platinum color in order to show that they are in the happiest mood. This in turn lengthens their lifespan. However if you make their fears come true than they are eventually going to break down and their Mood meter will plummet into the red.
The Mood meter acts exactly the same way as it did in the original Sims game. The level of the Mood meter is determined upon the sim's basic needs. These basic daily needs include hunger, fun, comfort, social, bladder, hygiene, energy and environment. The idea is to keep these needs all at high levels in order to keep your sims happy. After all, who wants an angry little person rampaging around the house?
As mentioned before, your sims need to occasionally buy food to restock their refrigerator. Besides food there are also a few other things that can be purchased. The most frequent of these items are different types of magazines, clothes, and video games. There are three different video games that can be purchased and played on both the PC and console system that you sim can buy. They are SSX3, Sim City 4 and The Sims Bustin' Out . And no, it's not weird at all watching your sims playing The Sims. The different games don't offer any different values of fun for the sim, but it just gives you something different to watch each time.
Your sims also carry with them a number of different skills throughout their life. Just like in the previous game skills can be accomplished by studying books. However The Sims 2 offers some new ways of gaining skill points in a particular area. For example your sim can gain some skill points in the cooking area by watching the cooking channel on the television. The fitness skill point is no longer just a simple point. Your sim's physical appearance is actually determined upon how much they work out. If they exercise quite a bit then they will be very buff and muscular. If they don't exercise at all and eat when they aren't even hungry then they will start to gain some wait and become obese.
One last new feature of The Sims 2 that is worth mentioning is the fact that they now have memories. Whether it was a good or bad event that happened in their life, chances are your sim will remember it. If it's a really bad memory then it can haunt them in their dreams and they will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with fear all over their face. Once they realize it was just a nightmare they then go back to sleep.
We've mentioned a lot of new features here and some old ones just to recap about the original game. But perhaps the most noticeable of which are the brand new graphics. Nothing says 'sequel' like a brand new coat of paint. This seems to be one of the main attractions of The Sims 2, and it's also what truly brings your sims to life. Utilizing a full 3D engine your sims have never looked so good before. You can watch your sims in action from all angles now. They also now have very detailed facial animations that can clue you into what they are thinking about. Most physical animations seem to be repeats from the original Sims game and are somewhat limited. This doesn't provide for too much variety in the way your sims move about. You may also need a hefty PC to run The Sims 2 with the graphics cranked all the way up but it's well worth it.
Yep, that's right, they still speak the same old gibberish, and the only way to tell what they're saying is by looking at those ever so popular speech balloons. The sound effects are also very much the same from the original game. There are some new songs and speech patterns but most remain the same.
Conclusion
For any fan of The Sims (and its many expansion packs), The Sims 2 is a must buy. It's one great strategy game that makes for a worthy sequel. If you're even just starting out with this franchise now, then The Sims 2 should be where you start. The only problem is that The Sims 2 has some slight limits on items that you can buy and a few other features that were included in the original Sims. With such limitations new expansion packs must be in the works. It looks like the number one selling PC game just got better.
It's not exactly easy to create a full-fledged sequel to one of the most popular PC games ever created. After all, The Sims has sold around 30 million, or more, copies worldwide since its release back in 2000. Since then The Sims has seen six successful expansion packs; each adding their own unique features and new objects. But as good as The Sims will always be it has been drained dry of some of its fun and no new expansion pack can remedy this. That's where the idea of a sequel always takes place. Now with The Sims 2 finally in our grasp we can take a look at how the world's most popular PC game can get even better.
Neighbourhoods and construction
For those of you who don't know, The Sims allows you to create your own little people, or "sims", which basically become your puppets as they do everything you command. You can not only choose how your sim looks, but you can also choose their personality, abilities, and steer them through the course of their life to either bring them happiness or sorrow. It's a very open-ended strategy game that basically puts you in the role of running somebody else's life. Amazingly The Sims 2 takes all the great features of The Sims and builds on them even further.
The first thing you'll be presented with upon starting up the game is the normal menu that allows you to choose which neighborhood you want to live in. Just like in the original game you can create your own neighborhoods, but this time you can actually customize the look of your neighborhoods. This is accomplished by providing you with different landscapes and various other objects that can be added to your neighborhood. Some of these objects include trees, telephone poles, water towers, rocks and more.
Next you can choose how big you want specific lots to be. After selecting the size of a lot you then get to choose whether it's a commercial lot or a residential lot. A residential lot is the normal spot of land upon which residential houses can be built. A commercial lot allows you to build them shops where they can buy their necessities. So your neighborhood will be equipped with many homes and shopping spots, since your sims are not allowed to go to other neighborhoods. All the ideas of the Hot Date and Vacation expansion packs from the original Sims are absent from The Sims 2. So your sims aren't capable of going out to eat or going to other neighborhoods. Such limitations as these can only mean one thing: expect many more expansion packs!
At anytime you can simply enter a specific lot and start building a house or shopping mall. If you start to create a new neighborhood from scratch you can quickly populate your neighborhood by adding in some already built houses. The building features of The Sims 2 remains quite the same as The Sims. So anyone who has already played The Sims should be able to quickly jump right into it. There are a few improvements that have been added to this area of the game. The most notable is the fact that you can finally put windows and doors on angled walls. And now you can really build your sim a mansion as you have the complete ability to build up to four stories high! If you do it just right you can even make a basement. Certain elements in the building feature also allow for easier ways of creating porches and even customizing the look of your roof.
The Sims 2 also includes a wide variety of new floors, doors, windows, and wallpapers. Combinations are almost limitless as you can build your true dream house. The only thing here that seems to be a bit limited is the amount of items that can furnish your beautiful house. The Sims 2 contains a large amount of items to buy for your house, but no where near as much as The Sims and all of its expansion packs. This is just another sign that expansion packs are to be expected later down the road.
Creating Your Sims
The Create-A-Sim feature is far more advanced than what appeared in the original game. From here you can completely customize the look and appearance of your sims. This is also where you can create whole families from scratch. Anything from their eyebrows, eyes, lips, cheeks, chins, ears, hair, glasses, hats, shirts, pants, and more can be changed and morphed to create truly unique looking sims. There are so many different ways to change the appearance of your sims that combinations are endless. If you want to create some celebrities or just experiment with making some hideous looking sims then it's all possible. This is also where you also get to choose their different personality traits that will ultimately determine what kind of sim they will become. Just be careful with what you decide on, because their offspring will take on some of the same physical appearances and personality traits.
How do their offspring maintain the same traits as their parents? It's all in the DNA baby. This is perhaps one of the best parts about The Sims 2. Upon having a baby, you'll notice that the child has personality and physical traits that resemble a mix of both parents. Also depending on how the parents look you can end up with one freaky-looking kid. Either way, this whole DNA idea can lead to one huge family tree. It also leads to eventual death. Which is sort of a relief because now you won't have the guilt of killing your own sims on purpose when you get really bored with them. C'mon, admit it! Like you've never locked them in a room that's on fire or purposely drowned them before. Well now they can save you some time by dieing off all by themselves. Once a sim dies Death arrives with his trusty list and cell phone in hand to handle the matter.
Throughout the life of your sims there are six age transitions that they will go through. Each stage changes the physical appearance of you sim respectively and gives them new features and interactions in their life. The first stage is obviously a baby which lasts for three days. Baby can do absolutely nothing on their own and can only beg for food or attention. They're a nightmare for their parents as they completely destroy whatever perfect sleep cycle the parents were on. Thankfully it only lasts for three days of the sims time. The next stage is the toddler stage which lasts for 4 days. Toddlers can do a little bit more on their own and require the assistance of their parents to help them to walk, talk, and use the toilet.
Gameplay
Before you know it the toddler has now grown into the child stage which lasts for eight days. Children can now maintain their own needs of eating and going to the bathroom and this is the first stage of when they finally go off to school for five days a week. Occasionally they may bring home a friend from school and some good grades. The next stage is the teenager stage which lasts for 15 days. Teenagers like to prepare for their adult life and start some after school jobs. Teenagers can also go out on dates for the first time.
The next stage is the adult stage, which lasts for 29 days. Adults can have fulltime careers in a number of different fields and can even get paid vacations and call in sick to work. Adults can also get married and have children of their own. The final stage of a sim's life is the elder stage. Being an elder means that you can die at any second. Sure you can die in any other life stage from such things as fire or getting very ill, but elders can easily die from old age. That's why elders only live from nine to thirty-one days because they can kick off at any second. However, there is a way to live as long as possible through these last thirty-one days. That's to keep the sim's Aspiration level up high.
The Aspiration meter is another completely new feature in The Sims 2. Included on the user interface is a new wants/fears panel with a small meter next to it called the Aspiration meter. Each day your sims have different wants and fears. It's up to you to determine whether or not their wants come true or their worst fears are realized. Some examples of wants could be a parent wanting his child to get an A+ on their report card or something as simple as eating cereal for breakfast. An example of a fear could be a sim's friend winning against him in a video game or being rejected by a girl. All the wants and fears are resembled by small pictures on this panel. The reason this affects your sim's lifespan is because if you let a lot of your sim's wants to come true than your sim will be very happy, and their Mood meter will reach full and go to a platinum color in order to show that they are in the happiest mood. This in turn lengthens their lifespan. However if you make their fears come true than they are eventually going to break down and their Mood meter will plummet into the red.
The Mood meter acts exactly the same way as it did in the original Sims game. The level of the Mood meter is determined upon the sim's basic needs. These basic daily needs include hunger, fun, comfort, social, bladder, hygiene, energy and environment. The idea is to keep these needs all at high levels in order to keep your sims happy. After all, who wants an angry little person rampaging around the house?
As mentioned before, your sims need to occasionally buy food to restock their refrigerator. Besides food there are also a few other things that can be purchased. The most frequent of these items are different types of magazines, clothes, and video games. There are three different video games that can be purchased and played on both the PC and console system that you sim can buy. They are SSX3, Sim City 4 and The Sims Bustin' Out . And no, it's not weird at all watching your sims playing The Sims. The different games don't offer any different values of fun for the sim, but it just gives you something different to watch each time.
Your sims also carry with them a number of different skills throughout their life. Just like in the previous game skills can be accomplished by studying books. However The Sims 2 offers some new ways of gaining skill points in a particular area. For example your sim can gain some skill points in the cooking area by watching the cooking channel on the television. The fitness skill point is no longer just a simple point. Your sim's physical appearance is actually determined upon how much they work out. If they exercise quite a bit then they will be very buff and muscular. If they don't exercise at all and eat when they aren't even hungry then they will start to gain some wait and become obese.
One last new feature of The Sims 2 that is worth mentioning is the fact that they now have memories. Whether it was a good or bad event that happened in their life, chances are your sim will remember it. If it's a really bad memory then it can haunt them in their dreams and they will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with fear all over their face. Once they realize it was just a nightmare they then go back to sleep.
We've mentioned a lot of new features here and some old ones just to recap about the original game. But perhaps the most noticeable of which are the brand new graphics. Nothing says 'sequel' like a brand new coat of paint. This seems to be one of the main attractions of The Sims 2, and it's also what truly brings your sims to life. Utilizing a full 3D engine your sims have never looked so good before. You can watch your sims in action from all angles now. They also now have very detailed facial animations that can clue you into what they are thinking about. Most physical animations seem to be repeats from the original Sims game and are somewhat limited. This doesn't provide for too much variety in the way your sims move about. You may also need a hefty PC to run The Sims 2 with the graphics cranked all the way up but it's well worth it.
Yep, that's right, they still speak the same old gibberish, and the only way to tell what they're saying is by looking at those ever so popular speech balloons. The sound effects are also very much the same from the original game. There are some new songs and speech patterns but most remain the same.
Conclusion
For any fan of The Sims (and its many expansion packs), The Sims 2 is a must buy. It's one great strategy game that makes for a worthy sequel. If you're even just starting out with this franchise now, then The Sims 2 should be where you start. The only problem is that The Sims 2 has some slight limits on items that you can buy and a few other features that were included in the original Sims. With such limitations new expansion packs must be in the works. It looks like the number one selling PC game just got better.
