The Sims 2: Great Simlish Fun!

Peering through the window across the perfectly manicured lawn, Sarah could see Tad wooing her sister! In a screaming fit, she ran it an berated Tad…breaking down into tears… Next door, a strange couple played with their green-skinned, bug-eyed child …as night fell, a ghost went to the fridge for a snack…

This is the world of the Sims 2!

The Sims 2 a video game designed to be played like a sandbox. The user is given a high level of control over what happens, and is not tied down to a specific game-goal. In the Sims 2, you create and play virtual characters, known as Sims, and lead them through their daily lives, trying to find them love, happiness, food, and the chance to be happy as they age and share their knowledge with their offspring.

The Sims 2 take the original concept of Will Wright’s The Sims and completely updates the game engine into 3-D, while adding the layer of again and various ages to play through. A character can go from being an infant, to a kid, to a teen, adult, and finally an elder before the pass their mortal coil. Each character has a virtual DNA, so they can pass their looks and traits on to their offspring! I prefer, though, to use a cheat-code to turn off aging so I can play more like the original game. I like just having one character who doesn’t age.

Installation
The installation took a while (about 10 minutes), but I did purchase the DVD version, so I did not have to swap out disks, which was nice. The installation provided nice screenshots and a trivia game to keep me from being bored.

The Sims

Your Sims are mostly under your control, but they have needs and desires that must be met, or they may take things into their own hands. They have emotions and desires, they can be cute or mean, they can be amorous or vengeful, and they are always fun!

The Sims can interact with their game world in fun (and sometimes crazy) ways. They can swim, cook meals, chat on the internet, read the newspaper, chat with friends, fall in love, get angry, fight, play games, rest, die, give birth, and many, many more ways! It is fun just seeing them interact with the various game objects and characters, and is highly addicting! The Sims retain memories as they go through their life. These memories can come up in conversation, thus spreading them. If one Sim saw another Sim making out, and spreads that rumor to the Sim’s spouse, they can get just as angry as if they saw their spouse cheating on them directly! Very cool!

The primary objectives for Sims (besides needs and fears—see below) is to make sure they have money to buy stuff to make them happier through better quality stuff. With a better bed, they can sleep easier and rest better, with a better stove, the can cook better, etc. To do this, they need to get a job, and preferably one that matches their interests and skills.

When you begin the game with your family, you begin with $20,000 Simolians no matter what size the family is. It would have been nicer to have more money for larger families, as creating, for example, a group of 8 rock-n-roll band-mates living together is almost impossible with starting at $20,000. Just buying the smallest home ($12,000) and the most basic amenities is almost impossible.

The Sims have skills that allow them to do better at tasks (cooking, cleaning), to look better (exercise) and allow them better chances at promotions (logic). Sims can buy objects that are skill builder, such as a chess table for logic, or a bookshelf to read about cooking. Certain activities also increase the skills just by doing them, such as cooking and cleaning.

Aspirations

Each Sim is created with aspirations. Aspirations are a primary driving force of the Sim’s life that helps determine their needs and fear in life, along with how they may interact with other Sims. For example, a “knowledge” aspiration creates a Sim that wants to see aliens, see the dead, and continue learning through life, while a “family” Sim desires a spouse and babies. This is a great feature of the game and really helps to define a Sim.


Sims Have Needs and Fears.

A dial shows each need and fear and how many points will be gained or lost when that even occurs. For example, a Sim based on Knowledge, may want to look through a telescope (for +500) but may be afraid of losing a skill point (-500). Those points make a Sim happier or more depressed. When they are happier they can do more activities to boost their skills. When they are depressed, they need to focus on that which is depressing them, such as hunger, or friends. When you can make these events occur, the points are added or subtracted. You can also “lock” in a Need or a Fear if you want to focus on that one. When they are met, the dial will change and make new needs and fears based on the character and where they are in their life. This makes a really great sub-game by providing constant goals to achieve.

Careers

Your Sims (unless you are using cheat codes) will most likely need a career. Sims begin their career at an entry level and must work their way up. To do this, they must develop work-appropriate skills (shown in the career field), have enough friends (shown in the career field), not miss too much work, and show up steadily to work in a good mood. When those conditions are met, they will get promoted, which means more money, a better outfit to wear, and a better carpool. Each career also has a reward object when you go far enough down the career path. Each object provides game benefits and can look very cool

Aging
Your Sims age through various life-stages, from infant, to toddler, teen, adult, and elder. The various stages are fun to play through (or at least have several different stage in one household), but they go waaay to quickly for me. I wish there was a way to control aging without using cheats.

Creating a Sim

The Create-A-Sim portion of the game is probably the most addicting for me. I have spent countless hours just creating cool families of Sims. Each Sim you create is almost infinitely customizable, from the size of their eyes, nose, mouth, to their clothing, to their personalities, glasses, hair, and more! I also download tons of new characters and objects from websites for the game, so I can quickly modify them to make my own ideal characters. For example, I created a family with Angelina Jolie and a mummy, a family of aliens, a family of Egyptians, and countless others! The level of detail you can make allows for great character likenesses! My own skill and replicating someone is not great, so I download them and alter what I wish. I probably have spent more time in this part of the game then in the game-world itself!

Once you create a character, you can also see what they will look like at any of the various ages, change their personality, and assign them to a family. You can designate who is in the family by lining them up in a family tree. Another fun part is you can take two existing members of the family and have the system create a baby from them. You can even age the baby or re-do it to see what it would look like!

Building Houses

Building a place to live is also a really, really fun game unto itself. With all of the options and materials provided by the game, plus the thousands you can download, you can create almost anything you dream of! Houses can have basements, up to four floors, swimming pools, trees, plants, and more. You can lay out the floors, walls, lights, furniture, doors, appliances…you can landscape the terrain so houses are on a hill, or in a valley. When you are furnishing your home, the game has a nice sorting feature that sorts items based on room or category type, making it pretty easy to find what you need. You can create dark, creepy, spooky houses; futuristic homes, and anything in between. If you like architecture, or just designing homes, this is a great, great part of the game!


Neighborhoods and Households

A neighborhood is where your Sims and other Sims live. It contains terrain, roads, and dwellings, parks, and stores. The game comes standard with three neighborhoods, and you can create your own with what is provided in the game, or even import maps from Sim City 4 to base your neighborhood on (although that can be a little tricky to get is just right).

The neighborhoods come pre-populated with families. These families have storylines you can follow, and are good learning tools. In fact, one family, The Goths, comes from the Sims 1 game, and now has a mystery to solve: where is Bella Goth?

Each household in the game can have up to 8 people living in it, but my experience is that more then 3 or so is really tough to manage unless you are using unlimited funds cheats.

Age Appropriateness PG-13

This game definitely falls under the PG-13 type movie rating. There is no direct nudity—it is pixilated, but Sims can “woo-hoo” with each other in various places such as the bed and hot-tub, and parents may wish to know this and talk with their younger kids about this, or make the decision not to let them play a game with adult themes, such as characters whose goal may be to “woo-hoo” with numerous different people. Characters can also die in several ways (except for babies), and older characters die of old-age.


Graphics and Sound

The 3-D graphics are quite nice to look at. All of the characters and objects are nicely detailed, down to the Sims having individual fingers. With the zoom function, you can get really close to many objects and find neat little pictures and such on many of the products in the game. Zoom in on the newspaper while it is being read, or some of the food containers. It is fun!

The sound effects are pretty basic, but contain one majorly endearing quality: the Sims speaking Simlish! Simlish is the made-up language that helps convey tone and such, but has no straight meaning. It is fun to listen to! The music in the game has several styles and can be accessed through in-game objects, such as the radio. The music is nice, and not annoying.

Game Speed

On a computer with a good graphics card and processor, the game runs really smoothly. If the game is not, then there are settings to dial back certain graphic-heavy parts of the game to make it run smoother, but look less pretty.


Load Time
The load-time for the standard game is very quick, but if you download thousands of user-created add-ons, then it can take up to 10 minutes to load…and too many parts can make certain parts of Create-A-Sim run really slowly.

Final Thoughts

The Sims 2 is a highly addictive game that many people can find fun with. Whether you love creating little people, building houses, or playing various styles of games, the Sims has it all. With the many expansion packs and thousands of user-created downloads, the Sims 2 can keep you busy…well, until Sims 3 invariable comes along!

__________________________________________________________________
Title: The Sims 2
Creator: Will Wright
Distributor:: Electronic Arts

System Requirements
OS: Windows Vista, XP, ME, 2000, or 98.
CPU: 800 MHz or faster
RAM: 256 MB or more
Disk Drive: 8x or faster CD/DVD drive
Hard Drive: At least 3.5 GB of free space
Video: DirectX 9.0 compatible
Sound: DirectX 9.0 compatible