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The Sims 2 (PC)
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Maxis
Genre: Simulation
Release Date: September 14, 2004
ESRB: Teen
By Dave Kosak | Sept. 10, 2004

The sequel to the biggest PC game of all time delivers on its promises: This little toy will keep you entertained for months.

It' s difficult to review a game like The Sims 2 because the original title -- which kicked off the best-selling PC game franchise of all time -- was so many things to so many different people. People are going to flock to The Sims 2 for any number of different reasons. Will they be satisfied? Will they get their money' s worth? Will they get addicted all over again? The short answer is yes. (The slightly longer answer is hell yes). But to see why, it' s necessary to tick off all of the things that people got out of the original game ... and how the sequel delivers even more for everyone.

The original Sims was as much a toy as it was a game. Little people would live out their day-to-day lives inside your computer, and you could play with them however you liked. Everybody played the game differently, some trying to make perfect, happy, successful families ... others treating them like lab-rats or trashy daytime talk show guests. Whatever your tastes, the original game spawned a whole online community creating content for it. What would happen if the Spice Girls moved in next to the cast of the X-Files? My wife downloaded them all from the Internet and we found out. It was more entertaining than reality TV.

As you' d suspect, Sims 2 follows the same formula. The way we see it, the original game was four things: an architecture simulator, a people simulator, a creative toy, and -- of course -- a game. Everyone played it for different reasons. So let' s look at each one and see how the sequel stacks up!

Hate your life? Simulate one worse than your own!

One thing that players will discover after only a couple hours of play is the size and depth of the game. For this reason, we' re also including a Extended Review with more detailed information and gameplay anecdotes.

Sims 2: The Architecture Simulator

Many people loved the original Sims simply for being able to build and decorate houses. For evidence just look at the lavish floorplans people have uploaded, or the uncounted multitude of furnishings, wallpapers, and floor patterns they' ve placed online. How' s Sims 2 stack up? As a building game, it delivers.

Starting off, the new true-3D engine allows you to swivel the camera to any angle, zooming all the way in to get a people-eye view of the interiors or panning around to view the structure for any angle. (We actually wished the camera control was even more configurable -- sometimes we wanted to zoom around the house more quickly or walk through it in first-person mode.) Houses can now have a more complex basic structure: you can build on foundations, put windows or doors on diagonal walls, create two-story rooms with multistory windows, build diagonally-oriented decks -- the works. When you build fireplaces, the chimney will stretch up to the roof. And roofs can also be customized, built the way you want with overhangs or dormers. Want to build an old Victorian home with a wrap-around porch? Or a multistory building with apartments on every floor? Can do.

When it comes to decorating a home, the choices are expanded, a vast improvement over the first game. When you buy a couch, for instance, you can now choose the upholstery and woodgrain separately. Suddenly a single piece of furniture can have dozens of options -- and there' s a lot of furniture. Similarly, there' s more wall and floor options as well. And they' re sorted by materials: brick, plaster, paint, etc. In this way, everything easier to find and easier to build with. More importantly, as people start downloading gobs of new surfaces from the Internet, they' ll be sorted and easy to find.

It' s also a relief to see the sims navigate buildings better. It no longer takes them forever to go up and down stairs, so multistory buildings are easier to use in-game. Chairs are now pushed under tables when not in use, so they don' t take up precious space. And, in general, sims are better at squeezing past each other in narrow areas. As a result, you can build much more realistic or creative layouts and still have them work within the game.

It' s not quite at the point where " if you can dream it, you can build it" (you can' t place furniture on diagonally oriented walls), but Sims 2 allows you to build most common architectural elements. It' s better than most off-the-shelf home-planning software, and way easier to use.

Sims 2: The People Simulator

There was something voyeuristic about the original game, something fascinating about manipulating the lives of your sims. It was rightly called a " virtual dollhouse." People used the original game to create families identical to their own, or crazy fantasy families that were either perfect or wildly flawed. Gamers who got a kick out of doing so will find that Sims 2 offers even more.

First of all, the level of detail is astonishing. The new 3D engine allows you to zoom in and get up close and personal with your sims. And now, rather than the stock heads and bodies, they' ve all got unique faces and distinctive features. You can see their facial expressions. I' m not exaggerating when I say that Sims 2 has the most expressive facial models of any computer game to date. Sims will, on cue, look overjoyed, disgusted, lustful, bored, sleepy, excited, thoughtful ... you can see it right in their faces.

Want to create your own sim? There' s more ways to tweak and change the face and makeup than you see in most massively multiplayer online games. When creating a family, you can also create their familial relationships -- brother, sister, grandmother, etc. The game stores a family tree for each sim that you can view as well (which is good, because after a couple generations the family can get pretty huge and convoluted.)

This level of detail extends throughout the whole title. A virtual dollhouse? Sure, one where the clocks actually tell time, where the televisions show moving video programs, and where sims can paint portraits of anything you choose and then hang them on the wall when they' re done. When two sims play chess together, they actually move the pieces in a real chess game. You can watch to see who will win, and see the winner celebrate with a big happy smile. Sims 2 is crazy immersive.

It' s hard to tell how deep the simulation actually is, but it' s complex enough to continually surprise. Sims have individual personalities and their own interests (familiar to anyone who installed the Hot Date expansion to the original game). You can watch them talk about different topics and react to one another accordingly (" The environment? Again? Booo-ooring!" ) Sims have their own memories, so you can see what they' re thinking about as they stroll around the house. One of my sims proposed to another and was rejected: for several days he moped around, thinking about it occasionally and sobbing.

Sims age, and each transition is the perfect excuse for a party.

It' s hard not to feel for the sims as they go through life, or to read into them more than the game is probably simulating: jealously, lust, love, hate? Sometimes you just never know. During one play session my wife inadvertently found herself in control of one messed-up family (see the Extended Review for the whole story). It all seemed funny until she heard a noise once and scrolled down to find their little boy in bed, thinking of his mother and sobbing quietly. For a split second, the sims seemed so real...

Sims 2: The Game

Hardcore gamers had mixed reactions to the original Sims, which was understandable. It was more of a toy than a game. If you were looking for win/lose conditions, it wasn' t rocket science to figure out how to make your sim earn a lot of money or get promoted. If that was all you were looking for, the original game got repetitive. Is the sequel going to be more compelling to hardcore gamers?

Yes and no. If you' re looking for some sort of strategy game where you can learn a technique, win the game, and brag about your victories online, then don' t be fooled by the five-star rating -- this isn' t really that type of game. It' s just as open-ended as ever.

But from a pure gameplay standpoint, Sims 2 offers a lot more than the original to keep it from being repetitive and to keep throwing interesting decisions your way. For one thing, your sims' basic needs aren' t the only thing you' re worried about. They now have wants and desires to attain and fears to avoid. This gives you a little more to sink your teeth into. After all, if a sim needs to pee, there' s really no decision to make -- you just click on the toilet. But in Sims 2, sims often want things that don' t have obvious solutions. What if your sim wants to make Woo-Hoo (aka, " do the nasty" ) in public? And what if your sim' s boyfriend doesn' t want to? Well, now you' ve got real decisions to make! Do you ignore the want and try to make your sim happy in other ways? Do you have her cheat on her boyfriend and Woo-Hoo with someone friskier? Do you buy the special sunglasses that make your sim irresistible? Do you dump his puritan ass? Sims 2 forces you into decisions like that, which ultimately make for a more interesting game.

The fact that sims now grow old with time also adds a new dimension to the game, and fixes a complaint with the original (where time seemed to stop when babies grew into children). As sims grow old they can' t possibly " do it all." Decisions have to be made. Just as in real life, it' s hard for sims to hold down a career while raising several children (at least, several nominally well-adjusted ones). Also, babies grow into toddlers, who grow into teens, who grow into adults, and eventually into elders. Wants and fears change accordingly. Because someone in the family is almost always moving through different phases of life, you see a lot more variety than you did in the original game.

Sims in the same household will often have conflicting wants and fears. Trying to balance them all under the same roof -- and watching the fireworks that result -- can be pretty entertaining and downright challenging. There' s a lot more game here than in the original.

Also, this is one game that' s just as fun (if not more fun) to lose. When things are going badly for your sims they get downright neurotic: they walk around cringing, they cry themselves to sleep, and they start hallucinating about bunnies. Crazy stuff happens! Sims who die tragic deaths come back as ghosts. Will Wright, in a recent interview, calls this " exploring the failure states." We call it dirty fun.

You can build some pretty awe-inspiring and complex houses, and the building tools are cake to use.

Sims 2: The Creative Toy

Part of the enduring success of the Sims franchise is that it allows people to create. Homes, families, furniture, clothes, and stories were all created and shared online. Does Sims 2 tap into that same creative energy?

We' ve already shown how the house-building part of the game has more to offer. But that' s just where Sims 2 gets started. " Over time we' ve come to recognize that storytelling is integral to the entire Sims idea and we' re always looking for ways to let players create, drive, and share these stories," Will Wright said in the above-mentioned interview. If you' re into this part of the game, you can create not just static slideshows of your sims' lives, but video of key moments (just tap the V key to start recording). Because sims grow old, have children, and pass on there' s a natural story created with every life.

Moreover, just about anything that can be created for the game can be shared easily online, often from right within the game interface. You can package up and upload houses, families, clothes, and Sims with a mouse click. Whole neighborhoods can' t be uploaded -- yet -- but they can be packaged up and saved to be passed from player to player. It' s equally easy to download things from the website and incorporate them into the game. (We were not able to fully test this functionality since the live servers are not up at the time of this writing; we were able to test-download a couple of items, though, and the process is very smooth.) A utility to edit and upload wall and floor textures is not available yet, but we' ve been assured it' s in the works. Meanwhile, the Body Shop offers crazy flexibility with creating characters and clothes -- the user community has already created some great stuff, with tons of outfits and hairstyles ready for download.

The original Sims limited you to just a single neighborhood, which was quickly remedied in expansion packs. But Sims 2 allows you to have nearly unlimited neighborhoods, each with their own layouts. You can even create a street layout in Sim City 4 and import it into the game. The ability to create a whole neighborhood from scratch, including community lots, is a ton of fun.

The commitment EA has shown to the online community around the game (in part by releasing the Sims 2 Body Shop Content Editor well before the game shipped) is encouraging; all signs indicate that Sims 2 will offer fans of the game virtually bottomless content in the months and years to come.

A Game for Many Tastes

It' s hard to pinpoint exactly what made the first game such a smash success, but it was probably a combination of what' s listed above. By all objective means of measure the sequel has it beat: it' s deeper, has more flexibility, it' s more engrossing, and it' s even easier to modify and expand. But there' s something else here as well, something that can' t be measured. Sims 2 is simply a lot of fun. It' s hour after hour of creative entertainment. Such an open-ended toy might not suit everyone' s tastes, but for many people this will be the most entertaining program available for their PC.

Want a second opinion? Check out IGN' s Sims 2 Review!


Extended Review

The Sims 2 Extended Review (PC)

A more in-depth exploration of the latest ' Life simulation' and sequel to the biggest PC game of all time.

By Dave Kosak | Sept. 10, 2004

This Summer when I was given a preview of Sims 2 by one of the producers, he was at a loss. We' d already cruised through his canned presentation, but I could tell there was more to see. I kept asking questions and he kept showing me more and more. " I don' t know what to show you next," he finally admitted. " There' s just so much." So, instead, I kept barking out orders, telling him things like " Invite the maid over! Hit on the maid! Now go in the hot tub and invite her in!" He kept clicking away, and the Sims kept responding appropriately.

As I sat down to review the game, I began to understand his dilemma. Just as he had trouble boiling the game down to a little ten-minute spiel, I knew that a couple pages of a review wouldn' t be able to show the full extent of the game. So, in addition to my review, I thought readers who really wanted to know more about the game would appreciate some detailed examples of gameplay that wouldn' t fit into the review.

Want a more concise summary of the game? read the review! But for more details and anecdotes, read on.

Emergence In Action

From what I can tell, the underlying AI for the Sims isn' t incredibly deep. Sims amble along living moment-to-moment, reacting to what' s around them and occasionally to recent memories. However, the AI is deep enough, deep enough to cause the unexpected or to give the illusion that a lot more is going on than you think. Surprising things just sorta flow out of a Sim' s natural behavior, which ends up making for a great game.

Let' s take the strange case of the Marfit Brothers. This pair of misfits live in a ramshackle home that I created for this humor column, " Spy Eye for the Sim Guy." One Sim I created as the lead character, Eugene: a slob desperate for romance. I needed another Sim for a screenshot I had in mind, and this Sim' s whole purpose was to be " the guy who lives on Eugene' s couch." For that role I created Bufus, who looks like a slacker incarnate.

However, when I started to play through the game, attempting to stage screenshots with Eugene, I had to deal with Bufus wandering around willy-nilly through the house on his own. My heart really warmed to Bufus when I caught him arguing with a paper airplane. He ended up being an integral part of the column.

Long after I had finished the column I kept playing with the misfit Marfit brothers, mostly to find out what would happen to them. You see, the thing with Bufus is that his only goal in life is to be popular. Instead of getting a job, he threw parties. He was a natural schmoozer. He' d throw on some grilled cheese sandwiches, crank up the tunes (salsa music seemed to suit Bufus best), slip on a pepto-bismol pink tuxedo jacket, and start the joint jumpin' . By this time I had my real-life friends watching me play over my shoulder and we got a big kick out of it -- Bufus would roll out of bed every day and it would be like: " It' s 10 AM! It' s time to PARTY!"

Neither of the Marfit brothers bothered to clean the toilet. Sims would walk into the bathroom and act horrified.

Parties at Bufus' s place were off the hook. He' d regularly invite people in off the street. He' d always order a pizza and then his brother would hit on the pizza girl. Then they' d invite her in and she' s party hard (in Sims 2, all the Sims -- even maids and delivery people -- are fully fleshed-out characters you can interact with). Eventually whenever she made a delivery she' d ask, " Hey, can I hang out now?" Of COURSE you could hang out! The door was always open at the Marfit place, and the seat was always up.

Then a crazy thing started to happen. Before long, Bufus had nine close friends and several screens full of acquaintances. He became the social center of the town. Everybody who was anybody came to Bufus' s parties. If Sims wanted to make any new friends, Bufus' s ugly-ass crud-encrusted trailer was the place. If you wanted to be somebody in my town, you really had to schmooze up to Bufus in order to get an invite. I didn' t try to make that happen, and it certainly wasn' t programmed into the game -- it just happened! That' s emergence. Remember, Bufus was supposed to be a throwaway character when I created him. Who knew? Situations like that grow out of different Sims and their personalities interacting as you play.

Groping the hired help. If you like her, you can ask the Maid to move in with you...

More emergence: teenage daughters always seem to end up talking on the phone for hours on end. How does that happen? I don' t think it' s programmed that way. I think that effect naturally grows out of teenage wants and behaviors.

The Sims are always doing things to make you wonder if they did them intentionally. My wife created the two Roberts brothers, a neatnik (who we were delighted to discover was terrified of using a public toilet) and a total slob. One time the neat brother put a TV dinner in the oven and walked to the family room. The slob walked up and -- I swear -- he actually looked over at his brother, then removed his dinner from the oven and ate it. Was he aware that he was stealing his brother' s food? Did he look over at him on purpose before slipping it out of the oven? The truth is, it doesn' t matter -- it sure looked like it, and we got a good laugh out of it.

" Let the Sims Figure it Out"

In doing my review I was fortunate enough to have the perfect test audience -- my wife was as hooked on the original Sims as anybody, and made for a good case study. We played the game much as we played the original: sharing different families in the same neighborhood. Things got a little hairy, though, when the local hot redhead Sim Nina Caliente had her hooks in a Sim from my wife' s family and a Sim from my family. Dilemma! Would Nina stick with my Sim or hers?

We decided to let the Sims figure it out themselves. One thing I learned early on was that it was easy to get in the habit of meticulously queuing up your Sim' s every move, but the Sims are much smarter in the second game and the game is just as much fun if you let them amble along on their own. So we had Nina throw a big party and invite both of her lovers. Then we just ... watched. At first they all seemed to get along in the hot tub. But then my Sim, the architect Feng Shui, caught Nina getting hot and heavy with the neat-freak Roberts brother and exploded with rage. He slapped her around, then retreated into the other room to cry. Poor Feng Shui. He agonized over it for days.

What Will Happen Next?

Which brings up another point. One of the things that really drives gameplay in Sims 2 is the question, " what will happen next?" It' s an odd question, because supposedly you' re in control of everything your Sims do, so " what happens next" shouldn' t be a surprise. But nonetheless, the surprises keep coming.

Let' s come back to Feng Shui, who was on the rebound: Nina may have broken his heart, but he wanted children, dammit, and needed a woman! I arranged a great little party at his house. He had the food, he had the dancing, he had the games. He dressed in his tuxedo. His guest of honor, Lucy Burb, was happy and in love. And then Feng popped her the question. You know what comes next: happy cutscene, she moves in, they make babies, right? But no -- I' m not sure what made Lucy turn him down. Maybe it was the setting. Maybe she needed to go to the bathroom at the time. She rejected him! He cried about that for days as well. You could watch him mope around his house, think of the failed proposal, and then bust into tears. Things don' t always go as planned.

" What will happen next?" You can never tell, and so you have to keep playing. Feng' s old flame Nina married the neat Roberts brother and moved in with both brothers. But she was insatiable, and once she moved in it was clear that she had the hots for the slob brother. She' d walk around, think of him, and sigh wistfully. She desperately wanted to cheat on her husband and make woo-hoo with the slob. My wife didn' t see that coming when the two of them got married, but now it was a part of the game and she had to figure out what she was going to do about it.

Paging Jerry Springer

In my review I mentioned that screwing up is just as much fun -- if not more -- than having a family do well. Truth is, messed up Sims have a whole set of surprising behaviors. It' s possible that they end up downright neurotic! Sims with screwed up childhoods will walk around, jittering, mumbling to themselves.

Of course you want to hear some examples, so let' s return to my wife' s game. Here she had Nina, the wife who lusted after her husband' s brother. My wife decides, what the heck, she' ll let it happen. For a while it seemed to work. One brother would be off in the office while Nina was Woo-Hooing the other one. Inevitably they got caught. Screaming! Slapping! Crying! You' d think you were watching an evening soap opera.

It all seemed kinda funny until we noticed what effect it was having on their young son. At one point, he couldn' t walk past his parent' s bedroom without thinking of his mother and stopping to just stand there and sob. He absolutely hated her. He could never get his homework done because he wasn' t sleeping right. He grades were terrible. He was afraid to go to school. He was totally messed up! It was all bad.

" This woman' s a pariah!" my wife finally declared, swiping her mouse pointer over Nina' s face like she was slapping her.

You' ll uncover all sorts of strange Easter Eggs as your Sims hit bottom or get stuck in messed-up relationships. When a Sim is desperate for some socializing, a big fluffy " Social Bunny" might appear to talk and play with the lonely Sim. This isn' t a complete surprise because you' ll sometimes see the bunny on kids' television shows in the game. The hysterical part is that nobody else can see the Social Bunny. They just see your Sim talking to and laughing at thin air, and they make " he' s crazy" motions with their hands. This cracked us up.

Tall Tales of Town Building

The idea that I could create my own neighborhood from scratch really got my creative juices flowing. As stated in the review, you can actually create terrain and a road layout in SimCity 4 and import it into the game. It' s not self-explanatory, but the process isn' t all that difficult with the help of the readme file. The only tough part is that you can' t preview how it' ll look in-game -- the edges of your city will be cut off when viewed in Sims 2, so it took a couple of tries before I was able to get the town " just right."

Even if you don' t have SimCity 4, Sims 2 comes with a pile of empty cities that you can mess with, so you won' t be missing out. As for me, I created a town where one side of the river was to be a lavish master-planned community and the other side of the river was an old run-down farm community filled with shacks and trailer parks. COMEDY ... IMMINENT!

Once I imported the road layout I had a blast dropping in the plethora of animated decorations. The lavish planned community had pretty hedgerows and forests and public parks along a central paseo. The other side of the river I filled with old antennas, dead shrubs, decrepit farms and trails of smoke curling into the sky. Next, I laid out the lots, both residential and community. Building community lots is a blast. On the poor side of the river I built " Dookie' s Dive Bar" and " Skanky' s Chow Hole."

Dookie' s Dive Bar: If you can kill it, Dookie can grill it.

It' s also easy to upload custom pictures and storyboards for your town. This helps you set the tone for the region. My wife and I discovered another use for the town story, since we both play on the same PC: after a play session I can update the town story with notes to her about big events: " Despite Nina' s attempt to destroy our community, the town still thrives. Bufus just added a deck and a hot tub to his party pad." She sees that next time she starts to play, or she can edit it to leave a message for me.

After a couple of hours I' d built the town and one of the community lots. There were still dozens of other lots to be created. I' d have to build houses on all of them, or download ones off of the internet. Then I' d need to create families and move them in. What about the Hedonism family, who dress like Romans and throw bacchanalian celebrations every evening? How about downloading the Go-Go Yubari Sim from the website and seeing what trouble she causes? How about creating Sims who wear red face paint and call themselves the Devils? (I could create a husband and wife, " Lucius Devil" and " Jersey Devil." ) The possibilities are endless!

Go-Go Yubari, downloaded from the Internet, straining hard to make a sandwich.

My town is hardly even created, and already I' m asking myself: " What' s going to happen?" I' ve got hours and hours and hours of tinkering, building, creating, and playing in store for me before I can find out.

I can' t wait.

Pros
Tons of detail, great interactions, unlimited configurability and expandability. Hardcore players may want a more configurable camera.

Cons
Custom wall and floor editing not available yet.

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