• Create your Sims
• Push them to extremes
• Realise their fears
• Fulfill their life dreams
• take your Sims from cradle to grave
  

GameDaily Review
by Steven Wong on Tuesday, September 28, 2004

If you were obsessed with the original Sims, then you probably already own a copy of The Sims 2. Luckily, the game is very good, and aims to both please people who are familiar with the series and draw in new players. Just like before, the player guides Sims through their lives, getting them jobs and increasing their proficiency across a number of different skills and attributes. Increasing skills through reading books or practice (as is the case with cooking and cleaning) will make the Sims eligible for promotion. Random events, which occur while your Sims are at work, might require some quick decision making that can either make or break your Sim's career.

However, the big draw to The Sims 2 is its technological improvements. Players can choose to play some pre-made families in pre-made towns, or decide to build their own family from the ground up. The Sim building engine is fantastic for creating different faces, and many will enjoy creating Sims out of real family members. The family can be moved into one of the pre-existing towns where they can interact with the different inhabitants, or the player can try to build a community from scratch. There is even an option to import a city from SimCity 4 for your Sims to inhabit. The graphics look as great as ever, but strangely missing are options to determine the height of a Sim. There are also only two body classes, fat and slim, with no options for anything in between. So, all Sims that are about the same age are generally the same height and build. Luckily, their looks are mutable depending on whether or not they work out, and you can see their stomachs grow or shrink....

To read the full The Sims 2 review go to GameDaily

Game Play for The Sims 2

Player Sims
A player's Sims can experience a life generally reflective of reality through events such as working, marrying, having children, pursuing new interests, going to school (if you're a young Sim or a teenage Sim), learning new skills, engaging in relationships, ending relationships, partying etc.

Also, the Sims can experience more fantastical events such as seeing a ghost, being abducted by aliens and having male pregnancy, or being visited by the Grim Reaper, which usually appears after the death of a Sim so the Grim Reaper can remove the corpse.


Life stages
Like humans, Sims operate based on certain drives: they have needs, develop dreams and goals, and exhibit personality. They can progress through six life stages: baby, toddler, child, teen, adult and elder (the expansion pack The Sims 2: University has an additional life stage, Young Adult, for Sims who choose to attend college). Sims die naturally after a certain number of days in the elder life stage, determined by how high their Aspiration Score was when they first became Elders. The different life stages present different challenges, such as the reduced mobility of elders, children not being able to cook, and the constant care of infants.


Needs
As in the original game, Sims are driven by their Needs. Sims have up to eight Needs (or "motives") depending on their age, ranging from tangible needs such as "Bladder" (the need to urinate) and "Energy" (the need to sleep), to more ephemeral qualities such as "Social" contact and a pleasant "Environment". These needs are displayed graphically with meters that change from green (full) to red (low), and a Sim with an empty meter will either require or insist on action which fills it (for instance, if the Hunger meter is low, a Sim will go to the refrigerator and "stuff face", or the user can direct them to cook something). Some empty meters also cause actions (a Sim with an empty energy meter will pass out; a teen, adult, or elder Sim with an empty Hunger meter will die (starving children and toddlers will be taken by a social worker); a Sim with a red bladder meter will wet himself). These Needs are compiled into an overall "mood" meter, whose color is displayed by the diamond (called a "plumb-bob") that hovers above the active Sim's head.


Personality
Personality is a quantified way of measuring a Sim's behavioral characteristics. There are five personality traits, which players can allocate 'points' into to control that Sim's personality; for example, a Sim can be active, lazy or somewhere in between the two extremes. These traits determine how fast a Sim learns skills, the rate at which specific needs decay, the types of interactions a Sim will autonomously engage in, the likelihood of accepting certain interactions and the likelihood of bringing home a friend from school or work. All Sims communicate in a language known as "Simlish", first introduced in the original The Sims game. Simlish is a mix of fractured Ukrainian and Tagalog that communicates a Sim's emotions or reactions using tones of voice. This extends outside of characters; songs heard on the radio are also sung in Simlish.


Career
Children and teens may attend school from Monday to Friday. Homework completion and mood affect their grades (high grades generate cash or skills). Parents may enroll their children in private schools, after success in a minigame of inviting the headmaster for dinner.

An adult sim can find a job from either a newspaper or computer, and be promoted if they go to work in a good mood, and they have the required skill points and/or a sufficient number of friends. Each career contains ten jobs with increasing salary, each with its own uniform, hours and carpool.

The original careers are Athletics, Business, Crime, Culinary, Law Enforcement, Medicine, Military, Politics, Science and Slacker. A sim reaching a critical career level receives a career reward, an exclusive household object, most of them useful for improvement of a skill that is critical to the career. When reaching old age, a sim can retire with a fraction of the salary. Teens and elders may also seek employment, however only three jobs are offered in each career track for the teen/elder age groups.


Aspiration
New to The Sims 2 is "Aspiration", roughly analogous to self-esteem or life satisfaction. As toddlers and children, Sims aspire only to "Grow Up", but upon becoming teens, the player assigns to them one of five life aspirations: Family (befriending family members, marrying and raising a large family), Fortune (wealth and prestige), Knowledge (both book learning and life experience), Popularity (friends and socializing) and Romance (frequent and varied romantic interactions); with the Nightlife expansion, two new Aspirations were added: Pleasure (wanting to live life to the fullest) and Grilled Cheese (eating many grilled cheese sandwiches), the latter of which is gained through misuse of an aspiration reward. Each Sim has wants and fears that correspond to his or her aspiration, stage of life and present circumstances. When a want is achieved, such as to "make a friend", aspiration points are allotted to the aspiration meter; conversely, when a fear is realized, such as the death of a spouse, aspiration points are penalized. There are six levels to the meter: the highest is platinum, then gold, two levels of green and two of red, with the meter depleting a small amount every few hours. Aspiration levels, along with "mood", determine complaisance: Sims with a platinum meter are fulfilled, docile and more willing to perform tasks they dislike, in addition to having their mood meter full ("Platinum Mood") regardless of their individual needs; Sims with red meters will often experience nervous breakdowns and require treatment from an automatically-summoned psychiatrist. Aspiration levels also determine the length of time a Sim will live as an Elder before death. Finally, the Sim's lifetime total of Aspiration points are recorded by the game, and can be used to 'purchase' special objects that possess unique effects, such as providing free money or altering lifespan, but only if the aspiration meter is at "gold" or "platinum" level; if not, the chance of success decreases and unwanted side effects occur.[10]


Relationships
Romantic relationships can happen in any number of ways. Constantly flirting with another sim, regardless of sex (Sims are effectively bisexual) will eventually make them fall in love, or obtain a crush on one another. This allows more intimate interactions such as making out or WooHoo. Sims can get married (or become "married" through a "Joined Union" the alternative to marriage, or just stay in a non-marriage romantic relationship.


Death
Sims can die in several ways. If a Sim reaches the end of the Elder life stage, he or she will die of old age. Sims can also meet premature ends by various means, such as electrocution, starving, disease, fly swarms, fright, fire, drowning or death by satellite. Sims leave behind tombstones or urns, which are typically possessed by their ghosts. As long as the memoriam is left on the lot, ghosts will haunt the household. Ghosts make it harder for a Sim to live by waking up easily frightened Sims, and can also scare a Sim to death. Sometimes the sim can obliterate the urn.

After death, a Sim is no longer controllable and will be removed from the control interface. Death is carried out in The Sims 2 by the NPC Grim Reaper, equipped with the uniform scythe and robes in addition to a clipboard and a cell phone. Sims can be saved from any premature death if a friend begs the Grim Reaper for mercy. There is a better chance of saving the sim if there is a higher daily and lifetime relationship. The University expansion pack also offers a phone with a direct line to the Grim Reaper to resurrect any deceased player that the caller had had a relationship with. The phone is a career reward, which can be acquired after doing very well in the Paranormal career track. The caller must choose a bid to offer for the resurrection of the dead sim, and if the sum of money is too small, they will come back with deficiencies. For example, turning into a zombie. This list continues at Wikipedia

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "The Sims 2".