Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Prepare to experience the wild ride of life through the eyes of your Sims. The Sims influenced the gaming world like no game before it. Now comes The Sims 2 with a lively 3D world, realistic Sims, and new gameplay that will let you control your characters across a lifetime. As you manage Life's Big Moments, they'll earn a Life Score that measures how well you are playing each Sim. Your Sims will have more awareness of their surroundings, be able to form more complex relationships, and be e Amazon.com
The Sims was one of the most popular games ever made. In it, players micromanage the lives of a family of virtual people, or Sims, and influence their paths toward success or something akin to a nervous breakdown. Its open-ended blend of cartoonish behavior and everyday living is unique in an art form otherwise obsessed with carnage and sports. With The Sims 2, long-time fans now have a deeper game with lots of ways to customize and share their experiences. The game will also attract first-timers because the goal-oriented gameplay and the luridly fun starter families make it easier to get into the action right out of the box.
Now Sims are born with the traits of their parents, families grow, and Sims grow old.
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The People in Your Neighborhood
The game starts at the neighborhood level. Here you can create a housing development from scratch or start with one of three premade neighborhoods, each with its own theme. From there, you'll settle on a house and a family of Sims to control.  | | Create your own Sim (above) or your own house (below) from scratch with advanced tools. |  |
Aside from the basic needs carried over from the previous game, Sims now have aspirations, wants, and fears. The wants and fears are the day-to-day things that occupy their minds, like wanting to see friends or get married and fearing death or being rejected for a kiss. Satisfy their wants, and they become more efficient at completing tasks you assign them. Realize their fears, and Sims become lethargic, cranky, and unresponsive to your commands. Aspirations are the big-picture things, like raising a family, becoming wealthy, and gaining knowledge. Succeed here and you'll be able to buy odd gifts for your Sim to improve his or her life, like a money tree that pays dividends or a "fountain of youth" water cooler. What Else Is New?
Of course, you wouldn't be able to juggle all that if it weren't for the improved "Free Will" option, which makes it easier for Sims to fulfill their basic needs. The artificial intelligence of the game is noticeably improved; they won't turn on radios just as a family member is going to bed but, strangely, they do occasionally put their dishes on the floor. Another big change in the series is the concept of the lifespan. Now Sims are born with the traits of their parents, families grow, and Sims grow old. Not only does this go hand in hand with aspirations (growing up is the first aspiration that a baby Sim will have), it provides a limited time with which your Sims can achieve their goals.  | | The Universal Control Panel helps you manage your Sim family. |
A Family Affair
The Sims 2 not only lets you create just about any type of Sim in any type of family, build elaborate houses, and even create a neighborhood from scratch, but it also allows you to start the game in medias res, with premade households. These families all have backstories that are smart spoofs of soap-opera plots--lots of scheming, romance, ghosts, and family fighting. Parents of teens shouldn't worry, though, because nudity is tastefully blurred out and "woo-hoo" between Sims takes place completely under the covers. The ESRB has given this a Teen rating. If The Sims 2 were a film, it would likely land between PG and PG-13. The makers have included some nice tools to help share the universe you've created. For example, you can capture in-game stills and video to show friends the private moments, family interactions, and house parties of your Sims. You can even package a household to share as a blog or an album on a special Web site. The Sims 2 is for patient gamers. Like life itself, the game is filled with mundane details, like getting ready for work and doing dishes. The game also demands a level of creativity from its players that the run-and-gun game genres wouldn't know what to do with. But those who stick with it will be rewarded with an absorbing, amusing diversion and a virtual family history that they've created themselves. --Porter B. Hall Set Up a Sims 2 Machinima Studio
 Amazon.com contributor Porter Hall reveals how you can make movies using the Sims as your actors. See his guide to setting up a Sims 2 Machinima Studio. |
Customer Reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 50/50 chance you'll be able to play it., Apr 26, 2023
EA and Maxis have relased a game that is full of crashes, bugs, errors, instalation problems, driver issues & graphic problems. And I'm experiencing every one! My roomate who builds computer systems for people has spent over 50 man hours walking though my system and OS! My new game system exceeds all specs and runs all other programs on XP flawlessly. It runs Doom3 & Half Life2 smoothly.
Online fourms are full of gamers who are unable to play this game! Check it out for yourself, you may want to think twice befor buying this game.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Simply amazing!, Apr 20, 2023
I have never played such an awesome game! You get to create characters and modify each and every one of their facial features. Not only that, but clothing too! The alien feature consists of getting abducted by them, starting a family with them, and getting returned by them (if they want to). If you are a fan of the first Sims, you will love the SIms 2!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Some more cheats, Apr 16, 2023
I just wanted to give out a cheat web address for anyone who's interested:
http://www.cheatcc.com/pc/sims2.html
It's a great site for those Sims 2 lovers who need a little help!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Bug Central, Apr 12, 2023
This is a fun, engrossing game but it is FULL of bugs and also missing some elements that I enjoyed from the first version, specifically the pool table and some other decorative/ recreational items. Some specifics on bugs:
1. If you buy a pre-landscaped property, the bushes and shrubs are often placed in such a way that the gardener cannot tend to them. You have to watch the gardener to see what he/she is unable to access, or send your SIM around to try to do the landscaping, and systematically turn or delete each planting that cannot be tended to.
2. On more than one occasion I had a situation where burnt food was stuck on the stove, and I could neither remove it nor delete the stove. I spent many sessions going back and forth with technical support on this, and they were never able to fix it. Ultimately the only way to solve this problem is to move the family out of the house, thereby losing money and having to redecorate. Similarly....
3. I had a situation where the dart board got stuck in play mode. I couldn't remove it, couldn't play with it. Same deal, have to have the family move out and move back in.
4. Again similarly, I had a phantom person get stuck on a couch several times. SIMS cannot sit on the side of the couch where the phantom person is (not a ghost, just an occupied space) and to get rid of the person, one has to move the family out and start over.
Finally, I am not thrilled about the selection of furnishings, specifically beds. There aren't very many styles of high end beds in the high rangle of energy and comfort. You can't have a SIM with a "funky" style unless you are willing to sacrifice energy and comfort, and this problem is especially so with single beds.
So overall, the game is fun, but it really stinks when you are going along and then get stuck with some bug that is unfixable, forcing you to either live with it or move the family out and in. When you move the family out, the basic bones of the house remain, but you have to re-purchase all of the furnishings and accoutrements of the house, and you end up losing money in the deal somehow.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
 A disappointed diehard Sims fan, Apr 11, 2023
Some months ago I bought the Sims 2 for 120 pesos. I had never paid before in my life so much money for a video game, but I was willing to do so since I own the original Sims and almost every expansion (Which I played to the bone), and I had heard that the Sims 2 would be the best simulator ever.
However, it seems as if the Sims 2 is just the original Sims with better graphics. Let me explain.
1) 3/4 of the stuff that EA had promised is not there. For example, they had promised that you would be able to accompany your Sims to work. They even showed a screenshot of a Sim recruit doing a training course. But you can't. They promised weather too, but I can't see it. There aren't any new careers either, and etc.
2) The building tool has been complicated to the point in which I just can't build houses by myself. As a hardcore Sims fan, I would spend hours and hours building houses, and having fun with it, but here it's so frustrating that I just move to the pre-made houses.
3) The Sims's movements are still robotic. Turn left, walk, turn right. They will get stuck a lot just like in the original, and add to that a messy camera. Go figure...
4) The catalog has been reduced a lot. There aren't any cool objects. I paid 120 pesos for this, and all I get are the usual beds, desks, computers, libraries, gym machine and lamps? No way. I want a larger catalog. What's the point of building a secret basement if you can't put a secret laboratory in it?
5) Time goes away REALLY fast. Even in the 'Normal' speed, I have to wake up my Sims at 5 am to make sure they won't lose the carpool that arrives at 8 am. You'll have to spend entire days just to get a couple of skill points (Sims get tired 10 times faster than before) and plus, they become older, so your Sim will be a grandpa before he gets to the top of his career.
6) I can only invite 2 guests to parties, which now last a determined quantity of time. EA obviously made this to force me to buy a "House Party" expansion pack remake.
7) Controlling your Sims is now 20 times harder. In the original I could control a family of 5 with ease. Now it's almost impossible to deal with a family of 4 in a semi-large house. The camera, the new free will, time that goes away in a eye blink, Sims that get tired in a matter of minutes plus their personal wishes & etc that if you don't provide they go crazy, all contribute to making control a nightmare. It's impossible to keep track of what a Sim is doing, while completing their personal aspirations, make them earn skill points and move them higer in the career at the same time.
9) VERY slow loading times. My computer is less than 3 months old, yet I have to wait 15-20 seconds each time I save the game or load a family.
Conclusion: Don't buy if you played the original Sims. But if you never even heard about the original Sims, then this game is a really good choice.
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NOTE
It's the second time EA steals me a large amount of money. It happened before with "Battlefield 1942 Deluxe Edition", for which I paid 105 pesos, but I've NEVER been able to play ONCE because of the damn "Connection to server failed", "CD key in use" or "Invalid version" problems. EA should stick to sport video games, it's the only thing they do well.
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Based on 815 reviews.