The Sims 2 Comments by Kristan Reed

...I wonder if there'll be any expansion packs...

...as good as Halo...

...could I be any more irritating?

I really liked the Sims 2, as a stand-alone game it's far more complete than the original sims.

The main down-side it that it doesn't feature all the stuff which was later added to the original via expansion packs - it keeps the hot-date and house-party features, but totally drops vacations and pets.

I'll be happy to buy original expansions, but if they are going to try to flog me a 'pet' expansion again they can forget it.

"being stuck in the same house feels somewhat stifling and claustrophobic, "

Phone a Taxi :P

It does possess the ability to turn 10 minutes into 2 hours...

..and it makes the wife want to be on the PC which doesnt help when you wanna game of JO:TR :(

That's made my mind up. I'll be getting this, I missed out on the last one completely.

A very good score, though you sound like you are already fed up with it by the end of the review...
Is it a "8-because-others-will-like-it" out of 10?

I want Sims Arena Online where you can take your Sims characters and fight with others.

It's not a case of being fed up, more a case of seeing the same things happening over and over again and realising that part of the fun is taken away as a result.

As for being able to wander around the community lots - that's hardly a substitute for being able to see how their lives are progressing is it? The Sims needs to meet Sim City somewhere in the middle. This still resolutely sticks to the principle that watching someone's home life is where it's at, and to an extent it is, but it's not the full picture, you feel.

A bit like Fightbox then reflux? :op

Hmm.. sounds like I'd have exactly the same issues with this game as I did with the original Sims, tbh - loads of fun for about a fortnight then a complete loss of interest. If I had a PC that was anywhere near good enough to run it, that is. :-)

The wants/fears make a huge difference in how the game is played over the original, it gives you something to do rather than just furthering the Sim's careers and material possessions. Some of them are on the tricky side as well, having a Sim who wants to have public "woo-hoo" is not too tricky, when they want to do it with 5 different Sims it starts to get a bit on the difficult side.

Sounds wonderful to me. I think the score is 8 because Kirsten is not bold enough to go out and give the game a 9 which it deserves. Hell, GameSpy gave it a 5/5. As for being able to wander around the neighborhood, hello, that's what SimCity is for!!!!

Like the review for Far Cry, Kirsten was not able to hide exactly how impressed he was with the game, but dug out some pointless criticism in the end. Problem is, his reviews are usually so nice

I absolutely love it that the home I moved my Sim into has a cooker located such that, if on fire, it would trap the Sim in the house. The only phone was by the door and if I hadn't already moved another Sim in, Ickle Tiger would've been burnt to a crisp!

Buy smoke detectors and when the inevitable happens you don't have to bother calling the fire dept!

Nice that food that takes ages to cook goes in the oven and your Sim will do other stuff while it cooks/burns...

Great review, and pretty much sums up what I think about it too...

"The Sims needs to meet Sim City somewhere in the middle

Though not with the chav-friendly "Urbz" though, pleaseeeee no!

Would be nice to see some sort of cross compatibility with Sim City 5 when it inevitably turns up...

Sims 2 is weirdly addictive and I think a lot of that's down to the way you can pretty much customize your gaming experience to suit your own ends (no matter how devious they are!) but at the end of it, it does tend to get a tad repetitive and as with Sims 1 I just end up thinking "Shit, I could be doing all this stuff properly and for real rather than manipulating some computer-generated character on a screen to do it.."

Peej

LITTLE COMPUTER PEOPLE WAS EXCELLENT

this is pretty good though...

Nice to see mentions of Alter Ego and Little Computer People. I've still got the Little Computer People folder thing somewhere. *sigh*. I loved the way that was presented as some great science discovery: that you were just buying a "House On A Disc" which would hopefully coax the little person living inside your computer out into the open.

/presses CTRL-R to leave a record on his LCPs doorstep.

Complete utter boring crap. I'll never touch this, or the first one.

Alter Ego was superb. One of the best games on the C64. Not much graphically (in fact not much at all!) but as life-sims go, this for me has still gone a long way to providing the player with a lot more freedom to do dozy things than any other game.

/eats entire can of spray cream, gets ill

Peej

If someone has a copy of the female version of Alter Ego (or knows where to get one) I'll pay top dollar for it! C64 version, not Apple, btw.

Activision used to be amazing for original stuff. Remember Portal?

Alter ego, wow blast from the past - It is around on the net somewhere, there is a website where you can play the game in your webbrowser - Someone posted a link to a old Robin Hood C64 type of adventure game, which you played via your webbrowser.

Complete utter boring crap. I'll never touch this, or the first one.

Now that's what I call an informed opinion!

/chapeau

Not sure where you'd buy a C64 copy of Alter Ego these days, Kristan. But both male and female abandonware versions are available for download here. Scary PC CGA stuff, but .. you know.

If they made one of the available "professions" serial killer this might be worth a look at some point. The prospect of wandering about Pleasantville or wherever dismembering Sims is strangely appealing....

Alter Ego was an excellent game at first but in the end the same old options kept coming up which kind of killed the interest.

Highly original though just very short lived.

abandonware versions are available for download

Why not play it online?

I'm sure I kept reading previews/interviews going on about how you wouldn't need to spend all your time guiding sims back and forth between toilet and fridge. Oh well.

Maybe they fixed it, found there was bugger all else to do and put it back in.

Another game in the "train AI to do tasks" is Creatures, and its sequels, all published by Mindscape.

Edit: Except "Creatures: The Albian Years", published by Fusion Labs Ltd.

Personally I skipped on Sims 2 in favour of Burnout 3: Takedown. I mean, since that game is GOD of Gaming at the moment - and it is.

Sko, the Sims will do what they really need to do themselves; eating, showering, going to the loo, watching TV etc.

You can leave them alone and they'll just keep doing what's necessary to keep themselves reasonably well without your intervention.

Just keep the fridge stocked till they begin to fill it themselves.

"but easily outshines practically any game of its type"

yes the market is so cluttered /lick

Hmmm

How can you make an accurate review of the Sims 2, if you admit that you have not played the Sims 1. Most people that read this review will mostly want to know how it differs from the first one, and surely you are in no position to comment on that, and yet you do comment on it several times:

"Previous Sims just came across as little more than a glorified Doll's House, populated by easy to manipulate drones"

"Back in 2000, the original Sims sported the kind of fugly isometric visuals that were years out of date even then... Fast forward to the present and it's a game that not only is a vast improvement..."

True and fair comments, but I am not sure how you came to these conclusions if you are one who has:

"never touched a Sims game before in his life"

You also say that:

"We wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to those that have so far resisted its charms"

Personally, I would recommend that they go and get the first one on budget and see if they like it, as if they don't I severely doubt whether they will be pleased to splurge out £30 on this, seeing as it is basically exactly the same!

Not having a go Kristan, I'm a fan of your reviews, but in this case I'm not convinced that this review is particularly helpful to people who have already played The Sims, and lets face it, this group probably covers the majority of people who will buy this game.

The wants/fears and aspirations is a major change to the game from the original but I can't see any mention of it in the review and it's key to having a successful household.

Yes, there is a school of thought that suggests that in order to have a valid opinion of something you need to have played all the others. Fair play.

But that's not entirely helpful to the vast majority of people out there, like me, that have never played it before and want an alternative viewpoint. It doesn't make it an invalid viewpoint, just a different one.

Saying that you can't review a sequel unless you've played the first one is like saying you can't have an informed opinion on a band's new album until you've heard everything else they've done. That person's outlook may not be as "up" on the progress of the music, but it's still a valid opinion.

I'm sure there are tons of people like me that are curious about this one, having never played the previous games. Besides, Tom is utterly sick of Sims games and wanted a break! Would you have rather read a tired cynic's opinion, or a fresh one?

To be honest, I've gotta admit I did come to this review looking for a fairly complete comparison between the two games. The first paragraph was kinda a sudden knee to the balls for those hopes. ;)

"...to the vast majority of people out there, like me, that have never played it before..."

Wouldn't the majority of people've played The Sims, as it is/was one of the fastest/mostest selling games ever, commonly regarded as a cash cow and stuff?

Good review on the whole, I'm finding the story thingies a bit lacklustre. I imagined there'd be a bit more narrative or whatnot, but all I seem to get is "do this" at the start, then do it, and be left to my own devices again. Dunno if I'm doing something wrong, or if it's crap.
And not being able to reset the neighbourhood to undo some of my godawful architectural/life choices is annoying.
Having liked The Sims for a bit, then turned to hating it, I'm re-converted back to liking it by the sequel.

Fair enough Kristan, you did caveat it in the first paragraph, and I agree that it is a useful perspective for people that won’t have played the first one, although I don’t agree that this is a majority of gamers.

I still think a balanced review from somebody who has experience of the first one would be useful, but yes I would prefer not to have it written by a complete cynic.

Sadly there's just not enough time to play every single game that came out ever. It's plainly unrealistic to expect us to be experts at every single game out there. You wouldn't read Q and expect them to be experts on Jazz or Classical now would you ;)

We review about 130 games each per year. Ask yourselves how many games you've played in the last year!

"The dad got so bored with life he resorted to imagining that a Social Bunny was in the house, and started fighting with him in a cartoon ruckus fashion, and even dreaming about him."

:D

Hit the road, Jack

I was only trying to cop off with the buxon lassie, and I ended up getting her up the duff :\ Now I've got a screaming sprog on my hands and I can't even sell it!

Mouse,

If you don't look after it social services will come around and take it away for you.

Hmmm. Well even though I don't want it, I would feel terribly guilty for not looking after the little blighter. He's a toddler now and just learned to talk and... well.. I'm starting to get attached to the little beggar. I'm just a tad annoyed though cos I was kind of planning on concentrating on just the one Sim for a while, but I ended up with three within a night's playing.

Good review.

Still enjoying this game, but its proving bad for my ( real life )relationship. My girlfriend seems interested in asking me every 10 minutes what I'm doing now, and of course I'm trying to shag every women I meet. She's not too happy about that.

One complaint - how are you supposed to tell the difference between an adult and a teenage sim ? I spend ages trying to "woo-hoo" with this women, but she wasn't having any of it. Eventually realised it was because she was a teenager and felt like a right kiddie fiddler. And she never seemed to grow up, so couldn't even groom properly.

^^^^

Well you've posted your Def Jam link on the Sims page. Well done, you've managed to confirm our fears that all Def Jam fans are stupid.

A hip-hop gangsta kid lives down my road and professes how he is "from da ghetto!", and how he enjoys "bunning dat zoot, blad.". His dad drives a white Espace.
Stereotypes are wrong. Not all gangsters are straight out of Compton, some are from Surrey dontchaknow.

Sure you can have mine. It's...

Oh, no, wait. I've changed my mind. You can't have it.