GameSpy.com: 5 out of 5 Stars & an Editors' Choice Award

"It's deeper, has more flexibility, it's more engrossing, and it's even easier to modify and expand."

Ya gotta read the review!

The Sims 2

By Dave Kosak

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.

Individual Sims have an incredible range of expressions.

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.)

Mr. Feng Shui discovers one of the many little surprises hidden in the game.

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.

Let's get this honeymoon started!

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.