The Sims 2 ~ Explained

I am soooo behind on all my work lately and I wish I had a respectable excuse, but I don’t. The reason I’m getting nothing serious accomplished recently is I’m totally addicted to The Sims 2. What a great game! If you ever played The Sims or The Sims Online, you know how much fun they can be, but also how limiting in some ways. Well, EA Games has listened to our suggestions and come up with a version of The Sims that has it all. And the graphics and sounds are wonderful!

So, I’d like to take you on a little tour. Here’s some of the stuff you can do in this game, along with a few tips I’ve come up with so far.

When you first run the game, the initial screen is the main menu where you choose a neighborhood to move into or create a new neighborhood of your own. One of the neighborhoods already created for you is called Pleasantview and if you choose that, you see the neighborhood and the homes that have already been created by Maxis (EA Games’ Sims Team). Maxis already made you some families, so you can choose a house that is already occupied or run the tutorial to get a feel for how things work in this new version. If a house is occupied, it has a green spinning diamond above it, as shown below.

Clicking on that house shows you a description of the family and each of its members. You can enter this house and play with this family or you can create a new family and move them into an empty house or build them a new house.

You can also create children, but I prefer to let my sims make their own. In this version of the game, sims age and actually get pregnant, so Linda and Vic can become parents and even grandparents, before they eventually die. The whole life cycle, from infancy through death, is represented in this game.

When you create your sim, you choose all of their default outfits … everyday wear, bathing suits, formal attire, sleepwear, underwear, and workout togs. Here are some I chose for Linda:

The Sims 2 also includes another program called the BodyShop, where you can create custom clothing, hair styles, etc. It’s a little more difficult to use than the Sims 2 itself, but lots of fun once you get the hang of it. The clothing styles I show above are all custom creations, but the ones included in the game are also pretty good, and you can join the Sims 2 Exchange when you install the game and download custom sims, objects, and houses, and also upload your own to share with other members. If you are already a member of the Exchange, log in and type in keyword “buntah” to see some homes and sims I’ve uploaded to share (and please sign my Exchange guestbook). There are also many other websites where you can upload/download this stuff and share with other players. My favorite is the The Sims Resource. I like it so much, I paid to become a member so I have access to everything they have, as well as their fastest server.

When you create your new family members, you define their personalities and assign them an Aspiration type (romance, knowledge, popularity, etc.). Their personalities control their needs and their aspirations can be fulfilled to win you great extra objects (like a beautiful “romantic” hot tub). As you can see below, I made Vic a Pisces with the Romance Aspiration, which means the game will show you his “wants” based on his romantic tendencies. Each time he gets what he wants, he gets points which add up to great rewards:

You can also determine your sim’s body type … yes, in this version not all sims have perfect bodies. When I created Linda, I decided to edit her type to make her plumper (and more realistic LOL). Here’s her before and after shots:

Once you’ve created your sims, you are ready to move them into a house, or build one of your own. This time, I decided to buy one of Maxis pre-made houses and just redesign it to my liking. Here’s the house I started with:

Notice I added some topography (hills and a stream), trees, shrubs, flowers, walkways connected to stairways, fences with gates, and a swimming pool. I also added a third floor to the house and changed the outside texture and color to red brick and added different types of windows and outside lights and even a gazebo with a hot tub in it! If designing and building in the other versions were your passions, then this is the game for you! There are so many new designing capabilities: including diagonal walls which can have doors and windows in them, and your houses can now have foundations and decks, along with customizable stairways, so split level homes are now a possibility, and, as mentioned, you can now have more than two floors. The gazebo shows how the foundations and external stairs look:

TIP: Like other versions of The Sims, your sim will need to get a job to earn money to build and decorate (but even that is better in this version). However, Maxis didn’t forget our need for “cheats” so we can play the game the way we want. Since I prefer to design my sims’ homes before I actually start playing, I need a lot of money at the beginning. As before, your sim family starts with $20,000 simoleons, but Maxis gave us a cheat to increase that quickly. Once you’ve made your family, move them into an inexpensive property or house, then hold down your ctrl and shift key and press C. This brings up the cheat box where you can type “motherlode” (without the quotes) to instantly receive $50,000 simoleons. And you can just keep hitting ctrl+shift+C and typing “motherlode” as many times as you want, whenever you need more money. There are many cheats for the game and players are still discovering them all. But, you can keep up to date on what’s been found by checking this site.

OK … now my family is created and my house is designed externally. Now I will pop Linda and Vic into the hot tub while I add interior walls, doors, fireplaces, etc. and wallpaper and furnish my rooms. Here’s Linda and Vic relaxing in the hot tub together. Notice Linda is talking about an engagement ring (because her “aspirations” are also set to “romance”):

Once the rooms are all finished, it’s time to let Linda and Vic do their stuff. Their Need Indicators show that they are hungry so Linda is making them lunch (not that she really needs it, since she is already rather plump. She needs to go to the store and buy a different bathing suit, since this one is NOT a good choice for her body type. And, in this version, she can do that):

Notice she made them simple sandwiches. That’s because that’s all she can do. She has no cooking skill yet. So, she needs to study cooking:

Working out in this game also improves your body type. Since Linda has a rather flabby physique, working out will help her. Also, because of her chubbiness, when she dives in the pool, she does a belly flop:

The workout made Vic tired, so he takes a nap. Linda joins him, but (thank you, Maxis, for adding this one) she’s just relaxing in bed with a good book:

Once the fireworks have died down, both of them sleep and have very pleasant dreams. Unlike the other versions, they don’t just lie there on there backs, snoring like chainsaws. In this version, they move around and even spoon each other:

These are just some of the features of The Sims 2 that are new and improved. There are many more, but I recommend you just buy the game and play it until you stumble upon them. I don’t want to spoil all your fun. But, I do want to make a few more important points.

Though this version is indeed more stable than the previous versions, it will still slow down if you make extremely large houses with many objects in them, so keep that in mind.

It loads pretty fast, but again, the more it has to load, the slower it does that, so keep that one in mind when you are downloading hundreds of custom sims, objects, and houses.

As usual, the bathroom actions in this version are still blurred for privacy. However, there are patches available to disable those annoying pixels. If you are an adult and not easily offended, you can go to The Nude Sims Page and download the patch. Search for it on Google and you will find it.

Remember that Maxis makes these games so they are suitable for children. However, my experience tells me that many adults play this game and would like more adult content. For that, visit the many sim fans sites for downloads and tweaks that make this more possible.

If you are playing The Sims Online and haven’t bought this game yet because you prefer the interaction with others, I suggest you get this game and join the Exchange where you can blog with others and share your creations. This game makes The Sims Online and the earlier versions of The Sims look like flat cartoons.

Practice skills and see what new goodies are available (for example, using the telescope brings aliens to visit). There are also ghosts in this version. Be careful. If one scares you bad enough, you will die.

I give this one 10 thumbs up. Maxis kept putting off the release date and making us crazy, but they did it for a good reason. This one is literally bug free as far as my testing goes (of course, you must have a computer that meets its requirements, so read the box carefully before you buy it.) If only other software companies did the proper testing before they released buggy programs, many of us would have a lot less computer problems. Congrats to Maxis on a job well done!

*all screen captures in this article were created with my favorite print screen program, FrontLook Screen Capture. See my review of that here.


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