"Adds a fun career to the Sims 2, but the career can turn into a hassle later on."

So here's the third expansion in what seems to be yet another long line of expansions for everybody's favorite life simulator, the Sims 2. Unless you still haven't moved on from the original.

So what's the grab this time around? We've already fought our way through college, and have rallied forth in the land of the lounge lizards. This time around, EA offers us a ticket into the land of executive hell. Basically, the higher ups at EA enjoy bossing around their thralls so much that they thought, “Hey, if I'm addicted to this, why can't commoners be?!?” And thus I present to you, The Sims 2: Open for Business.

The main feature of the game is as said above, the ability to open up businesses, at home or in community lots. There are basically two kinds of business you can open up, rentals or sales. Of course, you could combine the two, but that's just vicious. Anyway, you can then go ahead and hire yourself a staff, because you really can't do this all by yourself. You then assign wages, manage them, and do whatever it takes to snag in customers. You even get a new information bar on the upper right end of your display. From here you can view business reports, ranging from financial, to personnel, to customer satisfaction, as well as the cost of the items for sale.

This is all nice and good, my only real quirk with it is that in order to manage your personnel, you need to talk to them individually. The same goes for what uniform you want them to wear, or not wear anything at all, to their wages. Now, this may seem a bit meager a discomfort, but when you get to see their wages, how they're feeling, and their skills (I'll get to that later) with a single click, would it not be at least kind to allow you to set those values in the very same menu? It can really lessen the hassle one gets. Especially with tons of employees who you can't really keep up with, in fact most often than not, you will forget what specific job this person who is standing there does. The only way to actually tell is to open up his management bubble and look at what he's not doing. Couldn't this information be conveyed in the business information toolbar?

So now that you have employees, you then decide what sort of things you want to peddle. You could open up a shop that sells all manner of things since there really isn't a restriction to what you may sell in a single business, or maybe a restaurant? Just not in your house since in order to start a restaurant, you would need some appliances and furniture that isn't available for the home buy mode. I hope this gets addressed, but I doubt it. You could always go start a bar though and sell food. It's no restaurant, but it's close enough. Of course, now you would need someone to cook the food you want to sell. After all, in order to sell food, you need to have food, on display. So that's one of the new furnishings available, display cases, and in this case, storage for digestible items. Of course you would need to restock once you run out of food to sell or you get bad customer ratings. Restocking is, to be honest, a hassle with food. That's why you go get an employee to do it. Unfortunately now, you need to keep watch on him to make sure that he's happy and pampered or else he'll go do something drastic like slack off, or worse, quit. It's really a mixed joy that. Another bad side to the whole restocking thing is that items manufactured, like food and toys, are stored in the business owners inventory. It can get crowded in there. Believe me.

You'll also need cash registers to gain cash. Now, if you have a person with no badges manning the register, it'll take him quite a long time to ring in customers. Long enough in fact for customers to get irritated and throw away the object they plan on purchasing and storm of. So to avoid this, you'd need someone with a badge in that job you want handled well.

What are badges? Simply put, it's a new feature in the game that one gains as he works in the business. There are many of these, but you don't need to know about each one of them now.

Also, your business has levels. If you get enough customers happy, you get a level up. This allows you to learn a business perk. Think of these as bonuses. These perks can help in the business as well as outside of it. A good thing too is that you are able to pass on your business skills and perks to Sims in your family. Just like passing on the business.

There's also the new feature to lock doors. It's a bit simple as it generalizes with you, household, and workers. Of course, it's to be expected with the business in mind, but it's useful enough even if you don't run a business.

The new items are, well the new items were made for the business aspect. So as mentioned earlier, you have display cases and racks, you also get a couple new pictures, and furnishings. More items to use I suppose, but there aren't really a lot of practical uses for them. Not barring the slave market furniture. These are the toy making, flower arranging, and cooking appliances. They're generally there to supply you with items to sell. Overall, I'm not really impressed with the new items.

So now that your business is up and running, you can't just slack off. You could if you had a manager. These are people with enough skills and badges to run the business while you are away. That way, the business can still generate income even if you're at home. All you have to do is make a call. Unfortunately, finding a manager is hard pickings. Even then, checking up on your business while at home takes quite a long time depending on the level of the business. And you need a manager in there, since if you're not in a lot without a manager, no work happens. If you don't check in on a business, you get lower income. So it's kind of a pain as it introduces you to a new career that you need to handle yourself to gain simoleons. On the plus side though, you can get more cash in a day with a business than you would with other careers.

The new songs are as what you would expect from a Sims game. It's good, but can get annoying if listened to for a very long time.

Overall, this expansion adds a fun little career to the game, all with new abilities and rewards. Unfortunately, this fun little career can quickly turn into a smoldering hell. In fact, you might just waste a way a Sims' life with one. It's fun, but turns into a hassle fairly quick. I'm giving it a 7. It's good, not great, but it's enjoyable for what it's worth. Definitely worth installing the Sims 2 again, so give it a try if you can.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/06