The Sims 2

"So, How Was Your Day Today? Really? Mine? I Don't Know Where To Start..."

Well to start off, my girlfriend and I missed work today since we had a rough night. You see first I was abducted by aliens as I was innocently star gazing the night away. I didn't return till about six in the morning so I went straight to bed. My girlfriend on the other hand had started a fire in the kitchen and was dead right as I had gotten abducted and she spent several hours challenging Death to a fiddle contest until she finally won. Once we woke up, I romanced her a bit and we ended up getting married and once that was over with, we threw a party and invited the entire block. Might I say, thanks for dropping by and asking about my day, now party's over so get out! I've got a death ray to invent and my wife's got a long day ahead running an entire business!

If any of the Sims in The Sims 2 could tell you how their lives were day to day, that's more than likely what you would hear in this off-beat and wacky sequel to the incredibly awesome series. Sims 2 doesn't stray very far away from its predecessor in terms of game play. The only real difference is the fact that you can now have direct control of your own character. Other than that, they've added minor things that really don't add much to the game play such as aspirations, fears, and wants. Although in the story mode game they play a role in how the game flows, they really are nothing that add to the depth of the game world since there are very minor consequences attached to them. The only true reason to have them is govern for three reasons: Aspirations to guide your career, fears to negatively affect your career so that you can't promote yourself, and finally wants which build up aspiration points which determine what items can be unlocked. Aspirations essentially shouldn't matter as you can choose any career you desire and won't have any positive or negative boosts to whatever career you choose.

There are two modes of game play in this series and they are story mode and free play mode. No one honestly buys a Sims game for the story mode since it's almost pointless and serves only as what should be considered an added incentive to buy it for consoles. The real meat of the game is in free play mode. If you want to get insanely addicted to Sims 2 and be incredibly immersed then this is where you will waste countless hours of your life. It is essentially an open ended life where you, the sim, will create yourself and if you like, three other companions. From there, what you do is entirely up to you.

Creating sims is essentially the same except now you're able to change nearly every single physical feature on their body from their body size to their breast size and to even the make up a female sims wears on her face. You can create rock stars to porn stars, be creative, be plain, but most importantly create who you want. Although it is a bit of a downside that there aren't as many articles of clothing as there were in previous installments.

As your new life starts, you can either own an already built house from one of four not-so-different-locations or you can bulldoze them and create your own entirely original house. Should you decide to do either, your imagination is once again let loose as you try to decide what exactly your dream home is, but not all is perfect. You have to live with a fire code that limits the amount of items you may place on the screen, also there are no longer any swimming pools, and there are is no two story house building. These exclusions can only puzzle the mind as to why these features would be left out, but then again if you think just a bit, you'll soon realize that Maxis and EA created the game for the PS2 and simply ported it over to its much stronger opponents in terms of graphics, thus they have to suffer because of such laziness. A lot of the features that are in the original Sims 2 for the PC version could've been added to the Xbox version without any problems which is such a shame because now the full potential of the original game can never be experienced on the consoles.

Regardless of some setbacks, The Sims 2 manages to stay addictive and should entice several console fans of the original game to return and if you've never had a sims experience then what better place to start than here? Despite its flaws, it's still got enough juice to stand on its own two feet.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/06, Updated 04/04/06