"Well, definitly not what you would expect, but somehow its fun"

It would be assumed that "The Sims 2" for the Nintendo DS would either be like the Urbz which was released last year, or the Sims 2 for the PC. Well, its neither. In fact, it loses all the unique features of the Sims series. If the title screen didn't says "The Sims 2," I'd swear that I was playing a game called "Hotel Tycoon DS." They have replaced the relationship building system with a new, extremly stupid one, they have REMOVED the "needs" (such as hunger, bladder, sleep, etc) system, and they have taken away a lot of the free roaming abilities that were present in the Urbz. However, that being said, the Sim's 2 does what it does extremly well. Let me now break the review down into categories:

Graphics: 8/10
Compare the graphics on this game to the same game on the Xbox, and you'd wonder why I even gave it a one in this category. In fact, in terms of todays standards the graphics are quite terrible. Blurry, pixelized, and unpolished. But considering this is a Nintendo DS game, the graphics are pretty amazing. A fully 3-d world, with a 360 degree camera that can be rotated to any angle at any time. Sure, they are kind of blurry and pixelized but I would rather have a so-so 3-d world than a 2-d world such as that present in last years title "The Urbz."

Audio: 5/10
The Sims do in fact speek "Simish" their wierd language, however EA only look the time to record 2 lines. One for male and one for female. So every time you walk past a person you are hearing the same noises over and over again. And remember those terrible sounds from the Urbz? Well guess what? They're back, however to make things really wierd, many of them have been switched. For example, the sound of a fire burning in The Urbz is now the EXACT same sound as the refregirator running. And the annoying eating drinking sounds are back as well. And the music is terrible. ALL of it. On the upside, the sounds they took the time to record just for this game are extremly good. The vacuum sound is awesome, as are a lot of the walking and door opening sounds. Would you beleive that depending on which room you walk in, your footsteps sound different? They put so much time into these things, and ignore the more important things such as the in game music. I can guarantee you will have your speakers off after about 15 minutes of purchasing the game.

Gameplay:8/10
Everything is done wonderfully here. You get to clean your hotel with the touch screen, deal with upset patrons, add rooms, fix broken things, find lost items, and many more things you would expect. Although you can't actually build the rooms, the item placment is EXTREMLY awesome with the touch screen. You get a blue-print like view and you drag and drop each item where you want it. You can immediatly see the result on the top screen and change it if it doesn't work. This feature is so nice, I wish there was more incenvite to use it. My only complaint here is that their new time system runs off the real time (as you gave it to your DS when you set it up). So when they say it will take 8 hours to build a room, it will take 8 real hours to build it. And when a guest says they are staying until Sunday, they really mean 6 real days. This feature is very annoying at times, but it makes goals extremly easy to deal with. For example, your goal may be "find Pete's cell phone before 3:55 PM on Saturday."

Controls:8/10
The camera system is EXCELLENT. Its amazing what they have done with the DS. However controling it is a different story. It is physcially impossible for a left handed person to control the d-pad, use the stylus, AND control the camera with the L and R buttons all at the same time, and it is NEAR impossible for a righty to do it. However everything else is PERFECT in this category. The menu's can be controler ONLY with the touch screens, and there are a ton of touch screen only in-game tasks that are extremly fun to do. This section would have gotten a 10/10 if they had included a feature that automatically rotated the camera instead of you having to ALWAYS do it manually.

Overall:9/10 (not an average)
Although this really isn't a Sim's title, it did turn out to be an excellent game. Even though none of the categories got a 9, the game is just so fun and addicting it makes up for the lack of work in other areas. Just to sum it all up, here are the major pro's, con's, and ?'s
+'s:
-Great graphics considering this is a DS game
-Great use of the touch screen
-Great for people who don't have a lot of time. About 10 minutes every day is all you need to put towards the main goals, but you can play for an infinite amount of time doing hotel tasks, if you so choose.

-'s:
-Removal of the "needs" system
-Terrible audio

?'s
-What was EA thinking when they removed the awesome relationship building system from their past titles, and replaced it with a "match the persons action to the corresponding counteraction" feature?
-Who chooses songs for EA games? EVERY EA game has terrible songs.
-Why not include a free roam mode for after you beat the game?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/05