The original The Sims quickly became the world's most sold game. The secret: it appealed to ordinary people, not just hardcore game junkies. It did so by focusing on a balanced mix of social goals and challenges rather than reflexes and the ability to blast monsters to smithereens.
That kind of commercial and critical success is a hard act to follow. Fortunately for Electronic Arts, it seems they got the sequel mostly right.
As before, you start by creating your unique character or family, adjusting everything from star sign and life goals to underwear preference. You can even create a Jay Leno-like chin and elephant-ears if that amuses you. Then you pick the town you want to play in. This matters, as you have a story-element running in the background where your neighbors are involved in various schemes, romances and generally quirky stuff. Fortunately, participating in this ongoing soap opera is optional.
Next up, you can choose between moving into a pre-built home or design your own place from scratch. Either way, you'll use your slim starting budget you have to buy and arrange life's necessities around the house: a bed, a couch, a pinball game, a Jacuzzi or whatever else you prioritize.
When you're finally done tinkering with the set-up, you move on to managing your little sims in the way you see fit. Depending on the stuff you have in your house, you can direct them to play, study, barbeque, swim, nap, get a job, interact with friends, make enemies, flirt, marry and pretty much anything you can think of.
At the same time, you must tend to your sim's needs or they will get cranky, so there's a fair deal of bathing, sleeping, cleaning, eating and relaxing involved. On the flip side, if you take care of your sims, they will be happy and perform better at work, which leads to promotions and more money.
In other words, The Sims is a digital dollhouse. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as you have completely open gameplay where you can basically do whatever you want. You can have your sim become a social climber, a career workaholic or a laid-back slacker, all within the same framework.
To keep the game from getting stale, each day brings a number of bonus challenges that sets the agenda. Also, each sim now has a limited life span, meaning you have to take aging and procreation into consideration.
Graphically, The Sims 2 is a big step up from its predecessor with dramatically more detailed environments. Mirrors have reflections, shadows dance on the walls, and the TVs display actual shows. Be prepared to accept less depth and detail if you run an older computer, though, as it takes a lot of juice to run the game at top quality.
You can swivel the "camera" around 360 degrees and zoom in and out, but that's the one shortcoming I noticed: to enjoy the richness of detail, you need to zoom in close. But as soon as something moves, you have to zoom out or start fiddling with the camera angle to see what's happening.
Another area for improvement is the meager selection of furniture, amusement items, exercise equipment and decorations. But seeing how the publisher made out like a bandit selling a plethora of add-on packs that enabled everything from pets to magic tricks for the first game, I doubt this shortage of options will remain an issue for long.
Overall, this is a fairly addictive game that is practically endless -- you can't "beat" the game. Speaking for myself, I prefer military strategy games, and I thought this dollhouse simulation might grow old real fast. To my surprise, I repeatedly found myself absorbed in the social and material tinkering into the wee hours of the night. The Sims 2 is dangerous that way -- you are never quite done. There's always one other thing you have to do.
