Like many kids, I grew up playing any video game I could get my hands on, and my early choices were largely determined by my parents’ preferences and what the owner of the only computer store in my rural hometown chose to stock. The original Sims was the first game I successfully lobbied to own: the active search for it—and my subsequent fascination with actually playing it—was, in hindsight, part of my emerging personality as a 10-year-old Quite an important early expression. So, as you might imagine, four years later, and countless hours in the game, I’ve thankfully not been tracked, and my hype for The Sims’ first sequel has reached a 14-year-old peak to the extent that customers can get. read: extremely. Because life is beautiful sometimes, I am not destined to be disappointed.
All of which goes to say, there’s an undeniable nostalgia factor at work here. But I still think The Sims 2 is the pinnacle of the series. And, while it’s not an undisputed opinion, it’s not exactly a niche one either: it’s certainly more competitive than The Sims or The Sims 4; even though The Sims 3 now has There are a lot of fans, but judging from the room temperature data, the number of fans is evenly divided at best.
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Of course, The Sims 2 wasn’t critically panned upon launch, although it received less criticism overall than the eventual sequel. For players of the original game, this is the first time they’ve returned to the base game without the additional content they’ve collected over the past four years (and tons of money) to expand their experience. The glaring lack of features such as pet keeping, holidays, fame, magical powers and city nightlife – all of which were added via the original game’s seven expansion packs – attracted a level of criticism, especially as EA and Maxis completely Almost all of these features are intended to be sold again in The Sims 2, amounting to a basic remake of the aforementioned EP.
But for a number of reasons, The Sims 2 avoided the more intense backlash that characterized The Sims 3 and 4 during its lifetime. One of the keys is its genuine innovation.
The Sims was a revolutionary living sandbox game when it launched in 2000, and The Sims 2 is the only one of its sequels to innovate so completely that it’s almost unrecognizable It is an iteration of the previous work. The Sims still deserves a place in video game history for proving the concept, but The Sims 2 had a bigger budget and better technology, thus introducing many features to the series that feel like So important, it’s hard to believe we spent four years ago playing without them.
The Sims 2 is the first game in the series where the passage of time seriously affects characters: aging, genetics, generations, and even days of the week were all introduced in The Sims 2 base game. In the original The Sims, death was the result of accidents and was easily avoidable. In The Sims 2, this was inevitable, adding a deeper layer of time management to a game that I think was always going to be a pretty hardcore management sim no matter what.
This ties in perfectly with the introduction of Desires: a new gameplay feature that allows Sims to choose between several basic directions in which they want to see their short-lived Sim lives. These choices are primarily dedicated to the pursuit of romance, wealth, family, knowledge, popularity, or (in later expansions) simple leisure. Success in achieving these dreams will determine whether an elderly Sim about to have a final date with death sees his life as a good one or a wasted one on a dead end.
Some long-time Sims players believe that the original The Sims never really got a sequel because The Sims 2 added so many new dimensions (actually a new one) to the life simulation concept itself that its predecessor presented Defining Philosophy). In comparison, The Sims 3 and 4 are simple iterations of The Sims 2: each game has a core setting (3 for open world, 4 for emotions), and it turns out that This was controversial among contemporary gamers, and was far less revolutionary.
The open worlds in 3 were theoretically a successful idea, but the stability issues they caused meant that even passionate fans often couldn’t actually play the game; however, Sims experienced constant swings of emotion in 4 The idea of state proved to be far less game-changing than it sounded on paper. But that initial transition from a relatively static requirements management sandbox to a life simulation that actually simulates life in a very realistic way? No wonder it still stands out after all these years.
Of course, the looming specter of death isn’t all The Sims 2 has to offer. Despite the not-unfounded criticism of repackaging and selling the original game with additional content, it does incorporate many of the quality-of-life improvements introduced in the expansions to the older game right from the start. TS2’s base game offers Sims the possibility to host house parties, visit neighborhoods, and live in multiple neighborhoods, while greatly expanding their options for social interactions and food and clothing choices, all with features that are better than The Sims 》More detailed character customization kit. It’s also the first fully 3D game in the series, and the most plot-rich to date, with the base game alone being responsible for many, if not most, of the series’ story cornerstones.
In addition to the base game, The Sims 2 expansion packs will introduce major concepts such as weather, universities, business ownership, and apartments – all of which are now considered basic expansion themes for any new generation (and thus in DLC An easy win on the sales side) franchise. And, for better or worse, it also started a tradition of smaller add-ons for The Sims with the advent of data packs—packs that at least pack a ton of content for a smaller price tag, but that’s still noticeable The Sims 3 store or a precursor to the practice of mini-DLC appearing in The Sims 4’s ever-growing suite.
But on its 20th birthday, perhaps the most pertinent question about The Sims 2 isn’t what it does for the series, but whether it’s still worth playing — especially if you’re like many of today’s Sims ” is the same, too busy not being born in 2004 to experience it.
My answer is yes, but maybe only in theory. “The Sims 2” was briefly released as a digital version of “The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection” through the EA storefront Origin, which includes all expansion packs and data packs. But it was only available for free to players who could claim it for free by proving they owned a boxed version of the original base game, and was only available for a relatively short period of time between August 2014 (when the collection was promoted to promote Simulation Launched with the release of “Life”) 4) and in October 2018, it was completely discontinued and can only be re-downloaded if you had the ability and the brains to add it to your library during those four years.
It’s still fairly cheap and easy to get a second-hand physical copy of the game, but you have to face the fact that the boxed version was produced in 2008 at the latest and was therefore only optimized for running on PC Windows Vista. While getting The Sims 2 to run on modern settings is by no means an impossible task, both The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 can be played instantly with the press of a digital button. It’s even better to be able to access their acclaimed older brother despite the technical barriers.
While I will defend The Sims 2’s supremacy until my last breath, The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 are both excellent follow-ups that deserve appreciation for their unique take on the concept and their Improvements to quality of life. As successors, they’re at least strong enough, and EA’s convenience and continued support for both games means it’s probably more appealing to play just one of them, unless you’re already a die-hard Sims 2 fan. Any substitutions accepted. If so, you’re in luck, because even now TS2 still has a very active support and modding community; but it’s not exactly a game you can throw yourself into like the sequel. Basically, it’s obsolete software, so players will have to do some work to get to the title screen.
Of course, the utopian happy ending is that EA re-enables support for The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection and starts selling it digitally—heck, when we do, digitize The Sims Complete Collection so that the entire The core franchise is preserved and available to modern players. This is not impossible. The entire series turns 25 next February, and while EA has largely refrained from celebrating its other two Sims anniversaries in 2024, they’ve been hinting at their desire to support multiple Sims simultaneously for some time. “game.
Does this cryptic suggestion mean they plan to finally throw “retro” Seamus a bone? To be honest, I don’t know; considering that production on Project Rene (aka The Sims 5) seems to have quietly slowed down, I’m starting to wonder if they might not be doing that either. But maybe that means this is actually the perfect moment for The Sims franchise to look to the past, rather than the future, in order to realize its elusive dream of revival? If that’s the case, The Sims 2 is the perfect place to start.
