Sims 2: Who has it?

[Blake]

I've been playing The Sims 2 quite a bit over the last few days, played two familes from young people to old people. It's an easy game, with my second family (consisting of two adults) I easily managed to get them into platinum mood before going to work every day, meaning they got promoted every day, as long as I could keep up with the skill training, which wasn't all that hard with the Aspiration rewards like the smart hat.

Screenshots time:

The very first family I created. Father, teenage daughter, crazy old uncle. Perfect. All these sims ended up endearing in their own ways - the Father by using hottubs naked and scaring other Sims (Outgoing sims ROCK!), the daughter by becoming a Military General despite being goofy and playful, and the crazy uncle by seducing a young housewife and stealing her from her two sons, and then keeling over while mopping the bathroom floor, leaving a massive life insurance windfall, and scaring people as a ghost - giving pretty much my first Platinum experience (Knowledge types love ghosts) - and for wearing eye-liner and shadow, pity I didn't screenshot him.


The SECOND family I made, but never played.... they were just too scary to look at


Danger! Danger! Danger! Mortimer attack! For some reason, Mortimer Goth randomly runs in and attacks my Sims.


I like photographing Sims while they sleep. Think of me as a scary ceiling-crawler stalker.
NOTE: I love how couples don't sleep like zombies anymore, they cuddle instead.


This just looks really silly Check out the toddler making a mess in the bathroom, what is it with kids and splashing around? They even get water out the toilet, ewwww.


Old gray hair daddy with his son. It's moments like these that make Sims 2 the ultimate feel-good game. No wonder chicks love it.


Place your bets. Round 1... Fight!
Note: My Sims would never really fight, they are too angelic for that


I'm too cheap to buy multiple beds. And did I mention I like watching Sims sleep?


Spot the Adoptee! And I have the Exercise machine outside the dining table window to taunt those flabby man-Sims.
And yes, my Sims all sit down together at meal times. I'm pathetic . Incidentely this is my second family, the parents had long careers and got to Mad Scientist/General, then they had a kid and adopted one just before graduating to old coots.


Eeek! Naked old man! Sims have such a funny horrified reaction when they see a naked old man. It's hard to capture in a screenshot but it's soooo funny.
Note: I used a no-censor patch.


Just what the young ones want on a sexy house date, an old man in the tub with them! Well, atleast he isn't naked.


One of THE most fun things in The Sims 2, Paintings! You can select the target like a screenshot and the Sim paints it. The old coots painted these, and many, many more. I've almost ran out of walls to place paintings on. I also add extra lights to highlight the paintings, especially the lights meant for gardens to light up trees.


Boy Wonder and Girl Genius. Background paintings:
Father like Son, Kids jumping on bed, Naked old Man.
Note: Boy Wonder maxed out Logic, Cleaning and Creativity before becoming an Adult. He also nearly maxed out Cooking. This is what I mean by the game is easy.... Thanks to private schooling he started adult life as an Inventor.


In the Tub, are two geriatrics performing WooHoo (WooHoo!). Beside the tub are their children. Dee-sturbing!
NOTE: There is also a bugged invisible Sim in the room.
NOTE2: They are in a basement, it's like a secret place for Public WooHoo.

Back to more boring talking stuff. I actually find it remarkably hard to complain about The Sims 2, because EA apparentely spent a lot of time and money polishing it. But I'll complain a bit anyway. The "stuck sims bugs" and "pathing gaffus" are still around, even if they are less severe than in The Sims. Aspiration is generally too easy - Sims can be kept nearly permamently in Platinum with fairly repitive actions. The Aspiration Points are hard to spend - especially because the rewards make the game even easier. All four Sims in my second family have over 100K AP - with the most expensive item costing only 30K, I could keep them all permamently youthful if I wanted.

In terms of general longlivity I think it's the kind of game for binge-playing marathon sessions, then you put away for a couple of weeks, it's not really addictive, more of a periodic obsession.

Oh yeah, so far I've focused on Angelic Sims and functioning families, I havn't even got into the degenerated stuff, other than the paintings of Naked old men decorating the walls.

[Adagio]

The worst parts of the game so far is:

Yeah, the aspiration is a bit too easy, that's why I mostly don't use aspiration points to buy those extra things... I don't pursue to get high aspirations by doing repeatedly stuff, I prefer to gain it following what I feel is right (repeatetly inviting someone over to get more points is stupid)


I also find it 'stupid' that time stands still when going downtown. I mean if you pick a sim to go downtown at 1 pm and calls the taxi to go back at 10 pm, then when he gets home it's 1 pm, because he arrives shortly after he left, while still he managed to do lots of stuff downtown (like getting tired)... in the above example, when he arrives home at 1 pm he's soo tired that he needs to get to bed, and if I forget to wake him up, he'll be fresh at about 10-12 pm
They could have fixed this by simply using the same way they have done the work/school part, so they wont get home before the time they actually left downtown, but after exiting downtown you get back to the family again as normal... Would have been soo easy to implement


And why don't they have some kind of high-score in the game? Like when a sim dies, this person gets into the high-score, which can be sorted in different ways; number of children, number of grandchildren, number of woohoo'ing, number of public woohoo'ing, cash earned, dying age, you name it
That would have been nice, and wouldn't take long to implement either...

[Blake]

They could have fixed this by simply using the same way they have done the work/school part, so they wont get home before the time they actually left downtown, but after exiting downtown you get back to the family again as normal... Would have been soo easy to implement

I was working out how to do this for taking only some of the household downtown, and your right, it is simple. If you leave the house at 1pm, play until 10pm, then return to the house, it'd still be 1:10pm at the house, and the sim would have a "downtown" icon, you play with the other sims until 10:10pm, at which point the taxi arrives and deposits the downtown Sim... so the player plays from 1pm to 10pm twice, but each sim only experience 1 to 10pm once - no paradoxes.

With my next family I might try to limit Aspirations in some way... but the problem is it's kinda limited. Like if you finally get the Knowledge sim to max out his logic, but it wasn't one of his current 4, then it's entirely wasted. If you can finally afford that hottub, but it wasn't a current aspiration... the first kiss, at the wrong time. I find that my married sims mostly aspire to interact with each other, until having kids then the Knowedge ones become obsessed with their children and apparentely forget about their spouse other than a quick chat and backrub now and then. I've only really played with Romance/Knowledge couples, I suspect they are the easiest (especially Romance) and that Family and Fortune will be more frustrating.
So overall the Aspiration system seems to be sufficently limited that "Effective use is abuse" and "Role playing results in frustration". I dunno, prehaps sims need "life long" aspirations, like reach the top of their career, buy the best hottub etc, of which they can have many and they only rarely change (say due to realizing major fears). Then they could have their few "fickle" aspirations like flirting with their spouse or eating Mac 'n' Cheese.

It is a good thing that using Aspiration is by no means nessecary for a successful family or for enjoyment of the game, even if it works exceptionally to make super-sims.


Oh yeah, something I didn't mention earlier is I dislike the lack of hippy style hairstyles for males. A "Get stoned, Free Love and attend peace rallies" aspiration would be nice too I want my hippies dagnamit.

[Dis]

I'm not sure I can play a game that calls it WooHoo

[Dis]

god (or dog if you prefer) help me. I'm actually considering buying this game again.

I should know better. I shouldn't buy games based on a thread in the Apolyton/Other games forums. I did that with Doom3 and I grew bored of that game in a week (actually less). Why is the temptation so hard to resist? It's like peer pressure. And you guys are my peers. I never could resist peer pressure (the only reason I ever smoked pot).

[DrSpike]

You just have to respond to pressure from the right peers.

[Dis]

too late. I just bought the game today .

I've been playing it all afternoon. I skipped dinner, and neglected feeding my dog. But once I achieved a goal, I was able to stop. My goal was to make woohoo with another sim. Although I'm not sure I actually did woohoo. The objective (I can't remember what they are called for some reason) disappeared off my screen. But I'm not sure if I did it right . How do you make woohoo? I just kept choosing make out and proposing she stay the night. It didn't seem to clear until I kicked the other guy out of the house. But I didn't actually see anything.

Anyways it was a long hard road to get that far. Who would have thunk making woohoo would be so hard .

I must say this game is harder than the first Sims (vanilla game- I never tried any of the expansion packs). I remember doing well in that game without much effort. Although one possible reason is I started this game as a single bachelor. I think I started the first game with more than one person in the household. In sims2, it can be difficult being the only one in the house. You have to do all the chores yourself, fulfill goals, work, meet social demands. Whew! a lot of work.

When in reality, being single is easier than being married (I think). I'm single, and my life is cake. Of course I never do any chores even though I'm single. I never clean my house

My career is tough. I was a lab test student for a while. I got promoted to research assistant, but I was fired my first day at that position . But the next day as a test student I was promoted again. . I'm still not sure how to do better at work. I know the first game you needed to keep your needs fairly high and have many friends.

The problem I'm having now is environment. Especially outside my front door. As soon as I walk out the door it drops to around half. I tried putting some garden gnomes, and pink flamingos, but they don't seem to be working.

Money is almost non-existant when you are single. I can't afford any decorations, I could barely afford to build my own house. I guess I should have went with a pre-existing house.

maybe I'll read the instruction manual now. I did the tuturials, but I was too eager to play to read the manual.

[Dis]

one more thing. The music on the radio station is cool.

I've been listening to the metal music. It sounds awesome . Better than most stuff I hear on the radio. Hilarious.

My only gripe is the music goes away when you pause the game, or in the buy or build modes. And sometimes the sims turn it off . I usually try to keep my boombox on all the time.

Although after about 6 or 7 hours of play, I'm starting to get tired of the same old metal songs. Eventually I guess I'll move in my mp3's.

[Dis]

I want to post a screen shot. I made my seem like me in real life. It's kind of scary how much it looks like me . I even made the layout of the house similar to mine. And green carpet as well

I haven't been doing any sadistic things...yet. I'm trying to succeed. Succeeding is more difficult than I thought it would be.

my screen shot is resized to 800 X 600

[Blake]

Bachelors are hard, but good for learning

The easiest is a couple, because they can f*ck each other for entertainment and you get twice the income with not much more work.

This is my, Chamber Of Mad Science, Mwahahahah



My old man Sim called Hovis was so depressed when his old wife Jenn died that he went mad, then he devised a cunning plan to live forever, he moved out the house and into a Bunker on the hill. Then he invited his Father in Law around (who likes bathing naked in hot tubs) and they immediately fell in love and decided to move in together and be the Crazy Old Mad Scientists On The Hill Who Spy On Mortimer With Their Telescope.

This is where I will send all my Knowledge Aspiration sims so they don't have to die of old age, currentely it's a bit sparse because they are fairly poor, I'll move in more Sims that are about to kick the bucket and fill it up with cool career awards.

[Kassiopeia]

You can build Basements? I didn't know that. Now I know where I can put the teenagers to live without having to get a second floor or expanding the first one out of proportions.

[Adagio]

I haven't been able to build basements yet, how do you do it? Do you have to manually dig the whole (which is kinda expensive) or is there a function to it?

[Dis]

I just realized something!

I forgot to put a roof on my house!

that could be the reason why my environment rating drops so much when I'm outdoors. I'll have to check on that.

[Dis]

also how do you get the money tree to work? I think I know how to get the aspiration meter to gold now. It took me some time. I was finding I did not have time to meet my wants. Getting my logic up to 4 was hard. I just couldn't find the time. But then I got like 5 or 6 easy wants in a row. I did them all consecutively. They all involved my girlfriend. flirt, hug, kiss, makeout, and woohoo with her. It put me up to platinum.

I've also noticed the aspiration meter tends to go down over time, even if I don't get any fears (that I know of- I may have missed it).

I was spending all this time trying to get my cleaning up to 2. What a waste of time. I'll concentrate on easier wants.

And my cooking is still only 1 . all I can make is cereal, instant meal, and tv dinners. Kind of like me in real life.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my girlfrined who moved in. She makes more than I do!. She's an intern. I'm thinking of quitting and conentrating on home life . I don't have a high cleanliness rating, so I think that affects how fast your cleaning and cooking skills increase. I'm not sure. yeah I know, it's time to read the isntruction manual.

[Adagio]

Yep, the aspiration meter drops down over time... Would be strange that when you're 80 you're still extremely happy that you learned how to cook when you wanted to learn it, and not just some random day