I remember this being quite the improvement over the last game, having much of the packs from the first game intergrated, added with new things, jobs and also a system where it creates a child based on the looks and traits of the patents making the fantasy even more fun with the choices that can be done in the game!

I'm probably remembering wrong, but I don't remember there being as many DLC add-ons as the first since quite a few were built in already. Not to mention the addition of Aliens was pretty hilarious too, keeping the humour of the game intact with what may happen to your sims.

foi onde eu comecei a gostar de the sims... é um jogo extremamente filosófico que alimenta a ideia em que vivemos numa matrix, que alimenta a ideia que podemos estar sendo controlados por alguém, assim como também estamos controlando nesse jogo. no the sims vc cria seu personagem e sua história. mas nas cidades já existem familias com histórias enraizadas (sendo 90% das histórias beeeem bizarras) MUITO interessantes.... as animações desse the sims, os traços dos sims e a jogabilidade são sensacionais.. tanto na época de lançamento, quanto agora, é algo único e vai estar sempre marcado em vossos coraçoes....

For personal reference more than anything else.

Played it for a little bit after having played it for probably somewhere around 20 hours over the past six or so years. This is less supposed to be a normal playthrough and more just a dick about with it to be able to write this as I'd like something to come to anytime I consider playing this game. This isn't going to be the best written thing and might even be quite crappy and just feel like a scattered list of things rather than a properly constructed review or whatever but it'll be what I need it to be.

This was the third mainline PC Sims game I played and about the fifteenth Sims game I played at least some of overall, because of this and the fact that the two PC Sims games I played before it were 3 & 4, while it may not be entirely fair to the game, this is going to be less seeing it on its own terms and more how it feels to play compared to other games in this franchise as quite a few of the other games offer a very similar but in my opinion better experience.

Obviously I could try to take things like the games age into account and try to overlook it but when I can just play one of the other games that I already prefer for what they do with the gameplay or how well they do certain things and notice that they don't have the same issues that this one has due to more recent time of release, it feels a little weird to ignore the issues I have. Yeah the game's going to be not quite as in depth with its mechanics, not provide a higher amount of options of things or whatever and that's not the games fault, but even with that in mind I have played Sims games without those issues beforehand and because of the whole similar experience thing it means I will talk about those problems as they are actual issues I have with the game and impact my enjoyment of it.

Something I'll quickly note though is that while I understand that I could just use cheats or mods to get something closer to the experience I would actually want. I don't really use either of those and I also think that I wouldn't end up with the game being the way I want it. But also I'm looking at the game how its available to me and probably meant to be played, it also then begs the question if I'm just going to do all that then why not just play a different Sims game where I don't have to do that and I'll be having a better time?

To start off with one of the biggest problems to me and one of the main reasons I struggle to spend much time with this game is, when looking at it alongside all the others in the franchise it just doesn't do anything to stand out from the rest that actually interests me. Sims 1 has the cool artstyle and higher difficulty, Sims 3 has the open world and seemingly endless amount of things to do, Sims 4 has my favourite CAS + Build/Buy mode and the various gameplay mechanics brought in by expansion packs like the calendar, the active careers and club system. Even some of the spin-offs and ports have their own thing, Sims 2 on consoles has direct controls, Sims 3 on consoles has Karma Powers and this is without mentioning that a big thing is just being able to play The Sims on consoles and handhelds which is cool in itself as each console doesn't really have a whole lot of similar Sims games that provide the typical Sims experience. Sims 2 if I was trying to work it out myself I'd get nowhere but having been more into the Sims community a few years ago for a while has made it clear to me that for this game its the details that it has (the pizza looking good, the kid either being happy or sad returning home with their report card and various other animations), the story or lore aspect and the things like 'dinner with the headmaster minigame' or the chemistry system and personally none of this is really enough to make me want to come back to this game all too often. The details are cool and all but once I've seen them, I've seen them, the story and lore doesn't even remotely interest me and the other stuff is fine but not really things I use all that much. The game not having much of an identity (gameplay-wise) is why I think I notice the other stuff which I will focus on for a lot of this log, as the game just then becomes nothing to me but how does this fare as a Sims experience/video game and that's why I think I think of it the way I do.

I really like the music though, because I grew up with some of the soundtrack from playing the PS2 spinoffs which had music from this game its quite nostalgic for me even though I only first played this game a few years ago. The soundtrack is really good on its own merits I think though.

A big issue for me is having only one save file and to get a new one you have to delete the first one in the files of the games, they can't co-exist yet if anything happens in the game (a certain sim dies or whatever) it stays like that and if you want things to go back to the way they were, you would need a new save file.

Create a Sim has a lot more depth than the first game but having first played it after years of playing 3 & 4 it feels so unbelievably restricted. Some examples being only four skin tones, two body types, four hair colours and just a low amount of outfits for certain things like outerwear and athletic wear. I also wish that I could make my sim be a supernatural type straight off the bat and the fact that I can't and have to meet one in game and develop a high enough relationship with them makes it so that I don't really play with the supernatural types as much.

I don't particularly like how the sims themselves look and it feels like if I try to mould them how I want, then they go from looking kinda weird to really weird in like a second, because of this I usually stick to just the presets and it makes most of the sims I make look the same.

The personality system is mostly the same as the first game where you assign points in certain personality types. The only differences being that you can choose a Zodiac sign that automatically assigns points and being able to choose an aspiration. I already didn't like the point system as I think that while it changes how the sims act some of the time I just think that I am more likely to play a sim a certain way with the trait system of 3 & 4, whereas in this game all the sims I play end up feeling the same as there's not much personality to glean from the options present. I also have a problem with the amount of points as any time I've tried to make a sim in this game I nearly always have to compromise on the personality I want due to not having enough points. I can sort of understand that this probably comes from the game not wanting players to have sims that have no points in anything or all personality types being maxed out, but I feel as though something like that wouldn't matter in a game like this as its singleplayer and a game where people enjoy playing how they want.

The turn-ons and turn-offs are also new to this game and I don't really like them, I don't like that its mandatory to choose them whenever I'm making a new sim and I don't see the point in it anyway as while there are quite a few options there, the majority of them feel way too specific and it makes it kind of hard for me to know what to choose as I have no idea who my sim is going to be interested in going in as I have no idea what townies I'll get and considering that it feels like you can just go for someone who doesn't adhere to your turn-ons and turn-offs anyway, the whole thing just feels kind of pointless. I like the idea in theory though.

Something from the first game that's been improved here is the camera as you can now freely zoom and rotate the camera as its no longer restricted to a couple of set options, this is great and doesn't gets changed in later games as it doesn't really need to be.

Sims 2 is bigger than Sims 1 (or at least you can see more when on a certain lot) and while this is nice it creates an annoyance for me as when I can see a house I'm not currently in, clicking on it only gives me the option to play as that household rather than just go visit them. This wouldn't be a big problem if it wasn't for the fact that going to places in this game feels needlessly complicated, outside of certain areas that I'm guessing came from expansion packs like the vacation areas, the Universities and downtown, the game doesn't seem to have a map that you can access whilst playing the game. This means that if I want my sims to go anywhere then I have to click on them or get to a phone and use a menu that has a list of places they could potentially go to, but other houses aren't named by who lives there or whatever but instead just the house number and street name creating a need to learn and remember where the sims I would like to visit actually live which might be cool for other people but I just don't like it.

Buying things in the game is kind of annoying to me as you don't have (mostly) everything in your wardrobe when playing and it means you have to go out to shops and buy the clothes to be able to wear them which is interesting but I wish was optional. There's a couple of other things like this like buying a mobile phone and also the groceries. Having to buy groceries is not something I'm keen on as it may be realistic but just feels kind of annoying as I usually forget I need to do it until I've run out of stuff and then its just having to wait a bit until I can cook again. Its another thing that I just would rather be optional and it doesn't really interest me all that much.

Another thing I don't really like is the lifespan of sims as its not changeable (from what I could tell) and feels far too short, I remember a playthrough where I had a sim who I wanted to get married, have at least one kid and try to reach the highest point in her career but I just couldn't do it with the time the game gave me and by the time her child was a teenager she was already an elder. There is a device you can get with aspiration points that adds another three days to a sim's life or a cheat to turn off aging but they're still not quite exactly what I'd like and I just prefer how it works in 3 & 4.

Conversations feel sort of weird in this game and it feels like there's so many categories of options but not so many options themselves. I also prefer options where your sims stay where they are and continue talking rather than go play a game or whatever, which is what a fair few of the options are. It feels kind of pointless to me to have all the questions in the Ask section as you don't really seem to learn anything from it outside of one or two things. On this, maybe its just that I've never been able to find it but I don't think there's a way to ask a sim if they're in a relationship with someone which is kind of annoying when considering them as a potential romantic partner for my sim.

I think a big thing for me is that while I recognise it as an integral part of the series, I'm not actually that keen on looking after my sims (feeding them, making sure they sleep and go to the toilet), I'm usually having the most fun when I can just create stories for them or doing experiments/challenges and this game with its short lifespans and the needs decaying quite quickly and often makes it so that I can't really do that aspect as much which makes the game kind of boring to me.

The expansion packs in the game are kind of a mixed bag for me, one of the biggest problems I have is that a few of the packs are series mainstays and have been done by the other games and if I'm being completely honest are kind of at their worst here. Universities feel like the standard Sims gameplay loop but in a bigger house and you don't have to cook, Seasons seems to only bring weather and gardening and gets outshined by those things being in the later games plus the festivals in 3 and calendar/holidays in 4. The only expansion that doesn't feel like the worst version is probably Pets (which is admittedly not a pack type I'm particularly keen on) as the pets can have jobs which is kind of cute and makes it somewhat better than 4 I think.

FreeTime, it may just be because I got the majority of the packs at once and the only way I can tell what each pack brought is by the encyclopedia in the pause menu, but this pack feels unbelievably shallow and low in content compared to a lot of the packs in the series, it brings hobbies (which I don't really use) and things that feel like if they came out once patching/updating was more prominent with games, they would have just been added for free.

Open For Business is a neat idea and I like being able to sell things at a stand and essentially have boot sales but I find the actual act of running a shop to be kind of boring in this game (I think that 4 manages to make it feel more fun). I don't really use Bon Voyage as I don't have the in-game time to give my Sims holidays but it seems like a neat pack. I do enjoy Nightlife and Apartment Life though as I like the inclusion of the Downtown area and I've always enjoyed having my sims live in apartments.

I don't think that this is a bad game by any stretch of the imagination and I think if I played it when I was younger and it was the newest release I would have been a lot more into it, but it just pales in comparison to the rest of the games in the franchise and any time I try to come back to it I just get bored or annoyed with it kind of quickly. Its alright but I'd rather be playing something else.