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The Sims 2 | 
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| From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $24.99
You Save: $5.00 (17%)
New (2) Used (13) from $24.99
Rating:  900 reviews
Sales Rank: 950
Platforms: Windows Me, Windows Xp, Windows 98, Windows 2000
Genre: strategy_games;action_games
ESRB: Teen
Media: CD-ROM
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 1.1
MPN: 14726
Model: EA9965814
UPC: 014633147261
EAN: 0014633147261
Release Date: September 14, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Sequel to the hit lifestyle simulation | | • | Manage your Sim's dreams and fears over a lifetime | | • | Mix Sim genes and see physical and personality traits inherited down through Sim generations | | • | Movie-making feature lets you control the camera and capture the action into mini movies | | • | Also available in DVD Edition |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The Sims 2 is an incredible sequel to the best-selling PC game of all-time! You'll get to direct an entire Sims' lifetime, and try to get them to reach their goals in life. Will they have a long, successful and happy life - or will they end up poor and heartbroken?
Amazon.com
The Sims was one of the most popular games ever made. In it, players micromanage the lives of a family of virtual people, or Sims, and influence their paths toward success or something akin to a nervous breakdown. Its open-ended blend of cartoonish behavior and everyday living is unique in an art form otherwise obsessed with carnage and sports. With The Sims 2, long-time fans now have a deeper game with lots of ways to customize and share their experiences. The game will also attract first-timers because the goal-oriented gameplay and the luridly fun starter families make it easier to get into the action right out of the box.
Now Sims are born with the traits of their parents, families grow, and Sims grow old.
| The People in Your Neighborhood
The game starts at the neighborhood level. Here you can create a housing development from scratch or start with one of three premade neighborhoods, each with its own theme. From there, you'll settle on a house and a family of Sims to control.  | | Create your own Sim (above) or your own house (below) from scratch with advanced tools. |  | Aside from the basic needs carried over from the previous game, Sims now have aspirations, wants, and fears. The wants and fears are the day-to-day things that occupy their minds, like wanting to see friends or get married and fearing death or being rejected for a kiss. Satisfy their wants, and they become more efficient at completing tasks you assign them. Realize their fears, and Sims become lethargic, cranky, and unresponsive to your commands. Aspirations are the big-picture things, like raising a family, becoming wealthy, and gaining knowledge. Succeed here and you'll be able to buy odd gifts for your Sim to improve his or her life, like a money tree that pays dividends or a "fountain of youth" water cooler. What Else Is New?
Of course, you wouldn't be able to juggle all that if it weren't for the improved "Free Will" option, which makes it easier for Sims to fulfill their basic needs. The artificial intelligence of the game is noticeably improved; they won't turn on radios just as a family member is going to bed but, strangely, they do occasionally put their dishes on the floor. Another big change in the series is the concept of the lifespan. Now Sims are born with the traits of their parents, families grow, and Sims grow old. Not only does this go hand in hand with aspirations (growing up is the first aspiration that a baby Sim will have), it provides a limited time with which your Sims can achieve their goals.  | | The Universal Control Panel helps you manage your Sim family. | A Family Affair
The Sims 2 not only lets you create just about any type of Sim in any type of family, build elaborate houses, and even create a neighborhood from scratch, but it also allows you to start the game in medias res, with premade households. These families all have backstories that are smart spoofs of soap-opera plots--lots of scheming, romance, ghosts, and family fighting. Parents of teens shouldn't worry, though, because nudity is tastefully blurred out and "woo-hoo" between Sims takes place completely under the covers. The ESRB has given this a Teen rating. If The Sims 2 were a film, it would likely land between PG and PG-13. The makers have included some nice tools to help share the universe you've created. For example, you can capture in-game stills and video to show friends the private moments, family interactions, and house parties of your Sims. You can even package a household to share as a blog or an album on a special Web site. The Sims 2 is for patient gamers. Like life itself, the game is filled with mundane details, like getting ready for work and doing dishes. The game also demands a level of creativity from its players that the run-and-gun game genres wouldn't know what to do with. But those who stick with it will be rewarded with an absorbing, amusing diversion and a virtual family history that they've created themselves. --Porter B. Hall Set Up a Sims 2 Machinima Studio
 Amazon.com contributor Porter Hall reveals how you can make movies using the Sims as your actors. See his guide to setting up a Sims 2 Machinima Studio.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 895 more reviews...
 My favorite video game of all time December 30, 2008
Alice Fielding (Norman, OK USA)
The Sims 1 was tied with Phantasy Star Online as my favorite video game of all time. Well, The Sims 2 takes all of the good things about The Sims 1 and then adds a whole bunch more good things to totally blow me away. There are now toddlers, teenagers and elders. There's complex genetics which is completely fascinating, especially when you factor in the alien beings. The graphics are MUCH better and you can view close or far from all angles. The flexibility of friends, roommates, getting engaged and married or separated, broken up or divorced is great. Best of all, characters can be related to each other, so you can set them up from the beginning as spouses, siblings, cousins, etc. and they will interact with each other differently from if they were not related. The potential for storytelling is tremendous. This is the best video game in the history of the world as far as I'm concerned. Five thousand stars!
Positive Experience December 6, 2008
Cheryl Walker
The item was shipped quickly and in good condition. Would recommend this seller to anyone.
Leaps and Bounds Above TS1 October 14, 2008
Andrea Head (Detroit, Michigan)
A sophisticated and complex sequel to The Sims, The Sims 2 is pretty to boot. I think that my favorite aspect of this game is the new levels of complexity in the sims. They have hopes and dreams as well as fears. Another noteworthy feature is the life cycle -- sims age, now. No more perpetual children or adults who live forever.
If you enjoyed The Sims, you'll definitely love The Sims 2. If you've never played The Sims before, now is the time to start.
A review by my daughter August 26, 2008
Tanya Applegate
My name is Frances Applegate and I'm 9. I just ordered The Sims 2 and I'm very excited to play it. I have played it at friends houses, and enjoyed it very much.
1. First off there's the plant people. (you can recognize them by their green skin) They lurk around some neighborhoods. They're very nice, but poeple are scared of them and misunderstand them.
2. And then there's the werewolves. If you mess with a dog with yellow eyes that walks outside your house at night sometimes, and you become friends, he'll bite you, and you'll become a werewolf.
3. There's also aliens that evade occasionally. Some sims fall in love with them and have alien-human babies.
I won't give anymore away but here's a few cheats for money.
C+ctrl+shift, motherlode and katching.
Enjoy playing sims!
Say "bye-bye" to your social life! July 27, 2008
C. R. Swanson (Phoenix)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ah, the Sims. Wonderful little creatures that obey our every commands, making us feel like God, only without some smart-a$$ coming along and nailing things to cathedral doors.
You're doubtless quite familiar with the Sims as a premise. Basically you create and control people. You run every aspect of their lives. You make them do their bidding, and if that means building a house full of nothing but wooden furniture and fireplaces, then by gum, you can do that!
"Sims 2" is a massive improvement over the original game. It took everything that was good about the original and basically set it to eleven, while toning down a lot that wasn't so great (you don't have to micromanage your Sims nearly as much). With this game you get a whole new set of bells and whistles, including a 3D enviroment, Sims that actually age and will eventually die of old age (provided you aren't the sort who tells them to go swimming and then deletes the ladder so they can't leave the pool. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!), new jobs, new aspirations, new gizmos, new building options, etc, etc!
It can be kind of overwhelming at first, but if you start out small the game will guide you, and you'll soon be running people's lives just like that one aunt you have who thinks she knows exactly how everyone should do things and loves to tell you, at length, about how you're messing up your life!
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