The sims 2 pc ign review

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In a way, it almost feels like developers tried to make an adventure game set in the Sims universe, changing everything they could without spoiling the formula fans have come to expect. Now before you start thinking there's a grand, epic journey awaiting you, just know there isn't.

The story in Sims 2 is as quirky and lighthearted as the series itself, so don't expect to save the universe in a galactic space battle. You won't find armies of Sims charging down a virtual battlefield or Sims overthrowing a tyrannical government. What you will find is a collection of mini-mysteries packed with more genuine humor and wit than you could possible hope for. At the start of the game, you're driving down a desert road when your car breaks down.

As the gods would have it, you stop right next to a gas station and convenience store. The gas station you leave your car in for repairs disappears soon afterward, taking your ride with it. After talking with the local sheriff, who just happened to be nearby, you hitch a ride into Strangetown, the nearest residence. Here, you're set up with a place to live. And that's about it. It's then up to you to talk with neighbors and start doing the whole "Sim" thing, namely surviving and making friends.

In doing so, you end up knee-deep in murder mysteries, cult conspiracies, alien encounters and battles with the undead. Before getting into that , it serves to note precisely how different this game is from both the PC and console versions. There's no child rearing, aging or death, for starters. You can't start a family or build a house from scratch, and instead of controlling your character with a cursor, you directly control your character like in a third-person action game.

The interface has moved from the bottom of the screen to the left, and it shows far less information. The rest of the info inventory, skills, relationships, goals can be viewed by pressing start.

Lastly, the PSP version is far more goals oriented. With all that stuff taken out, it may sound like there's not much left worth playing. But you'd be wrong. Much of what developers took out they replaced by something altogether different, yet equally entertaining. In the place of family and children, you have a hilarious quest into the seedier side of the Sims universe.

You can't build a house, but you can still furnish one with cool, PSP-exclusive items. And instead of characters that age, you get a full cast of Sims with their own personalities and psychological hangs-ups. If that's not enough, you can play a bunch of mini-games imbedded in the game's storyline.

There's a whack-a-rat style game where you smack zombies with shovels. There's even a symbol-based dance game. Fortunately, they're all really fun. You'll play the communication mini-game far more than the other types. Instead of just watching two Sims engage in conversation, you now need to "win" conversations by playing a symbol-matching mini-game. You need to match the symbol floating in a Sim's thought bubble with a three symbols found at the bottom of the page.

It's easy at first, but the better the relationship you have with a given Sim friend, soulmate, etc the harder it gets. It gets to a point where it just feels cheap, but not for the reason you're probably thinking.

It's the constant load times. Since each phase of this mini-game is timed, you'll get screwed several times as the PSP chugs to read information. In addition to the story and mini-games, you also get a slew of little additions with the PSP iteration of the Sims 2.

Take secrets, for example. Have you played The Sims 2: Castaway? The Sims: Castaway. The Sims 2: Castaway Review. Sims Family Robinson.

By Jeff Haynes Updated: 14 May pm. Even the crossover to the consoles has been rather successful, with the Simlish speaking characters doing more objective based situations. This covers everything from getting jobs to taking on the pulse of the urban streets. However, the latest game for The Sims could be their most challenging adventure to date, which can be summed up with the following verse: Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip Of unlucky Sims that found themselves on a doomed ship The weather started getting rough, the Sims were turned and tossed And as the game starts out, you see, your whole boat's crew is lost That's right - The Sims are getting lost in a deserted island in Sims 2: Castaway.

Initially, you'll create one to six different Sims, manipulating everything from their appearance to their personalities by determining what their star sign happens to be. Unlike some of the other Sims titles, you initially select an occupation for each character, which determines their skills at specific activities. For example, Mechanics are good at building new tools and items from materials, while Executives are good at communication and Chefs are obviously skilled in the kitchen.

It's up to you to figure out how many Sims you want on this voyage; some players may find that having a Tom Hanks "Castaway"-style experience is a much more engaging time, while others may want to embark on a Gilligan's Island-like adventure, selecting a primary Sim to play with. Regardless of what you choose, your story unfolds in pretty much the same way; told via cell phone photos, you see your Sims having fun on the boat until they're thrown from the vessel in the middle of a storm.

Eventually, you find the Sim character that you selected wakes up on a beach without any of their friends apparently nearby.

It's here that the game begins, with your character trying to find a way to eke out an existence on this deserted island, hopefully find their friends and eventually figure out a way to leave for civilization. Of course, doing this is a pretty daunting task for just about anyone, even an experienced survivalist. To get around this concept, Castaway introduces a series of books that your Sim stumbles across. Apparently, your island has had its fair share of shipwrecked inhabitants, and the books that are scattered around indicate a number of goals to for your Sim to accomplish.

These range from rather basic goals, such as making a basic fire pit to warm your Sim on cold nights to more elaborate ones, such as building shelter from the elements. There are even more fantastical tasks, such as gathering pieces of treasure maps and hunting for lost gold that you can take on. While having these guidebooks is a decent way of pointing out some of the goals that you need to accomplish, they tend to be within the realm of too easy to accomplish or very distant checkpoints to fulfill.

As a result, you may discover that you crank through multiple objectives at the beginning of the game, feeling like you're completing many tasks, only to slam into a brick wall because a large number of projects will require much more skill in certain traits than your Sims currently have. As a result, the game then grinds to a halt as you sit and try to figure out what you have to do to reach the next milestone, before picking back up again. What's worse, you only receive an indication that you've gained a brand new skill level once in the game, making it very hard to know if you can proceed in the game by building new items or acquiring new tools.

Tools are the key to help you through your island existence, but you won't simply find these items washing up onshore from the wreckage of your boat. Instead, you'll need to acquire items in your surroundings, such as bamboo, vines and palm fronds to create different objects. However, you can't simply make things at will - you'll need to acquire plans for different items based upon the resources you gain and the skill that you have. The Sims was one of those games that you just didn't see coming.

It smacked the gaming world upside the head with its quirky nature and long reaching appeal. Obviously, the success of the original was so high that it was a forgone conclusion that The Sims 2 would eventually hit stores after the billions of expansion packs were done selling for the first game. Finally, after four years of waiting, The Sims 2 is coming out. We've had a final for quite a while now and have been playing the crap out of it in order to write this review.

The Sims 2 is a strange game to try and review. There are a lot of different ways to look at it and play it. The only thing that's certain is that this series is one of a kind. I can honestly say that I don't think I "got it" when the original game was released. I enjoyed it for a while but became frustrated at how hard it was to juggle relationships, bathroom breaks, and sleep time in order to get to the top of the corporate food chain.

But over the last few weeks, I finally discovered something, partly due to a lot of the improvements made over the first game. The Sims isn't about "winning" or reaching a certain goal. It's about setting up experiences and watching them unfold. It's about personality and creativity and The Sims 2 handles both in a way that can't help but make you stare in wonder at this brilliantly bizarre series. The most obvious addition is the new engine.

It was an easy decision for them to make the game better looking. Not only did it help them keep up with the technology but more importantly helped them create an experience with a lot more personality and flair than The Sims was ever capable of supplying.

All of the items found in The Sims 2 are amazingly detailed and vibrantly colorful, but the real charmer is the hugely long list of interactive animations between sims and the environment. Video Review Available In Sims 2 you do not read. You interact. You experience the visual world that unfolds before you. A text review may suffice, but why not treat your eyes to tons of direct-feed video and your ears to detailed commentary from IGNPC's Editor-in-Chief? Download It Now How can you not smile at the different ways the sims dance depending on their personalities?

How can you not be pleased when outgoing characters are giving other sims in the room a thumbs up as they walk by? How can you not throw a fit of laughter when a man in a top hat and a cute blonde teenager burp in each other's faces for fun? There are so many wonderful animations of the cute, disgusting, touching, playful, exciting, amazing, and clever things that we see in life right there on the screen for your virtual people to act out.

The combination of actions happening in the house can be downright hilarious and bizarre. The Sims 2 is a brilliant simulation but also a wonderful caricature of life in general. And that's what you have to remember when playing this game. It isn't about completing a lofty goal of saving the world.

Not reaching the top rung of the corporate ladder doesn't mean you failed. A dirty house and toilet isn't the end of the world. This game is about experimentation and creativity, whether you're setting up relationships or building a crazy house. You can almost equate it to a very strange canvas. Maxis is selling some amazing tools to create all kinds of things from architecture to full blown stories.

It's up to the gamer to take those tools and use them however they see fit. And that's the most difficult thing to understand.

As I said earlier, I didn't really understand when I was playing the first game. I was used to playing games that have specific goals. The Sims 2 declares that having goals is almost a distraction to having fun.

Don't get me wrong, if you want to think of the game that way, it's possible. You can move your sims up to the top of the corporate food chain, help your sim-kids and teenagers get into private school, or even complete abstract goals of affording the best TV on the list. But those are side shows to the main events of watching the personalities interact and sharing experiences with the community.

Maxis added several different features to improve on the original and improve on it they do. The first of these is the ability to use either one of three prepared neighborhoods with an interesting background or create your own from scratch using one of several neighborhood terrains. Players can now create different sized lots, place houses, community centers, and environmental items like balloons, rocks, trees, clouds, birds, and so on.

The neighborhood story can be added to, modified, and made creative easily with their new story creation tool.