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The Sims 2

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The Sims 2 is a computer game from Maxis and is the sequel to the popular game The Sims. It is a vast departure from the previous version and various updates. It is fully 3D, and, unlike the previous installments, characters will age and have genetic traits that can be passed on to their children. It was officially released on September 17 2004 in North America and Europe, though some customers report purchasing the game as early as the 14th. It was released on the 21st of the same month in Asia.

Description

Sims age through 6 unique stages: baby, toddler, child, teen, adult and elder. Family relationships are much more integral to this version of the Sims than the previous version. As Sims age, get married and have children, these relationships are recorded in an extensive family tree.

In this installment of the series, Sims can have more realistic marriages with engagements and parties. Sims are pregnant before having children (unlike in the previous version, where children just appeared). Other unique events such as deaths, funerals, and a first kiss also take place in a Sim's lifetime. Good and bad experiences are kept as memories and can affect the Sim's behaviour.

The graphics and house design engines have improved with more choices for houses, neighborhood design, food and clothes. The Sims Body Shop, a tool which allows a user to design a Sim's body, clothing, genetic features, etc., was available before the game's release. The design is limited to the 3D meshes currently available as one cannot edit the meshes from the Sims Body Shop and nothing has currently been released to allow this. There are also currently no object editors to allow editing of objects (which one could do in the original The Sims).

The Sims 2 introduces a new aspect into the game: the Aspiration Meter. The meter ranges from red (lowest), through green and gold, and up to platinum (highest). The level is raised when a Sim fulfills a "Want", and is lowered when a "Fear" is realized. Wants and Fears may change on a daily basis, and are displayed graphically in slot-machine fashion on the toolbar. When the Aspiration Meter is high, aspiration rewards may be properly used. For example, the Elixir of Life Machine allows a Sim to live longer. If this machine is used before the Aspiration Meter reaches the gold level, however, it will backfire and the Sim will lose life days. The Aspiration Meter also affects how long an elder will live for once they enter this phase of their life.

This also means that while the game still has no set goals, there is a new strategic level to balancing a Sim's life as you now have a limited time in which to fufill Aspirations, meet needs, progress in a career, socialize and possibly have a family.

System requirements

Many have criticized The Sims 2 for needing extremely high system requirements. A similar complaint was levied against Maxis' SimCity 4. However, despite this, few bugs were reported for the game.

The system requirements for The Sims 2 (from the official The Sims 2 website) are as follows:

  • 800 MHz processor for systems with a T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM. 2 GHz processor for systems without a T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM.
  • 256 MB RAM
  • Windows® XP, Windows ME, Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Operating System.
  • At least 3.5 GB of hard drive space

Bugs

"Liney" Sims

One of the few bugs that have been noticed in The Sims 2 is that, on some computers, sims and other moving objects would go all "liney", that is, they had transparent horizontal or diagonal lines runing through them, whenever the sims were preforming some action and the user's camera was not moving. This problem only seemed to occur on systems using the ATI Radeon 9000 series graphics cards or GPUs. This problem has been fixed in the new version of ATI's drivers.

"Jump Out" Bug

Another, prehaps more important bug has come to be known as the "jump out bug". Whenever a sim gets more than 255-256 memories, they will start to "jump out" of interactions that involve chatting. They will be, for example, sitting on the couch one moment, and standing next to it the next. This bug is caused by a design overseight. Sims will remember every A they ever get, but their number of memories is stored in a single byte in a file, which can hold values from 0 to 255. On top of this, sims also have hidden memories that don't show up in the memories pannel, yet still count toward the 255-256 total memories needed to cause the bug. This bug has rendered the game almost unplayable for many people. Maxis will most likley fix this bug in an upcoming patch.

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