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What's so amazing about The Sims 2?
JayedTadaSkier
Posts: 817 Member
in The Sims 2
This isn't meant to be a troll post or a rude one, It's just a legit question I have; I don't see what's so amazing about The Sims 2.
I may be a bit biased, but The Sims 3 was my first Sims game. I'd never played a simulation game and I thought it was the funnest thing. I started purchasing expansion packs, trying out families, trying to learn different skills for my sims and trying to create all sorts of new sims! My friend who got me into the Sims eventually started to talk about the Sims 2 and I got interested; The simlish pop artist trailers and watching a few episodes of let's plays got me really interested, so I bought The Sims 2 double Deluxe on Origin, along with Seasons, Tried to play it.. and, well... I found the game extremely boring. After hearing about the release of the Sims 2 Ultimate, thought I'd give it another try; same results except now I had prettier hair and some better outfits.
Starting with the Sims themselves, I feel like I have no real control over their life. I tried my best to work around the odd CAS (Probably technology restrictions, pass) and thought the personality system was neat. Chose an aspiration and began. Then I come to find out I only vaguely picked a personality for my sim; The game chose from a random roster of lifetime aspirations categorized by the one I chose and randomized their interests. I know you don't have to follow their aspiration, but it's what most of their aspirations are tailored towards. Also, their needs! Jeeeesus Christ, their needs. It seems like they need to shower about 3 times a day and eating 3 times a day seems to be a light snack to them, not to mention they take like 4 in-game hours to eat because they're too busy staring at eachother and gesturing at the table. Or falling asleep in their food because their energy need is low because you went out to a community lot that day.
The gameplay? It's.... it's extremely bland to me for some reason. Between constantly making sure your sim has a nice comfy couch to sit on you can't afford and managing their aspirations, it's extremely unfun. Want to go out with your friends? Sorry, you missed your third shower that day! It's unbelievable how fast their needs drop; I've seen the hunger bar drop quite a bit just while they were eating, and like I said before, you seem to be rushing to fill your Sims' every whim; you have to meet their needs. They're a semi-random personality you gave a face and a few likes to and have barely any control over. It's not about how you want to play, it's how they want you to play with them.
I see people talking about how lively sims seemed to be in this but they seem so empty and dead to me. Their animations are sticky, robotic, and unlife-like (Probably due to the time, not sure...) They always have an extremely blank face and their interactions with eachother are very.. odd.
I will admit I haven't really tried a family from birth, but by the time I usually get a sim pregnant, I'm so bored of the game. I'll probably have to force myself to see how the family dynamic works compared to the Sims 3, though I really have no doubt it's better (Doesn't make gameplay more fun for me.)
Despite the whole rant, I do have a few things I ACTUALLY enjoy about the game! I'm a complete and total sucker for small details and this game sure has a few of them; I love how the Sims use the counters when cooking and actually serve the meal their cooking. They even place the plate down smoother than the Sims 3! And the graphics of the furniture and build objects are extremely great. Most of them are actually really high-poly, most even higher quality than The Sims 3's objects. Eating out in restaurants is pretty cool too, even though my waiter / waitress usually forgets about serving me.
Perhaps I just have to force myself to play this game and deal with it's BS for me to like it, but I just don't think this game is for me and I fail to see how people say it Trumps the Sims 3; The open world is amazing and traits add so much more diversity among my Sims. That said, I don't think The Sims 2 is really that awful and certainty think nothing bad of those who DO enjoy the Sims 2. Apologizes for the really unorganized rant and Happy Simming. :shock:
I may be a bit biased, but The Sims 3 was my first Sims game. I'd never played a simulation game and I thought it was the funnest thing. I started purchasing expansion packs, trying out families, trying to learn different skills for my sims and trying to create all sorts of new sims! My friend who got me into the Sims eventually started to talk about the Sims 2 and I got interested; The simlish pop artist trailers and watching a few episodes of let's plays got me really interested, so I bought The Sims 2 double Deluxe on Origin, along with Seasons, Tried to play it.. and, well... I found the game extremely boring. After hearing about the release of the Sims 2 Ultimate, thought I'd give it another try; same results except now I had prettier hair and some better outfits.
Starting with the Sims themselves, I feel like I have no real control over their life. I tried my best to work around the odd CAS (Probably technology restrictions, pass) and thought the personality system was neat. Chose an aspiration and began. Then I come to find out I only vaguely picked a personality for my sim; The game chose from a random roster of lifetime aspirations categorized by the one I chose and randomized their interests. I know you don't have to follow their aspiration, but it's what most of their aspirations are tailored towards. Also, their needs! Jeeeesus Christ, their needs. It seems like they need to shower about 3 times a day and eating 3 times a day seems to be a light snack to them, not to mention they take like 4 in-game hours to eat because they're too busy staring at eachother and gesturing at the table. Or falling asleep in their food because their energy need is low because you went out to a community lot that day.
The gameplay? It's.... it's extremely bland to me for some reason. Between constantly making sure your sim has a nice comfy couch to sit on you can't afford and managing their aspirations, it's extremely unfun. Want to go out with your friends? Sorry, you missed your third shower that day! It's unbelievable how fast their needs drop; I've seen the hunger bar drop quite a bit just while they were eating, and like I said before, you seem to be rushing to fill your Sims' every whim; you have to meet their needs. They're a semi-random personality you gave a face and a few likes to and have barely any control over. It's not about how you want to play, it's how they want you to play with them.
I see people talking about how lively sims seemed to be in this but they seem so empty and dead to me. Their animations are sticky, robotic, and unlife-like (Probably due to the time, not sure...) They always have an extremely blank face and their interactions with eachother are very.. odd.
I will admit I haven't really tried a family from birth, but by the time I usually get a sim pregnant, I'm so bored of the game. I'll probably have to force myself to see how the family dynamic works compared to the Sims 3, though I really have no doubt it's better (Doesn't make gameplay more fun for me.)
Despite the whole rant, I do have a few things I ACTUALLY enjoy about the game! I'm a complete and total sucker for small details and this game sure has a few of them; I love how the Sims use the counters when cooking and actually serve the meal their cooking. They even place the plate down smoother than the Sims 3! And the graphics of the furniture and build objects are extremely great. Most of them are actually really high-poly, most even higher quality than The Sims 3's objects. Eating out in restaurants is pretty cool too, even though my waiter / waitress usually forgets about serving me.
Perhaps I just have to force myself to play this game and deal with it's BS for me to like it, but I just don't think this game is for me and I fail to see how people say it Trumps the Sims 3; The open world is amazing and traits add so much more diversity among my Sims. That said, I don't think The Sims 2 is really that awful and certainty think nothing bad of those who DO enjoy the Sims 2. Apologizes for the really unorganized rant and Happy Simming. :shock:
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And I absolutely hate the angle I have to see my sims at when I zoom in close enough to see them well. I prefer to view my sims from an angle slightly above them, so I can see and click on the things around them, for them to do interactions. I could probably get used to it if I only played Sims 2 for an extended period, but as I said, I'm more interested in my Sims 3 game, so it doesn't happen.
I also don't like that they disappear when they leave their lot and the loading screen comes on, not just because I have to wait, but among the things I especially love in my Sims 3 game are watching parents take their babies and toddlers on a stroll and jogging. Maybe it seems strange to some players, but I almost never fast forward when I send my sims jogging. I follow them and watch them, and enjoy the scenery when they live outside of town in Sunset Valley or Hidden Springs, like in these pictures:
If they had combined the things I loved in Sims 3 with the wide variety of interactions in the Sims 2 for Sims 4, I think I'd have pre-ordered it, even at the high price they have it at. But instead, they took out my favorite features of the Sims 3, gave the sims emotions that look like they'd be a royal pain to deal with, and make the game unnecessarily complicated, and probably didn't restore the interactions that made the Sims 2 special.
I've never noticed their needs being extreme. It's nice they have to live off of more then two apples a day.
A shower a day unless they're slobs*; more active the more food they need... it works that way in TS2.
Body Shop is best for making Sims because it has more sliders for the face.
There's espresso and coffee in the game or the energizer if you want. That's where the fun is... surviving and flourishing!
You want easy, play TS3. You want hard, play The Sims (1).
(And no way! The only time their faces are blank is when they're not doing anything- like we do when we're reading or thinking- no expression. But TS3- their faces do weird things with their mouths and noses when they talk or smile, it's the ugliest things. I have to wait for them to not talk to take a picture. :shock: )
The Sims 2 will always be better then The Sims 3 for game play, The Sims 3 will always be better for building and creating worlds.
The Sims 4 looks best in CAS - imo- but over bloomed in the world- a world with only a backdrop.
And as I said at the beginning- Each to their own. :thumbup:
Some people probably started with 2, which gives it the nostalgia. But there's also things that were in 2 that just didnt happen with 3, or were different. Some things in 3 I could never lose like the open neighborhoods (hated loading screens) and horses, but some things I just miss from 2. Its the problem of reusing old ideas but changing them just a bit too much, people compare it to the old ones. For example, World Adventures is very gamey with puzzles and such, people might have wanted an actual vacation expansion. University in 2 was one of my favourite expansions, but Im not fond of it at all in 3. I loved the witchcraft system in 2, with the good-evil spells and the pseudo- alignment system, as opposed to 3 where you just get access to all of the spells. Of course, there's things in 3 that weren't in 2 that I just adore, like the whole Island Paradise expansion.
Also, I miss open for business.
but, on the plus side of it, as you said, the high detail, the clothing textures look better and more real, and the floors look great even the sims can look pretty real sometimes.
but it still has that emptiness to me.
I like to think of the games a different rather than upgrades or continuations of each other. Each is good and/or bad in its own way.
Rflong7, did body shop come with the S2UA? I never had it with my base and I keep hearing others mention it.
IreneSwift, have you necked on the couch yet? Use your tab key to release the camera ro the boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and then press the shift I think, it will help to reset the camera. I like to follow even when they are on bikes and in car, no nee to buy car in 2. That is one thing I will miss in 4 also.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Fun with Pets\SP9\CSBin
You can right click on the TS2BodyShop.exe and make a shortcut for it- place it on the Desktop.
Sims 3 (in spite of the ongoing bugginess) is my favorite. I still go back to Sims 2 from time-to-time though.
There are good reasons for this. The main one is that I can start a neighborhood with one sim, then marry, have children, send those children off to university, have them move out and marry on their own, have kids, et cetera.
I have a neighborhood with four or five lines of sim families and hundreds of playable sims populating it (including the expansion districts like Downtown and the Business district that interact with the main neighborhood).
I get to play with genetics and complex interactions across multiple families instead of just one family, one household.
Also, the fact that my vampires can cast spells is pretty nice. Witches being something completely separate in TS3 is something I'll never like. Spell casting is a talent, not a genetic feature.
Plus, Sims 2 (fully patched) is stable while Sims 3 is not.
One last (edited) point. The Sims 2 has continuity across families. It feels more interconnected than The Sims 3. TS3 is always this isolated family each time you play. It feels so... vapid... in that way. The traits, the lifetime rewards, the game play itself seems better in TS3, but it lost a lot of the interconnectedness, the continuity and the feeling of being part of something vast that I got in TS2.
No, I haven't tried that, but I saw a video (or videos?) that someone posted some time last year, comparing the difference between cuddling on the couch and making out in Sims3 and Sims2, and I definitely like Sims 2 better for those. So yes, the interactions are so much better, in any and every way I've seen so far, in Sims 2.
I'll try that bookprop cheat to see if I can reset the angle more to my liking. I'd be more inclined to play Sims 2 a little more often with a better angle. That and the max motives cheat would take care of the biggest drawbacks.
That brings up another point that makes a difference for me. I have no interest in playing the whole town. I have my family I made myself, and I want to play them. Period. I'm very focused and single-minded. Constantly switching to different families with different goals and personalities would disrupt my focus, and make it more of a chore than fun. But if I don't do that in Sims 2, none of the other families age, have children, or anything. It's not a big issue, in that I don't really care what the other families do or whether they have children or age, except that it makes it probably more difficult marrying off my next generation, and, as I've read that someone else mentioned, it's weird when your third generation children are playing with the same kids their grandparents played with.
I also am not really that interested in playing generation after generation. In Sims 3, when my founding sim and their spouse die, the game is done, and I move on to another. It doesn't work that way in Sims 2. I can't start a fresh, new game in the same world I've played, starting at the same point as the previous one, because once you've played that world is forever changed, and there's no going back to the way it was.
If I had started from the beginning with the Sims, I might feel differently. But Sims 3 was my first, and I've loved it right from the start, just as it is, in spite of the bugs and glitches. I have mods installed that do a pretty good job of taking care of them, and I've had my computer upgraded so it handles the game very well, and have never had some of the really bad issues that others have posted about having from time to time. I expect to still be playing Sims 3 as long as I have a computer that will still play it, which I hope will be for the rest of my life. (I'm old enough for that to be a real possibility.)
The only reason I bought the sims 1 was that my husband found it in a bargain bin while were looking for games for him, and pointed it out to me specifically- because it was made by the same that made the game I so loved to build cities up and attack with robots. (In my defense, it was really funny). I looked at it and it looked kind of boring to play just one sim (I'd just been managing huge cities full of them!), but the buglar on the front hinted at some possible excitement, so I decided to try it out (and remember, bargain bin). I thought it was fun, but it really annoyed me that the kids didn't look like the parents and they stayed kids forever. Towards the end of sims 1, I had seen there were people who made things to make the kids look like short teenagers, and that was kinda cool, but they still never did anything like a teenager. So when sims 2 came out, and had genetics (the kids actually got hair color and eye color and skin color from their parents) and gasp, they aged...yes, this meant they could die of old age...but for those who didn't want aging (like sims 1), there was a way to turn it off.
There were fears and memories (sims could remember who potty trained them, who taught them to walk, who they had their first kiss with, they weren't screenshots yet, but sims 1 had no such thing)- your sim could have a nervous break down... if you want to see what's so fun about sims 2, you really should play a family...find a sim with a goal and then very carefully not do it. Watch them slip into the red...watch them panhandle or rock a sack of flower or talk to the social bunny. There are real risks to sims for failing, and it's harder to meet their goals, and the further behind they are, the harder it is. The game is more challenging, but there are more endearing interactions. Because your sims were in real risk of just randomly dying (I had a familiy that's two heirs died on the same day due to freak accidents), you valued their progress more. Keeping them alive was hard, so you had to be good at it- which means that when the simmers that played 2 came to three, they found the game impossibly dull- I didn't want to come to 3, I was having fun with 2, and I couldn't get used to the weird way 3 looked, and next to the point system where people had different values of neatness/slobbiness, niceness/meanness, etc, traits seemed rather less personality- even though it gave the sim in question some area in which they stood out from others- with five traits, you didn't have the same varied reactions to things as with the point system in 2... but my husband had seen my initial excitement when I thought 3 was going to be 2 with an open world, and he bent over backwards to buy it for me for my birthday that year- money was tight but he updated the computer so it could run it and bought me the game, and I wouldn't be ungrateful because I knew what he was trying to do, so of course I started playing 3. It took a little while to win me over, but I really love reading to toddlers, and the fact that you can see the baby's needs like it's a real person from the time it's born- in two, you can only see the baby's needs if you study parenting books and that was added later in the expansions. The optimal baby routine was bottle snuggle snuggle (it'll burp) play with, plus changing the diaper dropped the diaper on the floor and it had to be disposed of- as though it was a real object...and you could bathe babies in the sink (it was adorable). Oh, and the babies had arms and legs that you could see, and they would splash. Toddlers had this nasty habit of playing in the toilet unless you had a funner toy closer.
But you're coming at it from a different angle. You aren't coming from sims 1, you're coming from sims 3. There have been improvements- and you will only see them as things you can't do in that game that you can in sims 3. That's why I don't go back to sims 2- because there were many things I loved about that game, and I had a lot of fun. I've played multiple versions of Cassandra Goth- in one game she got stood up at the altar by Don Lothario and ended up with Darek Dreamer. In the next she married Don Lothario and had a daughter with him. I love how you can play the exact same day (if you go to the goths, the wedding is all set up) and different things will happen, not even all of your own doing- and this is something that all the sims have in common. In sims 2, there are interests at different levels of interest that sims talk about (there is an an entire tab showing how many points this sim is interested in crime or toys, for example) you can change the interests by buying magazines, but they have actual interests without it having to be a trait. Every sim has interests. This affects conversations and how the sims relate to each other. There are preferences and chemistry- some guys are way more interested if a woman's in her bathing suit, or wearing a hat, or whatever it is you or the game selected for that sim... the different levels of chemistry behave differently. But they don't just have things that attract them, they have turn offs too. If your sim is pursuing someone and finds out she's got a turn off of face hair and your sim has face hair, it's pretty easy to fix this problem by getting rid of the face hair... Also, the items interact differently depending on what you have on your lot...you can only make certain recipes if you have the right item on your lot, the tragic clown is more likely to show up if you have a painting of the tragic clown lol.
Also, there are interactions like 'family kiss' or the one where the adults dance with the kid and put the kid's feet on their feet, it's adorable.
I think of it fondly, but I don't want to go back to sims 2 from sims 3, because I'll just do what you're doing...I'll just be frustrated that I can't read the kids skill books (but I can feed them smart milk) and I'll be frustrated that I have loading screens again, and have to actually go to the grocery store or have groceries delivered and remind my sim to put them in the fridge so they don't go bad! Oh, and have to manually age everyone up- or have them stay the same age forever (when they are not part of the active household in sims 2, they don't age...unless you age them up at your sims birthday or take them off to college with your sim). So, there are good things and bad things...it's funny that I miss fears. But mostly I miss the interactions between sims being a bit deeper, and you can try anything on the menu in sims 2, you don't have to work your way up to being able to click on it like sims 3, where the option is simply not there until you get to a certain point. But I really like basements, and I'm sure I'd just be really frustrated with the old building tools after being spoiled with sims 3 tools and CAS. So, if you are going to play sims 2, be aware that what you are looking for is in the interactions. Oh, and try a few pre-made families so you can experience family interactions...
One more example in what I'm talking about, if you start from sims 3, sims don't need ladders to get out of the water- the previous games sims did- that's what's being referenced in Brandi Broke's storyline- that her husband died in a tragic pool ladder accident- since in sims 1 people would often execute their sims by sending them swimming and taking the ladder away. This was still an option until sims 3. So, if you go into it with the idea that the sims should be able to climb out without a ladder, you're going to conclude that these stupid sims are so useless they can't get out of a pool. Or you could just be happy they can woohoo in cars lol.
Also, I do remember glitches- I do not have rosy goggles on that point, there were some bad glitches, and the habit I got into of waiting until the next game came out to buy this one was established because of the glitches and patches- they wouldn't patch it until the next game came out...you know, kind of like now, except that certain things have never been fixed. There was the nanny problem...food came from the fridge, all of it, bottles did not come out of thin air, they were removed from the fridge...so, when a nanny would glitch and come take a bottle out of the fridge, walk to the crib and lay it on the floor, she was emptying your fridge of food- food that, as I mentioned, would have to be replaced by a trip to the grocery store or paying to have groceries delivered. So I rather firmly remember a nanny seeding the entire floor with bottles...I was not happy. Also Bon Voyage, as much I loved that expansion had a bit of glitchiness with the concierge. So, I can tell you for certain that the game had glitches- I had to learn how to patch- and the fact that I loved the game was the only reason I put up with having to patch the game because that was a lot more work than normal games required.
I feel like Sims 2 family dynamic was much closer; child sims would run to hug their parents when they returned home from work! Romantic interactions seemed more intimate, like cuddling on the couch where one sim actually sits on the lap of the other and they make cute faces and whisper in each others' ears. There are definitely things that I find annoying though, like how eating a meal with another sim takes like 5 hours because they talk so much or of course the horrible loading screens and the fact that you're basically confined to your lot. Also, sims got way smarter in Sims 3 with regard to getting around obstacles. In Sims 2, if there was a sim in the way of them for half a second, they would just give up and yell at you but in Sims 3 they wait longer for someone to move or they find a way around the obstacle more often than not.
With the Sims 3, the open world was a complete game changer in my opinion and I love it; that is one thing I really miss when I play Sims 2 because I get bored being on my home lot all the time and having to sit at a loading screen to go to a community lot, which really aren't that fun anyway. I also like how you can plan a sims' outfit without having to purchase new clothes from a community lot and how you can have 3 preset outfits for them to change between rather than having to make a new one every day in the Sims 2 if you want your sims to have rotating outfits. I love how you can customize everything on the Sims 3! I get very particular about things matching in my house/with my outfits and it's annoying in Sims 2 when you can only choose from preset styles of things and can't find exactly what you need. I also feel like building friendships is a lot easier in the Sims 3; in Sims 2 it seemed that you had to tell a joke to a sim like 15 times and engage in lots of small talk before they would even begin to like you (they would just straight up reject your conversation much of the time). Granted, I often use cheats to drag relationship bars up and also their needs. I can't play either game without controlling their needs via cheats. I still make them eat and shower and sleep but without the cheats, that's all I would be doing! Speaking of cheats though, there were so many more fun cheat things you could do in Sims 2 with the tombstone and sim modder and just general weirdness!
I wish that I could combine all the positive aspects of both games to create my own Sims 4 version, but then I would probably never be able to stop playing! :P
They had to implement universities, they did it in the best way they could. They had to give us a nightlife, that was really a nightlife with all it was supposed to have. The Open For Business system is magical, so much efficient and fun, with features for all kind of sims and stories you'd possible have. And list goes on... Seasons, Bon Voyage, the magnificent apartments, even the whitches thing that was not supposed to be a major thing, all these things were awesome and really well made for the base game we already had, much of them totally new.
And yes, the leap from The Sims (1) was absurd for whomever witnessed it. It's impossible don't look at it with some nostalgia sometimes but it's a proof that the game made people feel really happy.
If I have to compare with the following games, I would say The Sims 2 doesn't have the best mechanics, graphics, but has the best ideas, the best concepts, and was trying to make difference, things I would never say about The Sims 3.
Legacy Photomode
Do you have a link? I've spent months searching for one with no result.
http://modthesims.info/t/485887
yup 100% true. Going from Sims 1 to Sims 2 was mind blowing! you could fully spin the camera. scroll up close to your sims. customize your sim like never before! Pregnancy. There was soooo much! For once, the base game was impossible to turn off! imo it is the best because it really was a full entire awesome step forward for the Sims franchise. Everything about it was an upgrade. It was better. Which is all we've wanted since then. And have hardly gotten...
*Team Seasons*
youtu.be/evFRA6oe7Is