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The Sims 2

By Dave Kosak

Will Wright's cheeky life-simulator prepares to take it totally over the top.

Spiffy: New focus on long-term goals and relationships. Tons of building options.
Iffy: Will the new 3D engine may tax the patience of more casual players?

C'mere, son, and sit on my knee. I think you're old enough now to learn about the Sim Birds and Sim Bees. You see, when a mommy Sim and a daddy Sim love each other very much, they get together to make "Woo Hoo." Woo Hoo, son. Most of the time you have Woo Hoo in bed, but sometimes you can have it in a hot tub, and -- what's that? You don't understand? The mechanics of it? Well, son, you just sorta disappear under the blankets for a while and ... Woo Hoo. You'll figure it out. It's fair to say that some Sims are preoccupied with Woo Hoo. In fact, for many of us, Woo Hoo is a way of life. Anyways, after the Woo Hoo comes the babies, who look like their Sim Mommy and Sim Daddy put together, even if one of them was obviously an alien. Sim Babies all have their own needs and wants and goals that change as they grow older, until they're young adults. And then, if they're anything like your father here, they too will want Woo Hoo. All the time. With multiple partners. Who, ideally, shouldn't ever find out about one another. So ... about what you've seen today ...

In a recent interview, game designer Will Wright said that the many expansion packs for The Sims helped the design team figure out the feature set for The Sims 2. That explains a lot. The original game was an inherently cheeky take on "simulating" modern life, but the sequel goes completely over the top: we're talking about wild passion, sprawling mansions, generational conflicts, high hopes, shattered dreams, aliens and ghost stories. Not to mention copious Woo Hoo. Sims 2 is an open-ended computer toy. It looks to have everything that made the original game unique and special, but with even more of the fun stuff.

As in the original game, you'll guide the lives of little simulated families as they start a career and manage their relationships. The Sims 2 brings three new features to the table: For one, your little Sims now grow up, grow old, and even pass away from age. However, they also pass along their genes (children will look like their parents), and you can raise children from infants to adulthood, generation after generation (we talked about this a great deal in our first preview. A second new feature is new goal-oriented gameplay, where instead of micromanaging your Sims immediate needs (they pretty much eat or use the toilet on their own), you focus on their main lifetime aspirations (this was the subject of our recent E3 preview). A third new feature is the ability to take movies, to literally record video of your Sims' story, to edit or upload to share with others.

Create a Sims Story
"We've created a great intersection of storytelling and gameplay," explained Producer Jonathan Knight during our recent demo. Part of the joy of the original game was watching the life story of a family unfold, and The Sims 2 builds this into gameplay. Each of the three starting towns has its own storyline, with feuding families, strange mysteries, or unrequited love. You can also create your own (more below), setting the scene with panels of pictures and text. Every family also has its own story: troubled teens, lecherous grandpas, crazy alien babies and the like. You can create your own families and write their own stories as well, even uploading them or others to share.

The point isn't to lock players into a plotline, but rather to give them something to sink their teeth into. What happens next is completely up to the player: it's like an instant soap opera, waiting for your magic touch to start the next thrilling episode. The story-like aspect of the game is enhanced by the lifetime goals of the individual Sims, and by the limited time they have as they grow old. It's like a hundred story arcs are overlapping every time you play -- it's a whole new level of addiction.

Powerful moments in a Sim's life are not only accompanied by a dramatic cutscene, they're also remembered for later. After your teenage Sim gets her first kiss, you'll see her fondly remembering the moment for months on end. She might even talk to others about it. During our demo, a whole family of Sims saw their dad get kidnapped by aliens. Afterwards, they all talked about it with each other in loud, panicked Sim-lish voices. Sims 2 is all about telling stories -- which is why being able to save them to video is so compelling.

Goal-Oriented Gameplay
As mentioned previously, the focus of the game is on managing your Sims' long-term goals instead of their basic needs (which they now pretty much handle on their own.) Your Sim may want to pursue family, career, knowledge, fame, or love -- and he or she will get little goals along the way (such as kissing a boy she has a crush on, or getting a big promotion.) Meet these goals and your score goes up. You'll even get a rank, such as "Hormonal Hurricane" or "Towering Tycoon."

Sims that are doing poorly with their life's goals will become loose cannons, causing a lot of trouble. We saw one angry teen swinging on a refrigerator door. On the other hand, Sims who are scoring really high get a special icon above their heads and enter "platinum mode." Life is going so well for them that little setbacks (lie being bored or uncomfortable) no longer get them down. They're walking on sunshine!

Score enough points by meeting goals and your Sim will be able to purchase "Aspiration Awards," extremely special items that change the gameplay significantly. Like the money tree, pictured above. You might instead opt for "The Love Tub," a special hot tub wherein no promiscuous advance is rejected. Or the ultra-rare "elixir of life," which will prolong your Sim's existence in the world.

A Home of Your Own
Building and decorating cool houses was a major draw in the original game, so considerable effort has been put into making The Sims 2 into a more fully-featured architectural simulation. The new 3D engine helps a lot here. But the options are staggering. Not only is there more furniture than ever before, but most furniture can be reupholstered or stained in different colors. Stairways can be of any height, so you can design fun split-level homes or tiered outdoor patios. When you build a fireplace, it'll also include a chimney that'll soar up through the second floor and roof of the house. Speaking of roofs, they're now configurable: You can create roofs of any style and even define the slopes anywhere you want. Terrain can be painted onto the ground as if with an airbrush, so you can create winding outdoor paths that look natural.

The neighborhoods themselves are also configurable. There are three starting towns with families and backstories, but dozens more to pick from and populate with your own cast of crazies. You can plant trees or landscape features on the town map (including an enormous sunken stone head that looks suspiciously like game creator Will Wright.) As if that isn't enough, you can actually fire up Sim City 4 and use the terrain and road tools to create your own town map, then upload it right into The Sims 2.

Everything you create -- towns, town maps, houses, families, and more can be uploaded to the Internet with the click of a button. We figure it won't be long before the number of people and places you can download will be staggering. The online community, aggressively supported by Maxis and EA, was a big draw for the first game and they're aiming for a repeat performance.

True Tales of Sim Insanity
What will truly make The Sims 2 so entertaining is the variety of situations your Sims can find themselves in. One of the starting neighborhoods, "Veronaville," is a Shakespearean parody split by a peaceful flowing river. One side of the river is dominated by the Capp family, and features stately Tudor architecture. The other side is pastoral and filled with Mediterranean-style villas, the largest of which is occupied by the Montys. Their children, Romeo and Juliet, have a budding love affair underway, despite a generations-old family feud. Nearby, to cause even more problems, are the Summerdream family -- whose house looks suspiciously like the stage of an Elizabethan theatre -- featuring a crazily dressed Oberon and Titania. Will love bloom? Or war? What fools these Sims be!

As before, ghosts of dead Sims can come back to haunt you, but now the ghosts are even more active. If your Sim drowns, he or she might come back as a blue-tinged ghost, leaving puddles everywhere. Sims who burn to death in a fire come back as glowing red spirits who might start fires of their own. Hungry ghosts raid your fridge, and restless spirits might haunt inanimate objects. Which is good to know, should your coffee maker start hopping around the kitchen.

No relationship is too strange for the Sims, meaning if you play the game that way, you'll rapidly turn your computer into a living episode of The O.C. You can now even flirt with your local maid, cop, or fireman -- getting to know them by name, maybe even marrying. Yes, it's possible for a Sim to keep calling the fire department when there's no fire, just to hit on the hunk that comes to your house. Oh, and aliens need love too. Just another day in the life of a Sim...

The possibilities seem endless, with wide-open gameplay that allows you to shape your own Sim comedy or family drama. The team at EA is still holding fast to their September 17th release date, so the wait is wrapping up. Meanwhile, you can check out the Sims 2 Body Shop, a free application that allows you to create and modify Sim characters to upload into the game when it comes out. Stick around for more information as the game nears release!