If you love The Sims, you will worship The Sims 2. Here’s the scoop about the anticipated sequel of our beloved life simulation game.
The Create-a-Sim feature will offer numerous options to customize your Sim, including different hairstyles and colors, make-up, facial hair, eye color, skin tone, accessories and of course lots of clothing styles.
Your Sims will start with the personality that you give them, or they will inherit it from their Sim parents. Their personalities will develop according to the choices they make in life, their behavior in certain situations and the memories they keep from their own actions.
Beware of cravings and morning sickness! A great innovation in this sequel is that you will follow your Sims from birth to old age. Your family will live through generations and the older Sims will be able to meet their grandchildren. However, there is still a maximum of 8 people per household.
Of course, with different ages come different tastes, so you can expect a wide selection of objects and many new interactions specific for each age. And since they now grow old, they will also be able to die of old age.
Some of the other new content includes tons of amazing new objects, customizable to the last pixel: change the foliage on trees, the countertops in the kitchen, wood types, fence color and even the pattern on the fabric of your sofa.
There will be new career options with unlockable career objects and a brand new helicopter car pool, you have more camera angles to observe your Sims (including first-person) and some life events will have cinematics to go with them.
One thing that I am really looking forward to is building and decorating, since it has always been my favorite part of the game. The new features include being able to build on hills, have a 3-story house and add an attic on top of that, place doors and windows on diagonal walls (yes, finally some use for diagonal walls!), modular stairs and even a deck. I’ve heard things about adding a basement, so we’ll have to wait and see about that.
Landscaping is now a much more in-depth option, and you will even be able to have your own putting green in the back. Another cool little detail is that you won’t see the gray area around the lot you are working on anymore. You will also be able to move a house to another lot once it is built (with family and everything).
Lots from Sim City 4 can be imported to customize the neighborhoods in The Sims 2. And speaking of neighborhoods, there will be a separate community area where your Sims will be able to go for some recreation or shopping, motivated by the need of groceries or clothing, or just for a dive in the community pool.
The Sims 2 Body Shop lets you create and customize Sims as well as sharing them with others by uploading them to the Showcase. Downloading is not available yet, but it will work pretty much as The Sims Exchange where you can get families and lots for your Sims game. You can already get it here: http://thesims2.ea.com/bodyshop.php
Quoting Darren Futa, TS2 producer, “Body Shop is just a taste of the content goodness waiting for you in the game.” Working with this program will get you the feel of the Create-a-Sim tool, and you will see how detailed it actually is. Add sunglasses, change the nose, lengthen the forehead, shorten the chin and choose the clothing from Formal, Casual, Athletic, Undies, PJ’s or Swimwear.
While they will only have a set of clothes, once you open your Sim in the Create a Family option in the game, you can give them more fashion options. For further customization, you can create your own set of textures. Pretty cool, huh?
As far as player-made content goes, there are plans to release a free downloadable tool in December (which I assume will be a Transmogrifier sort of tool to clone and alter objects) and there are plans for Homecrafter 2 as well so you can create your own walls and floors.
The Sims 2 is expected to ship on September 17, 2004, and expansion packs are in the plans for the future.
They are also in my plans for the future!