Notes: The Sims 2

Welcome to the Swamp

You want to play God. Go ahead, admit it. There's nothing to be ashamed about - everybody wants to command the very forces of creation itself. It's built into us from very early on that we must enact our will upon our surroundings. Handy then, that Will Wright and co. have given us so many options for living out our deepest and shallowest fantasies in the forms of video games.

I realize I'm about a year behind the curve on this one, but a few weeks ago I picked up a discount copy of The Sims 2. Of course the first thing I did to familiarize myself with the game was to build my college apartment and put digital copies of my roommates in it. I've been told that for most people, dropping your friends into the Sims is your personal end game. For me, it's just a good place to get started. I mean, come on, look at how happy Eric looks playing Jedi Knight! I'm not sure he actually owns pajamas like that but I like to think he does.

The sequel to the The Sims (original title - Sims: Devourer of Time) has most of the familiar elements of the first game. You build a home, put people in it, monitor their various needs and play out complex social dramas involving leveling up your cooking skill, throwing parties and buying expansion packs. Unfortunately it also has many of the same design faults, i.e., I'm really not interested in spending a lot of time organizing the collective bowel movements of a four-person family. I don't care what they say about the smart new AI, you still have to micromanage the use of the toilet if you want a happy Sim.

Flaws aside, the new game engine is remarkable. It pushes the limits of my top end machine, looks great, and is amazingly customizable. The home-building controls are extremely detailed and now include basements, patios, decks, bi-level floors and hundreds of new design elements. I could spend hours working on architecture alone.

Not exactly right, but eerily familiar

The character animations have also been brought up to match the complexity of the new meshes. They're simply gorgeous, and fun to watch, ranging from the flamboyant (one of the hugs is a leap into the arms, a la Shaggy and Scooby) to the subtle (simple body language will tell you how a conversation is going before the relationship numbers change). Still, a lot of the actual activity seems pretty banal. Here's us eating the toasted ham sandwiches Eric made with his new George Foreman Grill:

Ben and I look skeptical, and I think Jason is suggesting Cocoa Beef as an alternative, but we shall not speak of this.

I could go on and on about the other denizens I've been working on - the multi-child Frazzle family, the college kids hunting aliens, the country farmer couple with the comely daughter, or the mysterious goings on behind the steel walls of The Institute, but you get the idea. You can be a lot more creative right out of the box with this monster than with the original. It's tasty brain candy. The only real problems I've had so far is that sometimes a piece of furniture will get bugged, forcing you to tear down the whole damn house to fix it, and some of the behaviours are hard to predict based solely on the personality profiles. For example, I think I made Jason too lazy, because he routinely forgets to wear pants.

Now, if playing with virtual dolls isn't your thing (they're action figures, I swear!), you can look forward to Will Wright's next project, which apparently will render his entire life's work to date obsolete. That's ballsy.