By Logan Hosoda
For this week’s spotlight, I’m gonna talk about The Sims 2, one of my favorite games to hit the PS2 back in the day! It was developed by EA Games, and released in 2004 for Windows, and later ported to consoles. Now, I’ve never played any version aside from the PS2 version, so all features mentioned will be available to that version specifically. For anybody that doesn’t know, The Sims is a series that’s based on the thought of living your life through a character that you created, with a heavy focus on realism (to a quite vague extent). You need to play the game as you would your own life, improve your skills, get a job that governs those skills, climb the corporate ladder, and become majorly successful, or fulfill whatever aspiration you chose to fulfill throughout the game.
What really stands out about The Sims 2 specifically, which crowns it as the best sims game available in my opinion, is the co-op feature. Yes, you can play through the entire story mode in co-op. Each player begins by making their own sim, customizing how you look, what your goals in life are, etc. Then you embark on the adventure together, working your way up in life. It’s a feature that has unfortunately been absent in every other Sims game in the series, which personally has left a large co-op shaped hole in the future entries.
There’s two modes that you can experience in co-op for The Sims 2, which includes the main story mode, and free play. In story mode, you progress through a set list of objectives, all of which you must fulfill while at the same time keeping your Sim alive and satisfied (which is surprisingly difficult at times). Once you complete every objective, you’ll eventually gain the ability to move into a new location, with a bigger house, and different roommates. As for free play mode, you are given a budget at the beginning, and can create an entire house from scratch! Meaning, you must create the full layout, the floors, walls, ceiling, lighting, appliances… Everything! It can be pretty fun if you’re creative, but if you like progression, then story mode is the way to go.
There are loads of things to do in The Sims 2, and all of them are made better when you have a friend to enjoy it with you. If you want a slow paced game that you can kick back and relax with, the Sims 2 is a great option. So go on out there and live an awesome life… as a Sim! Just remember to not walk in on people taking a dump, they’ll hate you for it. Oh, and stay away from fire, and other dangerous things, or you’ll die… Yeah...