Requesting Feedback for LGR!
Added 2024-08-26 19:05:16 +0000 UTCGreetings, folks! I'm finally done with attending conventions for the season and I'm moving onto the next big projects on LGR. And the biggest one (other than a video about Long Island Retro) is the 20th anniversary for The Sims 2. I'm hoping to have a video about it out in September and I would love feedback from any who care to share.
After asking lots of LGR viewers about this at the past few conventions, I've learned that many of y'all stopped at The Sims 2 before becoming turned off/bored with the franchise after that. If that's you, I'd love to hear why!
I'd also be happy to hear about why TS2 never appealed to you at all, if that's the case. Or if you were one of those who played the first Sims and tried the second, only to bounce off of it and not like it at all.
Perspectives basically, I'm seeking perspectives. As well as any memories relating to the first two Sims games, good or bad. Thank you for your input and support, and I'll be back with a video of some kind in the coming week(s)!
Comments
Sims2 - 6 months in gameplay got repetitive Sims3 - 9 months in gameplay got repetitive Sims4 - 12 months in gameplay got repetitive i ain’t a gamer I guess…
Big Earl Sellar
2024-11-13 19:04:09 +0000 UTCI knew of the Sims, have watched other play the game but I have never been into the Sims. I watch your videos on the Sims because I enjoy your presentation. I don't think I would seek it out but because it is you, it's different. I think the game is interesting but I don't see me ever taking the time to play it. That said, I enjoy your videos on the Sims, I can play them vicariously through you!
CubicleNate
2024-09-06 18:28:17 +0000 UTCI had heard about The Sims, but never tried it myself. At about 12 years old, I was at MicroCenter one day and saw a computer running it as a demo. I played around for about 10 minutes and was enjoying myself. Then I decided to see what this "WooHoo" thing was. Then in the middle of the store with people around, I found out! I was so embarrassed that I ran away from the computer. Because of that, I never got the courage to play it again, and certainly not ask my parents to buy it!
Will Herrmann
2024-08-31 06:10:55 +0000 UTCThe first I saw of The Sims 2 was on a show called Gamezville, which I used to watch before going to school. My family didn't really have much money at the time, so buying a brand-new game was a difficult ask; but that Christmas, I ended up with my very own copy of the 4-CD edition... in Thai. (I should note, at this juncture, I am from the UK...) It included a little note on where to download a patch so we could install the English version, so we got that and away I went! The first thing I did, because of course, was to recreate my family as best I could. None of my Sims were especially good likenesses. I also didn't know how to make food or anything, so my Sims subsisted entirely on takeaway pizza. I remember being a bit confused by the voices, putting it down to the fact I had a foreign copy of the game. Took a while for me to realise that it was on purpose. The following years, I gobbled up every expansion pack I could afford. Nightlife was a favourite with the drivable cars, and while I couldn't exactly get my head around running a business or going to university, I still enjoyed the new build and buy mode items that came with each expansion. (Then I discovered the Sims Exchange and MTS2... hoo boy!) Worth noting that I used to play on a laptop that really wasn't capable of running the game, and ran into the Pink Soup problem all the darn time. It's a wonder I didn't give it up as a bad job, but that's just the sign of a truly great game, right? (Let's not get into the whole corruption thing!) I've not really stopped playing TS2 ever since, especially after the Ultimate Collection came out on Origin. It's amazing that there's still stuff about this game I'm discovering - for example, I had no idea about the little aspiration skill tree until very recently! I also hadn't really played a full generation from start to finish, until I played a random legacy challenge a couple of years ago. Good times, man. The Sims series thus far has peaked with TS2. I personally never got on with TS3, although I keep saying I should spend more time with it; and we all know about TS4 by now, I'm sure. Not really sure how to end this... so I'll just finish by saying Dag Dag. - LunarLoony
Tim
2024-08-30 19:37:33 +0000 UTCThe Sims 2 remains one of my favorite PC games. Period! I still play it on my old AMD Phenom II PC that I built in 2008 just after finishing my Junior Year in high school. It still runs its original Windows Vista SP2 install! The only Sims games I love more would be the PS2 port of the original and its sort of sequel, The Sims: Bustin’ Out. I still play those frequently, but, I digress, so back to TS2. The best memories I have of that game are from convincing my parents to please buy a copy of the game for me as a birthday present even though the ancient Windows 95 PC we had collecting dust could very clearly not run the game. My solution was to ask the manager of my local cybercafé if I could install and play the game on one of the machines there. Some may recall that the Sims 2 was released both in a special DVD Edition (recently bought a copy on eBay for fun) and as four CD-ROMs. While the manager, Adam, gave me permission to install the game, he pointed out that none of the machines in the café had DVD-ROM drives so my father and I drove to the GameStop in the neighboring town and successfully exchanged the DVD edition of the CD-ROM edition (still have my discs) and I was off! I can’t tell you the number of hours I spent on Saturday mornings playing at that café, paying $4 per hour no less, to experience that absolutely magical game! I was there so often that when Adam was selling some of their older Windows 98SE, 2.0GHz machines as part of a café wide system refresh later on, I first confirmed that they met the specs for TS2 and then pleaded with my father to buy me one for $300 just so I could play that game at home. Figuring I had likely spent about that much at the café playing the game up to that point he went with me to hand Adam the check and I took the machine home and put its GeForce 4200Ti to work rendering the wonders of Pleasantview and the many sims it contained, and indeed everything else the game had to offer even before any of the expansion packs were released! While I may not have that machine anymore, what a time, what a joy, what a game! I also loved so many of the little things about TS2 like being able to own a helicopter or a car that you could take to and from other lots and your pup could travel with you. I also really appreciated how much content the expansions provided, they really changed and enhanced the gameplay significantly. Several of the lots for houses are also still my favorites in the series! Some of the uniforms for careers, especially those in the military career track were excellent. I can’t forget figuring out how to max all skills in only a few days game time via the Knowledge Aspiration and The Eclectic and Enigmatic Energizer! I’ll also never forget the first baby that my sims had to raise! If you didn’t get to the child in the crib fast enough when they woke up from a nap, they would start to cry uncontrollably until you came to pick them up and hold them awhile. The sheer confusion I felt when my sim was suddenly abducted while stargazing late one evening with his telescope is an experience I can still recall even though that was twenty years ago now. Was my sim assaulted by ET!? He gave birth to a green alien child a few days later! I also still have expansions to explore even after all these years with the game! I like TS3 and still have a lot of DLC to explore there but I wish the game performed a tad better and was a touch more stable, it still has issues even on vastly more powerful machines relative to its release era that are running older versions of Windows. I also really liked the open neighborhood concept; I was sorry to see it removed from The Sims 4. The Sims 4 I wanted to like but I hated Origin and there is just too much now, a frustration you have also expressed in your always excellent reviews. It has wide content, but not much depth, a compromise caused by trying to appeal to the widest audience and the game, owing to its sheer mass is still teeming with bugs. I gave up on it long ago and don’t see a return in my near future. TS2, all day, every day!
James
2024-08-28 02:39:27 +0000 UTCI distinctly remember purchasing the sims 2 double deluxe for PC for a cool $20, a lot of money for a 10 year old. I cannot even begin to enumerate how many memorable moments this game has created for me, even to this day. I remember it struggling to play on my mid 2000s refurbished eMachines. no matter how slow it played it was still able to portray and tell many sim stories very well. it was clear that even the smallest details were thought out by maxis. even the burglars that steal lamp post lighting. Nostalgia aside, I still prefer sims 2 over the newer installments, especially if one was able to get the ultimate collection from origin. it's well developed and runs well on modern systems. On the other hand you have sims 3 and 4 that still have bugs and hiccups even with today's modern systems. which are inexcusable when they are charging as much as they have for the base game and all the packs and throwing ads at your face. The sims 2 will always have the nostalgia factor in my book, it is simple and uncluttered and well optimized.
Tyler Winstead
2024-08-28 01:52:20 +0000 UTCI mostly played The Sims to build and decorate houses. I’d make a family that fit the house’s aesthetic, but pretty quickly I’d move on to another empty lot and start a new house project. Later versions expanded on the actual Sims/roleplay stuff and seemed to make that part of the game the focus (to my eyes anyway), so I just stuck with the OG. I liked how simple it was I guess. Also didn’t help that my very meh Gateway couldn’t run later versions well.
scoHish
2024-08-27 21:30:22 +0000 UTCI think the issue for me was that I was kinda done with the concept. The Sims 2 did the same the original game did but prettier. Didn't really much expand on the idea, so I bounced off it pretty quickly. The only thing that really brought me back into the series was the couple of GBA/DS games, as those had an actual adventure vibe. There was the whole life management aspect, sure, but also there was a story, there was actual dialogue, there were quests. I found that much more engaging.
Pablo Rodriguez
2024-08-27 20:28:52 +0000 UTCSame here. My sibs and I had a lot of fun building together in S1, but I think what led to me eventually abandoning the Sims was this overwhelming feeling of sadness it gave me. Was it the melancholy music? The control over those helpless little people? Passing my own time watching them doing the mundane? I know these factors appeal to so many others, but I found it painful! In retrospect, I think other simulation games are a bit more my speed, where the focus is networks and construction on a larger scale.
frankie2chins
2024-08-27 17:48:08 +0000 UTCI remember really liking the original unexpanded sims, coz it felt like there was a "win state" - like once you had the 2.4 happy children and the big TV that was it, start a new family. Then I got the Livin Large expansion (or Livin it up as it was in the UK) and there was far too much choice paralysis so I got bored pretty quickly. Then of course the expansion packs became all the sims was about, heh
Andy Tait
2024-08-27 10:06:00 +0000 UTCThe first two Sims games came out when I was very little. I played the first game off a pirated copy that one of my schoolmates lend to me in grade school. I can't remember the year, but I still had an old AT machine with a Pentium cpu, just a few megs of RAM and Windows 98. My parents noticed that this game is not "stupid" and "violent" so they later bought me The Sims 2 as a birthday present in 2007, bundled with the Seasons expansion pack. (I still had the Pentium pc, but it couldn't ran the game, so I had to play it on my parents' computer... It was a Core2Duo, with a dedicated NVIDIA card, and Windows XP!) I really enjoyed that game, remember spending sometimes whole days playing it. When The Sims 3 gained popularity here, I was already in high school (2011ish). I gave up on game piracy by then, so I wanted to buy that game for myself, but that never really happened... I had little money and I wasn't good at saving up, and that game cost a fortune (on my scale back then). I always had something more interesting I would spend my money on. So I ended up never buying the game, and thus never getting it. It wasn't really popular among my friends, so we usually played other games... I eventually stopped playing The Sims 2 and probably because of that I lost the incentive to buy the third game. When The Sims 4 came out and I saw what it was compred to what I knew about Sims 3 it didn't really got me.
Marcsello Hooves
2024-08-27 07:15:50 +0000 UTCI got the first Sims as I had always wanted to LIVE in my SIMcity. So first disapointment was that it was just a neighborhood not in your city and you couldn't even really go anywhere. But I did play it as it seemed novel but at some point the mechanics started to feel annoying, your sim peeing themselves for reasons and it all started to feel like a simulation of a real life grind. And it was and I realized I don't need this, I have real life grind but without peeing myself constantly so I moved on to other games to escape the real life grind, not re-do it on screen. My friends, who also tried it out and got some fun out of it ultimately felt the same way and moved on.
J Ruonti
2024-08-27 05:49:00 +0000 UTCClint!!! (To be read in the classic “Detective Barbie” voice. The Sims 2 was the game me and my wife bonded over. In our early 20s she would stay over and play for many hours until she passed out from exhaustion and then I would take over and play all night, trying to resist the urge to mess up her carefully constructed families by flirting and WooHoo-ing with her Sims. I went on to play and love The Sims 3, and then went on further to tolerate The Sims 4, until I didn’t. TLDR: Perspective! She abandoned the game went it “went all 3D and complicated”. I embraced it. She’s a casual gamer. I’m an obsessive gamer. I think that’s where The Sims divided its audience. Rock on my friend. Pete Johns, Studio Live Today.
Pete Johns
2024-08-27 04:06:36 +0000 UTCI never really got into The Sims because what I enjoyed most was building houses in the game and the actual simulation aspect I found boring and annoying, thus I skipped every Sims game following the first. BUT, that said, I've found your breakdowns of Sims content very entertaining despite never playing the games myself, so do keep in mind that those videos do still have some level of general appeal even for people who don't play the Sims games! :)
Kris Asick
2024-08-27 03:47:16 +0000 UTCFor a long time, The Sims 2 was the only one I'd played, and I bounced off it. I'd borrowed it from a friend, back when such a thing was easy on PC. I booted it up, had a bunch of sims turn up to my new house and had a housewarming party. One of them decided to stick around and cook themselves some dinner, eat it, and then leave their dishes on the floor. Eventually I had to ask them to leave, and just found myself staring at the dirty dishes on the floor, knowing that my sim now had to be told to do the dishes... And I just quit, uninstalled and returned the game to my friend. We shared a laugh at my experience, and that was that. Later on I realised the appeal of what I'd call "story generator" games. It's entirely subjective, but for me it fits into that particular category of game where the stories that come out of it are much more interesting than the actual gameplay to get there. I've since casually played some more of The Sims (specifically 4), and I appreciate it for the stories that come out of it - even if I find myself questioning many aspects of the actual gameplay. I definitely feel like I'm wanting it to be something it's not, however.
AllTinker
2024-08-27 02:56:31 +0000 UTCAlso wanted to add: as a queer teen in 2004 who didn't see much representation in any entertainment, much less video games, the Sims 2 featuring same-sex relationships and even *marriage* was a huge freaking deal. Not only did I have blast setting up all these cute gay romances, but I finally felt seen in a hobby that was, to be blunt, still quite homophobic at that point in time.
Charlotte Grubbs
2024-08-27 01:57:03 +0000 UTCI'm one of the ones who got turned off of the Sims franchise after Sims 2. Sims 3 I never really played at all because it was so broken. I also felt like the focus of the game moved away from simulating lives and relationships to an open-world collectathon. I had high hopes for Sims 4, but once I figured out the core-gameplay loop, it just felt so hollow. Despite the focus on different personality traits and emotions, all the sims act the same. Sims 2 sims really felt like individuals. I loved that you could just put a bunch of sims in a room (removing the door optional) and sit back and watch the drama/hilarity/carnage. I will never forget my high-school senior self and a friend making sims of us and her boyfriend - along with sims versions of other people we knew - and playing them; at one point, I left the room, only to come running back when she started shrieking. Apparently my sim self and her boyfriend just randomly started full-on making out with zero input on her part, setting off a truly devastating - and fun! - series of events that rocked our little simulated town to its core. Messy sims are the *best* sims. Whereas Sims 4 sims just revert to doing nothing but the pre-programmed idle actions: turning on music, getting a drink of water, looking at their phone (that last one is too accurate). Every expansion or game pack, I take a weekend to see everything new, and then I'm done and don't play for months at a time. Sims 2 I played thousands of hours of, and that was just with three expansions (University, Night Life, Seasons). It truly never got old. I play the Ultimate Edition to this day.
Charlotte Grubbs
2024-08-27 01:54:23 +0000 UTCLove hearing the Mac perspective on this!
Chad Armstrong
2024-08-27 01:53:13 +0000 UTCI bought 1 and 2, but after that I kinda got into MMOs and for some reason life-sim games like The Sims, Simcity, etc., never really captured my attention anymore. I'll still spend an hour playing Tropico or Cities: Skylines - or even Rimworld - but I don't really get the joy out of it I used to. Maybe I just got old.
David Pierce
2024-08-27 00:44:57 +0000 UTCI think 2 was the first game in the series I saw someone else play, but 3 was where I started. I got 2's Complete Collection for free on Origin a few years back and it was fun to see the basis for a lot of 3's features, but it did feel just that: a little basic. Of course, I expected that for an entry that was developed earlier in time, but it still meant I had trouble staying interested. Funnily enough, I have similar feelings on 4—being able to do multiple actions at once is new and cool, but almost everything else feels like an earlier version of 3! Still, I appreciate 2 for its role in helping to develop the series and the mechanics that would eventually lead to 3. I like it, I just don't know if I could play it for hours on end like I used to play 3 back in the day.
Andrew Ferguson (DominateEye)
2024-08-27 00:21:30 +0000 UTCThe Sims 2 is my favorite of the Sims games. I have played a lot of TS3 and TS4, probably 200-odd hours each, but that's nothing compared to the thousands that I sunk into TS2 back in the day. I loved Sims 2 because it felt like a real evolution of the series. It was a fully 3D world, not just isometric perspective. Sims in Sims 2 had so much personality and life compared to Sims in other games. Also, the game systems were more complex than Sims 1, but it was still possible to know and understand them. I've long felt that you need limits to really spark your creativity, that you must have boundaries in order to figure out how to transcend them, and The Sims 2 really hit that sweet spot. There was an art and a joy to figuring out just how to set up a storyline or tweak a house so that it looked exactly how I imagined. Also, I feel like The Sims 2 was the last game where we saw content and ideas that were truly new. I still remember how exciting it was to finally have weather in a Sims game! And I *loved* Apartment Life. What turned me away from the series was EA's cynical decision to turn the series into SaaS: Sims as a Service. This has never been a cheap hobby, but everything about TS4 (and TS3, to a lesser extent) is a blatant cash grab, recycling content from previous games without any novelty or innovation. Yes please, let me pay to unlock pets for a FOURTH time, that's what I'm looking for from this game.
janeway216
2024-08-26 23:53:00 +0000 UTCI had the Sims (1) Gold edition on two CDs growing up and as a kid it scratched the "I wanna be an adult" itch, but as time went on I never spent the money to play any newer versions. Many years later my partner let me use their copy of Sims 4 fully loaded, and I loved the building portion, but never had much interest in the actual play and characters. It just felt like micromanaging an NPC.
Shino Puppy
2024-08-26 22:54:24 +0000 UTCBy Sims 2 I was already a bit out the door, because I didn't like how all the stuff they had added in the Sims 1 expansions was nowhere to be seen, so it was clear they were just gonna milk it adding all the same stuff again. It wasn't even a money issue, as I pirated games back then (here in Argentina it was almost impossible to get them otherwise before Steam became available), it was just a disappointment of understanding how it was always going to be with The Sims. I was also "growing out of it" a bit, like it wasn't fun anymore to me, felt like I'd rather live my own life than another person's.
Tadeo D'Oria
2024-08-26 22:31:13 +0000 UTCI never really fell in love with the sims 2. I felt it lost the simplicity and charm of the first game. I never really tried any expansions. I'd just go back to the sims 1 every once in a while. It's pretty much exactly the same feeling with heroes 3. Other examples (not as stongly) are Portal, Diablo 2, and the original mount and blade.
Tossabaddle
2024-08-26 21:08:12 +0000 UTCI’ve never played any of The Sims games, just not my thing at all. As a result I never watch any vids you do with them. Doesn’t stop me loving all the rest of your content though 😀
Mark Elliott
2024-08-26 21:04:04 +0000 UTCLoved The Sims 1 on PC back in the day, by late TS2 the expansions kept coming out too fast to keep up with and was too expensive for that many xpacs.
Master Ridley
2024-08-26 20:39:49 +0000 UTCI was the first person of anyone I knew to pick up the OG Sims. By the time Sims 2 came out... I was into Evil Genius (which I would looooove to see you make a video thereof) and Command & Conquer Generals (I'm shocked we never got another knuckle dragging modern warfare RTS).
M.T.
2024-08-26 20:34:55 +0000 UTCI played The Sims on PC and The Sims 2 on xbox for whatever reason. It was clunky but serviceable.
Jam
2024-08-26 20:30:25 +0000 UTCI had The Sims 1, played it to death. I still remember two of my favourite characters - a very dapper man called Alfonso Toastrack III and his attractive female neighbour, Ima Minx. Of course they got together and eventually ended up living happily ever after in their mansion. Weirdly The Sims 2 never appealed to me at all, although my sister was obsessed with it and picked up all the expansions. To be honest, like most people, the first did eventually descend into the usual trapping people in pools, burning them to death and the like. I mean, that's what The Sims is all about, right?
ctrl.alt.rees
2024-08-26 20:26:50 +0000 UTCMy wife and I played S2, purchased every expansion, and loved the game. We especially loved the community made downloads you could get. When S3 came out, and they basically killed fan made downloads then made every damn extra a buy in. We pretty much felt it jumped the shark at that point and was just a huge money grab. Also 2-3 was a okay jump in graphics quality, but 3-4 was pretty much the same it look and feel for me, maybe a bit better, but not enough to be a new version IMO.
Vaggumon
2024-08-26 20:18:07 +0000 UTCI have played all 4 Sims games, but number 2 was always special, it was the first game, but with all the enhancements and extra stuff that you wanted. Like Sim city I had to try the 3rd and 4th game. And I found entertainment in them, but Sims 2 was always the one that was the best in my opinion. Just like Som City 2000 is the best.
Mikkel Graugaard Hansen
2024-08-26 20:17:32 +0000 UTCI pretty much stopped at Sims 2, at least in spirit. I've played Sims 3 and 4 a bit over the years but found them to be soulless compared to the Sims 2. Sims 2 came out a very exciting era in gaming - the jump between the first and second games was massive and it kind of represented an overall shift in gaming from one era to another. It also still had the 90's Maxis charm and personality that the later games lost. Sims 3 and especially Sims 4 just became so... Bland.
Diana L
2024-08-26 20:07:58 +0000 UTCI stopped because The Sims two was not only a resource hog but I started to get busier with my life and couldn't dedicate a screen just for a game that I keep to keep an eye on, but didn't really "play". Plus, it was more of the same, or at least felt like it. The wonder was basically gone for me. Come to think of it, I started to grow bored with The Sims (1) after getting the expansion packs. I got number two as a free giveaway from Pizza Hut. I tried it for a while but found there were other things that drew my attention. (Plus, WoW was out and that was a full time job in itself back then, albeit an addictive one.) Could never get back into it.
Gary Leigh
2024-08-26 20:06:25 +0000 UTCI’ve never experienced The Sims 2, and sadly this was simply because my Mac was too slow to play it. And by the time I got a newer system… I had moved onto other things. In 2000 when The Sims came out it only needed a G3 processor at 233 MHz and pretty much any ATI chipset. This meant that practically any G3-powered Mac could play the game, even the budget iMac G3. It ran perfectly fine on my iBook G3 clamshell with an ATI Rage 128 with only 8MB of VRAM. I’m sure it also ran pretty well on lower end PCs at the time. Fast forward to 2005, I was looking forward to the release. However, I remember my PowerBook G4 (G4 867 MHz 12-inch model from 2003) didn’t meet the minimum system requirements. Looking it up now, The Sims 2 needed 1.2GHz G4 and a decent GPU when it was released in 2005. At this time period, if your Mac was ~2 years old, you could pretty much count on games not running on it. Well, unless you had a desktop where you could potentially do some upgrades, which were pricey at best. I recall enjoying the first game a lot, and a number of the expansion packs we picked up. Although the lag times between the PC and Mac version were discouraging. I remember being so excited to pickup Livin’ Large a few days early from the Aspyr booth at the MacWorld expo in 2002. I think this was ~2 years after the PC release. Maybe I'll play one of the sequels one day! Would it make sense to try 2, or skip ahead?
Mac84
2024-08-26 20:02:42 +0000 UTCI absolutely loved The Sims 2, especially when The Sims 1 was what I started out with, and the 3D world bringing everything to a whole new level was amazing! I remember the game barely being able to run on my Dell at the time, but later when I had a more powerful computer I kept playing it. Personally TS2 was also pretty inspirational for me because I thought the alien abduction part, bringing back male sims pregnant was funny. So it inspired me to do my own twist for my OC Reese to have been abducted by aliens but be kept perpetually pregnant instead. Sims did a lot of wacky things and I loved every moment of it, it proved to me that one can do the same being creative with their own characters. Another thing is I find that I have more fond memories of Sims 2 and miss aspects that were missing in Sims 3, since the latter of which introduced rabbit holes. Though at the same time it did bring us a nice open world which I loved. So both of these games gave me a lot of enjoyment, but there's just something about TS2 that was far more appealing in a way. Maybe that's just kid me growing up with the game like I did TS1 and it is just ingrained into my brain.
ReeseRiverson
2024-08-26 20:00:11 +0000 UTCI've played The Sims 1, 2 and 3 extensively. I've even replayed them all during this last year and two is still my favorite. One is fun to go back to once in awhile but two took everything and just made it better in addition to all the new stuff it added. 3 is really fun, being able to put objects off the grid could really make things look realistic and natural, the create a style was awesome, the open world was great, but it all somehow just didn't feel as good or charming as 2. And the characters are ugly af lol
steinaech
2024-08-26 19:57:54 +0000 UTCIv never played TS2! I started with TS3, but really got into TS4, then I went back to TS3 again since TS4 always felt cramped. I played TS1 on GameCube and it was weird and clunky. I suppose this is an entirely unhelpful comment to make about TS2; but that's life! The impression I get is that TS2 was the definitive version in terms of features; TS3 added extra features that people didn't really need; and TS4 removed features that people still want. Hence TS2 holds the crown as the culturally recognized peak sims.
Melonking
2024-08-26 19:56:44 +0000 UTCI actually just had a conversation with my sister about this and she had an interesting point. The Sims 3 and onward was when EA really started to push the online services aspect, especially with four as we all know. For her being able to just take the old Sims 2 games off the shelf and install them (with the usual tweaking effort) without feeling like she's missing anything or being badgered for pocket change is really appealing to her. The fact that EA gave origin users essentially the entire Sims 2 set was also a really nice bonus which makes it easy to come back to. Well they offered a physical addition of the Sims 1 ultimate and that aforementioned origin edition of Sims 2 after that EA gave up on complete editions of prior Sims titles which is a shame.
Knifethrower
2024-08-26 19:55:03 +0000 UTCQuite simple, i never got into any of the The Sims stuff, not my kind of game. But the world would be boring if everyone liked the same games, no?
BastetFurry
2024-08-26 19:50:53 +0000 UTCHonestly I couldn´t care less about the Sims games. No interest, not played. The only Sim games I played were SimAnt(which I liked), a bit SimTown and SimCity 2000(was ok, but never really got into it). Anything else, not my cup of tea. I´m more a player of Thief(1-2), Dungeon Keeper, Hitman and Postal 2, to name a few. Just saying: I like the game reviews/flashbacks from time to time, but mainly here for review of retro hardware.
Udo Krawallo
2024-08-26 19:45:52 +0000 UTCI'm probably not the typical case here, but I was SO excited to try TS2 when it came out after loving the original, but then I bought it and never could get it to run on my computer. I think it was an Athlon 64 and a ti4200 and it would just crash at the opening cutscene and I never did fix it. By the time TS3 came out I had switched to console gaming and didn't come back to PC for many years.
ThiccLink
2024-08-26 19:35:45 +0000 UTCLikewise, I never got into the Sims games back in the day.. I think I was busy playing Quake III and Counter Strike 1.0 back when the orignal came out and then when the Sims 2 showed up I was ankle-deep in a new job for work and playing World of Warcraft (ugh) .. Some of my friends did quite enjoy them though.. I remember getting asked by friends what they wanted my Sim to look like when I got re-created in their games ^_^
Evan B
2024-08-26 19:32:24 +0000 UTCThe Sims came out when I was at university. I decided to spend £1k of cold hard cash on a laptop for uni. In the end it was generally used for Sims and eBay. My flatmates would book out time to use my laptop to play Sims too. We decided to create a family named after a UK 70s/80s children’s TV show - Rainbow… and the kill them off. First one we removed the ladder to the pool. We literally cried laughing. Then second one we set on fire. But, this time when they died they became a ghost and the game gave us a message about being nasty people. We were so freaked out we closed the game without saving. I remember we thought it was so funny at the time but looking back, I’m kinda bothered by how we all came to the same conclusion of killing characters and were so enthused by it. We used to speak a pseudo-Sim to each other in the flat too, so for example we said ‘tsum-tsum’ to each other instead of goodbye. We were strange and sheltered young ‘uns. Guess I just never had the enthusiasm to try Sims 2. I had all the expansion packs for 1 so maybe felt ‘been there, done that’.
Dungeoneer
2024-08-26 19:31:11 +0000 UTCThe never appealed crowd checking in. Single parent household that could barely handle the cost of our computer and the internet. Anything other than piracy was almost guaranteed to not happen, so I played what my friends played. I had picked up SC2k/Win32 for cheap, probably at K-Mart, and absolutely loved it. I remember seeing stuff about The Sims when it came out, and subsequently for TS2/TS3, and just thinking "why?". The fun, for me, was in building an entire city, not just controlling one person. These days I'm more than capable of buying a copy of a Sims game and playing it, but I do less and less gaming as the years pass by and most of what I play are games from my childhood or their direct descendants, not offshoots. Having watched a lot of reviews of the games and their expansions (can't seem to recall where ;) ), I see value in the games, but they weren't attainable to me at the time when I would have most enjoyed them.
Ross Nelson
2024-08-26 19:30:08 +0000 UTCI played The Sims 1 because it was the most entertaining game I was allowed to play that our PC ran well at the time. I enjoyed the building aspect far more than the life simulation. By September 2004 I was allowed to play more violent games, and had a more powerful PC I’d saved up for in high school. By then I was far more interested in Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. I could only get so many games to play and I didn’t see it offering much to me over Sims 1 with mods. As the years went on EA only seemed to get worse while my crafting itch was scratched by Garry’s Mod, Minecraft, and later Rust and Valheim.
Aaron
2024-08-26 19:29:47 +0000 UTCSadly I never played the Sims, so I wouldn’t be able to give my honest opinion on the subject.
Andrew L. Budny
2024-08-26 19:28:03 +0000 UTCI loved the Sims 1 when it was fresh and new and lost interest after that. Not that The Sims 2 is bad, it's pretty good but in the end it *is* more of the same and not as innovative as the first game. I just decided not to ride the hype train any further and focus on other types of games. (Hmm I was 23\24 back when Sims 2 came out, I'm not even sure where my interest was back then lol. Maybe Morrowind come to think of it, I got into RPG's relatively late in my life.)
Marnix
2024-08-26 19:26:16 +0000 UTCI don't think I ever actually tried Sims 2, as a result of a weird combination of monetary restrictions and timing. I'd bought the first Sims early on, but at a time when my PC at the time was non-functional, and my at-the-time computer-illiterate self had to wait for my cousin to visit from across the state to look at it. So by the time I finally got to start playing and enjoying the first one, EA was a couple of expacs in already. Ones I couldn't afford at the time as a 7th grader at the financial behest of a single mom working at a grocery store. So...I don't really remember hearing much about Sims 2? Looking at the release date, I was deep in the console games paint at that point, even though I had just recently gotten a new PC at the time, I guess I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to try and do much big gaming on it yet. I don't think I came back around much until a friend passed me some, ah, "acquired" versions of 3 some years later that I'd screw around with for about half a day at a time and leave sitting for a while, and kinda kept doing that until whenever it was EA was like "hey, have 3 for free on Steam!" Geeze, this got rambly.
Valora Inverse
2024-08-26 19:25:09 +0000 UTCWoa thats a tough one... I tried sims 3 and 4 as well, 4 more than 3 but ... I think its like this. Sims 1 was a novelty and because it was a product of its time, imagination filled in a lot of the gaps in the game to create a story. Sims 2 improved on that a lot but lost a bit of its charm, yet it looked so good i played it a lot (much more than i played sc3k and sc4k together vs 2k) ... but at one point... well around 2005 i finished my apprenticeship and joined the life of a working person with a dayjob and responsibilities. And that was about the point i grew more and more rejective to busywork or "doing the same as i do on a dayjob just in a game". I guess thats it. I tried sims 4 playing a perma drunk detective and such in the police addon... and ... somehow the game played against me... Maybe its that. Sims tries more and more to be like real life plus goof, and i already have enough of that in my actual life... while sims 1 and 2 where more like "have a vigniette of life the way you like"... Its REALLY difficult to describe, but i hope my poor english makes some form of sense, even if i use german grammar at it sometimes :D
Axonteer
2024-08-26 19:24:06 +0000 UTCI remember the Sims 2 for mostly being the go-to game that my friends and I would play after returning home from the bar. It was a fun way to goof off and come up with the weirdest situations for our sims. As with most people (I think), the consensus was that it was a weird outlet to act out the taboo, the macabre, or the just plain silly.
Brittney Rogerson
2024-08-26 19:23:53 +0000 UTCI had originally started with the Sims 3, after coming from a lower-quality simulation game that, in hindsight, is terrible. I found a boxed copy of The Sims 1 at a thrift store, and found it fun to play. Sims 4 was next, and I think the last three entries were better. Finally, Sims 2, via physical discs. Though I'd had the complete collection on Origin/EA Launcher for a while beforehand, it never really seemed to work quite right. Sims 2 is an interesting game, though, and I largely enjoy the series for what it offers.
Vintage486Lizard
2024-08-26 19:16:40 +0000 UTCI absolutely love the Sims two and I wish I could play it again, but my PC doesn’t work anymore. I wish they would actually re-release it for consoles with mouse and keyboard support.
Parabellum
2024-08-26 19:12:18 +0000 UTCI can't recall if I played the Sims 2, but I had pretty run of the mill experience with The Sims 1. My brothers and I fought taking turns to play. We experimented with mods a bit, but mostly played vanilla. We did some cruel / dumb things like locking Sims in a 1x1 room to see how they responded / how long it took them to pee themselves. But mostly just played the game as it was designed. We didn't roleplay much if at all like many people seem to know. I think we played Creatures 1 and 2 more than the Sims actually, but were more excited about The Sims.
Joseph Coco
2024-08-26 19:10:30 +0000 UTCI'm one of those people who stopped after the sims 2. It's hard to recall why but I remember not liking the user interface, finding the sims to be ugly, and it running like hot garbage on my crappy computer at the time. I think by the time I got a better machine, they kinda went off the deep end with the sci-fi and magic and Katy Perry stuff and I just lost all interest. By the time the sims 4 came out I had more or less stopped caring about the franchise.
Ian Spence
2024-08-26 19:08:55 +0000 UTC
