No memory card, no booklet. Says not to be sold separately.
Invent a cast of characters and tell your own stories about them in The Sims™ 2. Create your Sims, give them personalities, and see what trouble they get themselves into. Directly control every move they make, customize their world, build their homes, create their food, and design their fashions! Guide them in their careers and fulfill their aspirations as you build their social network and avoid making enemies. Enjoy the peaks of pleasure and the trials of pain in your Sims' lives.Direct Their Lives- Develop a master plan for your Sim's social life, career, and pathway to greatness… or let them live in utter chaos. Control Their Every Action-Directly manipulate every move your Sims make with direct controls. Add Your Personal Touch-Create thousands of food recipes and clothing designs. Use these custom creations to affect your Sim's Aspirations and to impact other Sims' lives. Sims Remember and React-Sims now have Memories and Awareness. They may cower in fear, wave in friendship, or threaten other Sims. Double the Fun-Team up with a friend and take the neighborhood by storm in split-screen two-player mode! Endless Possibilities-There's a surprise around every corner. Investigate your Sim's world to find hidden opportunities. Being a Sims title, The Sims 2 doesn't veer much from the established formula. It's still very much focused on the control and manipulation of virtual beings. We still need to satisfy a bunch of needs for each character. These include the basics such as eating, sleeping and going potty, but also include complex needs such as the desire for relationships and wealth. Plus, there's a sim's career to think about. Not to mention bills, broken appliances and other things we in the real world face every day. And while taking care of a Sim's needs would be enough, each game has also packed hundreds of items to outfit, remodel and decorate a Sim's virtual homeHaving said all that, the Sims 2 for consoles tweaks the old formula enough to offer an experience that feels different and fresh. Back on the PC, the Sims 2 introduced a slew of gameplay additions that made it superior to the original. Each Sim actually remembered social interactions, for starters, plus it also introduced aging, death and the ability for a Sim to produce offspring. Not all of these new additions make into the console versions. To help make the experience more console-friendly, aging, death and child rearing have been taken out of the mix. But that doesn't mean console folk don't get anything in return. In lieu of aging, death and child rearing, the console version of the Sims 2 boasts a new story mode and a host of exclusive items and features that weren't in the PC version. And after playing through the game, we can say there's definitely room for both versions of the Sims 2. On consoles, the Sims 2 offers a deep, lengthy and very rewarding experience for fans or those just getting into it. Of course, it's an experience rooted in classic Sims gameplay, so those that didn't like it before may still be a little off put by it. the Sims 2 tries to get everyone to love it. One of the new features that attempts to pull in these elusive players is a dual control scheme. We can choose the classic option, which lets us use the analog stick like a mouse and "click" where we'd like our Sims to go and what we'd like them to interact with. Or we can go with direct control and use the thumbstick to move our sims just like in a third-person action title. There are benefits to both options (more later), and a huge part of the strategy behind the game is balancing these two options. The system actually works great and it's a load of fun balancing multiple sims by constantly swapping control methods. Sims 2 splits between two main game modes, Story and Freeplay. Those new to the series will probably want to choose Story, since it offers far more direction and guidance than freeplay. We started Story mode by using a robust, well-designed and very entertaining character creation system. We got to choose from dozens of hairstyles, clothing and accessory options, and we morphed our arms, torso, face and legs to suit our personal preference. We had the option to create everything from a classy, trashy, trendy, cute or freaky style Sim, and pretty much everything in between. Also, by using a console-specific genetics system, we could randomly generate a sim by defining a set of parents and grandparents. Creating a character is definitely one of the better aspects of the Sims 2. The interface is slick, friendly and very flexible. For those who just want to live out their sim fantasies looming overhead, they can start a game in Freeplay mode. The first option in freeplay mode is where to live. We get four options, including a place in Strangetown (urban), two places in Pleasantview (suburbs) and one in Melbourne (International). We could choose to either evict the current tenants of each location or simply take over an existing family. Those that want a little extra freedom will want to make their own families. The process is exactly the same as in Story mode, only the process allows for the creation of more than one sim. After making a family, it's then time to either move them to one of the four locations. Each location has a home already built, but we could bulldoze the place and build one from scratch if we wanted. Options for building a house include walls, floors, doors, windows, fireplaces and landscaping. And the system here is just as robust and fun to tinker with as in last games. In summary, the console edition of The Sims 2 marks a definite improvement over the Urbz: Sims in the City in terms of visual presentation, sound and gameplay. It tweaks the PC formula enough to attract the console crowd, yet keeps enough of the traditional Sims formula to warrant a look from fans of the original. It's a fun, funny and truly engrossing entry in the series.
