The Sims 2 took the series forward in its simulation of life and death. The death part was straightforward and nothing new for games at all. Many of its fellow 2004 sequels to reach the top of the charts involved copious amounts of death. More to the point, you could drown your Sims in a ladder-less swimming pool in the original The Sims. It’s the “life and” part that was new. The Sims largely confined its characters to a static status in life, a child or adult forever barring calamity. The difference in The Sims 2 was clear soon after starting and observing that a character has a note saying that they would become an elder in 13 days. In The Sims 2, characters have a maximum life expectancy of somewhere around two months before they die of old age. They can have children along the way, and your story is forced to move on to the next generation.
Something pretty similar has happened to The Sims 2 itself. It may have been wildly successful (including selling more than 600,000 copies in the UK), won many awards, and been given huge numbers of expansions, but EA would not allow it to live forever. Not when there was any possibility of it keeping any players away from its sequels and their lucrative add-ons. EA ended support for it in 2014 and removed it from online sale in 2017. You can easily still buy CD and DVD copies of The Sims 2, but with my laptop one of an increasing number not to have a physical media drive, I was unable to play The Sims 2 on it. I mean, I probably could have worked out how to eventually, but I don’t have time for that kind of work on my skill stats. My partner’s laptop does have a DVD drive and installing it on there was no problem, but the more limited access made for a very meta experience.
Picking up as the Dreamer family, one of the defaults introduced with bubbly soap scenarios, I noticed immediate differences from the original game, and not just in everything looking much better and more fully 3D. The Sims 2 makes it distinctly easier to keep your Sims from falling deep into the red in any of their needs for fun, hygiene, food, and so on. They take slightly more sensible actions on their own initiative, reducing the required level of micromanagement to merely quite high rather than extreme. And the time pressure just feels slightly less relentless in general. It’s easy to get into a smooth routine of eating, cleaning, playing, sleeping, even in the limited time around work or school. However, it’s clear that this is out of necessity because The Sims 2 throws new things at you to juggle.
Now your Sims have bigger dreams and aspirations, for romance, career, and more. And fears to match. I might have been keeping my Sims healthy and content, but adding in getting them to their ideal lives was another matter completely. They started getting phone calls from friends irate that they weren’t seeing enough of them. I invited them over and my kid’s grades slipped. The familiar desperation of trying to fit things like showering into the tiniest possible gaps in time (the school bus will wait outside! Yes!) all came back. Soon I was back to futilely trying to rescue their fun rating with rushed midnight games of SSX 3.
I had an aspiration to play The Sims 2 enough to let me say something about its clearly vast possibilities. There are a lot of other ways to play it. I messaged my brother for suggestions and got the following message back:
If I recall correctly, the way to start is to make a single sim and buy the largest possible empty lot, leaving just enough money to buy the essentials (bed, toilet, shower, bookcase), then order a pizza and seduce the delivery person
I didn’t get to try that. Even getting anywhere in the scenarios was beyond me. Exacerbated by the laptop situation, I was trying to do this in the smallest of available gaps in my own life. Which was filled with all the repetitive necessities of parenting a toddler during a pandemic. The fact that the game doesn’t let you leave the house even when your Sims do felt pretty fitting, to be honest. Rushing my sims through their gaming time, the irony was impossible to miss. I can’t tell you very much about The Sims 2. But in my limited experience, as a life simulation it felt all too accurate.
Top of the charts for week ending 18 September 2004:
UK games: The Sims 2 (Maxis/EA, PC) 
Japan games: Pokémon Emerald (Game Freak/Nintendo, GBA) 
UK films: Collateral 
UK singles: Eric Prydz – Call On Me 
UK albums: Embrace – Out of Nothing
Top of the charts for week ending 25 September 2004:
UK games: The Sims 2 (Maxis/EA, PC) 
Japan games: Tales of Symphonia (Namco, PS2) 
UK films: Wimbledon UK singles: Eric Prydz – Call On Me 
UK albums: Green Day – American Idiot
Alexander Sigsworth
The Sims 2 is a game I’ve only played on PlayStation 2, which is pushed to the limit by trying to cram in so much. Currently, I’m working on a gaming PC build and have thought about finally playing the original Windows version. But then I remembered my experience of playing The Sims 3. I remembered that it’s less like a game and more like office work, in which I develop the kind of routine for my Sim that I play games to get away from and that I ended up anticipated virtual weekends while wasting real ones. There’s a part of me that really wants to finally play this but I was worried that, like the others, it would be like looking into a horrible mirror. It seems you’ve confirmed this for me.