Why I Think the Sims 2 Is the Best Out of the Whole Franchise
Even though The Sims 2 was released 18 years ago, it still holds a special place in my heart, as it does with many people in The Sims community, particularly people that grew up playing The Sims 2. Every player has their favourite game out of the whole franchise. However, even though almost two decades have passed since its release, it stands the test of time when compared to the other Sims games.
The Sims 2 vs The Sims 4
It’s difficult to explain, but my experience with The Sims 4 was rather dull. As much as I tried to play The Sims 4, I never stuck with it, as opposed to when The Sims 3 was released; I jumped right into it and fully immersed myself in the game. However, anytime I would begin playing The Sims 4, picking a town, choosing a house, something always felt amiss, even though I tried playing it multiple times. So I sought to muster up interest in it by watching countless YouTube Simmers playing The Sims 4, watching them play the storyline, and building the magnificent houses, which, credit where credit is due, the build mode and objects in The Sims 4 are really spectacular, even though they removed the Create-A-Style that was a staple in The Sims 3, but that’s for another time.
However, I needed more than the well-thought-out building mode and its capabilities to make me join The Sims 4 universe — even though I’m the kind of player that loves to build immaculate houses and pays a lot of attention to it. Additionally, something about the new game’s graphics has never appealed to me. To most, The Sims 2 graphics might seem more dated, yet in my opinion, the game is more visually appealing than the later games, as the newer games seem more cartoonish, like an animated movie.
The situation wasn’t helped when I stumbled upon a bunch of videos on how The Sims 2 and The Sims 4 vary or why The Sims 2 is better than The Sims 4, which further made me retreat into The Sims 2 world. The overall problem that many players and I face is that The Sims 4 not only lacks the details that created a certain charm in its predecessor, but the gameplay itself is just a lot more…easier.
What many players and myself like about The Sims 2 is that every time you play, something unexpected can happen, throwing your original game plan into the wind, praying that you saved the game before the huge accidental turn of events occurred.
For example:
Imagine you were playing with a huge family where the adults had family aspirations. Therefore, their wants are to have as many children as possible; while the family is growing with each new additional family member, it’s getting harder and harder to manage the family, keep every Sim’s needs in the green, keep their moods up, fulfil their wishes, get good grades at school and so on — and that is already with the free will set to off, if it is on, then it’s an entirely different beast. Suppose the mother is pregnant again, which makes her needs deplete faster than the regular Sims, and one thing leads to another, and she dies of hunger. But that’s not it; while she’s dying and curling up into the fetal position and the grim reaper floats in on his dark cloud to perform his services, one of the Sims in the background sets the oven on fire. Now everyone’s panicking, the fire alarm is going off incessantly — and god, I hope you had a fire alarm — everyone is jumping around the fire as their needs are dropping rapidly from the fire. Meanwhile, the Grim Reaper is giving his death speech while everyone is screaming. Thankfully, the firefighters arrive and put out the fire, hopefully with no additional deaths. Now everyone is weeping and crying that their mother/wife has died while half of the kitchen is full of fresh piles of ashes where the kitchen equipment was once standing.
Now that’s just one of the hectic scenarios that can happen in this colourful game. As a result, these unforeseen, chaotic events can provide such a thrill where nothing goes as planned, adding so much variety and intensity to the game. And to be honest, playing more challenging games will always be more interesting than super easy ones, and that’s what the latest Sims games became — easy. Not to mention all the basic features that were removed, such as burglars, which added all kinds of excitement and unpredictability to the previous games. Therefore, I didn’t really enjoy The Sims 4 because it was too predictable, rendering it more boring compared to its older counterpart.
The Sims 2 vs The Sims 3
As for The Sims 3, I have fewer complaints than I do about The Sims 4. Even though, from the beginning, I was not too thrilled with the new graphics, this game was on an entirely different level. What ultimately made The Sims 4 shoot itself in the foot was that, well — The Sims 3 existed.
As a result, everyone got a taste of what the new generations of sims could offer. With a completely open world where your sims can wander, meet NPCs in the town centre, have various celebratory events with all the townies, go onto the various mountains and cliffs and see a pink sunset over the sea, and so much more; in this sense, it’s hard to compare The Sims 3 to The Sims 2, as it genuinely felt like The Sims 3 has made an enormous advancement within the franchise as it introduced so many new features. In contrast, The Sims 2 and The Sims 4 are relatively easy to compare for many people, as The Sims 4, after The Sims 3, felt like a massive step back in terms of the game’s abilities. Not to mention that when The Sims 4 was initially released, it lacked many of the essential game features that were never excluded before from the previous games, such as swimming pools and toddlers.
The Sims vs The Sims 2
The Sims is by far the most different from all of its successors. Created by Will Wright and released in 2000, The Sims originally was intended to be named “Dollhouse”, but after some reasoning that it wouldn’t gain any interest from boys, it was then settled on The Sims. Before The Sims came to life, the initial idea was to create a game focused on building homes and suburban living after Mr Wright’s house burned down in the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm.
As The Sims was the first game of the franchise, it is understandable that the game was hindered if compared to the later games due to technical limitations in those days. However, even with limited technical abilities and only four camera angles, as it had an isometric perspective, the game took everyone by storm at the time. And as later expansion packs were introduced, the game packed a punch with quirky objects, places and NPCs, sometimes with weird interactions or some elements deemed more suitable for adults, at least by today’s standards, such as the exotic dancers that jump out of cakes. But one of my favourite objects is the Aquatic Playhouse, a tank that Sims can swim in. Unfortunately, this object did not reappear in any of the following Sims games.
I must recognise that nostalgia plays a role in my judgment of this game, not to mention its innate charm, especially the music and soundtracks. But one can’t deny the allure of this game, and for a good reason, as this is the game that started The Sims universe.
While I admit that out of all The Sims games, The Sims 2 is my go-to, I do have The Sims on my laptop. Surprisingly, I got it working, and I play it every once in a while. By spending many hours playing the original game, I realised that the original Sims are by far the hardest to play out of all the games in the franchise, making it extremely difficult to progress. While in this game, the Sims can’t grow up or grow old like in the later games, it is a lot of work to keep up. For example, the Sims who have jobs don’t have any days off. They go to work every day, and their needs drop faster than in later games, and the Sims still have to make friends if they want to get promoted. Thus, this game requires a lot more effort, much so that it would overwhelm the majority of today’s players who are not used to the older generation of Sims games.
All in all, I can’t believe that I got to play this game for about 15 years now. And yes, The Sims 2 is far from perfect. Sometimes, it can be really clunky. For instance, if more than one Sim wants to simultaneously use the stairs in the same direction, Sims will throw a tantrum. However, installing mods and great custom content that even addresses the stair issue has really made an enormous difference. Recently, I found a mod that lets your Sim visit your neighbours’ homes, which you could never do in the game before. So when you put everything together by finding great custom content and mods, The Sims 2 fares exceptionally well against its successors.
And even though I might not appreciate the latest releases from the franchise, The Sims will always be important to me, and even though these days I can’t play it as often as I would like to, I appreciate the games immensely.
