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Genre: Sim

Format: DVD

Developer: Maxis

Publisher: Electronics Arts, Inc.

Mac Publisher: Aspyr Media

Minimum System Requirements: 1.2GHz G4, Mac OS X v10.3.8, 256MB RAM, 3GB hard disk space, 32MB ATI Radeon 9000 or NVidia GeForce FX5200 graphics card, DVD drive

Review Computer: 2.5GHz Dual Processor G5, 1GB RAM, Mac OS X v10.4.1, ATI Radeon X800 XT graphics acceleration

Network Feature: No

Price: $44.99

ESRB Rating: Teen (crude humor, mature sexual themes, violence)

Availability: Now

Official Website: thesims2.ea.com

The Sims 2? Really, only 2? I can't believe that in all the milking Electronic Arts has done with this franchise that we're only just now up to The Sims 2. Honestly, none of those other Sims titles were sequels? Not Vacation, or Hot Date or House Party or Makin' Magic or Livin' Large or Superstar or Unleashed? None of them? Well, okay.

So, okay, The Sims 2. Here we go again, I suppose. The Sims has pretty much become the bane of most game reviewers' existence. It's always a dark day when a new Sims expansion hits the office mailroom, the agony only surpassed by yet another Tiger Woods golfing game. I mean, I understand why Aspyr would want to cut back their catalog to focus solely on A-list titles, but do those titles have to be the same thing year after year?

The Sims 2, however, is at least more than yet another regurgitation of the original with yet a couple more new objects and outfits. First and foremost, The Sims 2 features a new graphics engine that does a much better job of bringing your sims to life. You can freely zoom in and out of their world (unlike in the original which only allowed incremental zooming), and you can rotate the camera a full 360°. The sims themselves are more highly detailed, giving them a bit more life, and they blend better into their surroundings (thanks mainly to dynamic lighting). Many of the later Sims expansions performed poorly on slower systems for seemingly no reason. The Sims 2 also performs poorly on slower systems, but you can at least now see why.

The gameplay on top of all this is pretty much the same as before. You serve as either god of your people or producer of your own reality show, depending upon how you see this. You can control every move of your sims, or you can set them up and leave them to their own devices. The sims are smart enough to survive on their own, but they'll do only that: survive. The fun in the game is getting into their lives and shaping their futures. When my wife played the game, her only goal was to have her characters get married. When Bill Stiteler plays, he likes to inflict as much psychological damage as possible. My niece likes to make them urinate on the floor. Bring to this game what you will.

Interacting with your sims is a simple matter of selecting your character then clicking on an object, which brings up a radial menu of things you can do with that object. Depending upon your choice, you may then be presented with even more options. You don't just turn on the TV, you select a type of programming to watch. You don't just kiss a sim, you select the type of kiss. The point of all of this is to fulfill your sims' basic needs. They have to eat, sleep, work, interact with others, etc. These needs are measured by status bars that are fairly simple to correct when they get too low. If the hunger bar is low, make some supper. If the fun bar is low, dance or play a game. So long as you're not managing a dozen of these little people, it's not too hard to move your sims through life with a good deal of success.

A lot of the fun in The Sims 2, as with the earlier versions, comes in furnishing their environment. There are three neighborhoods from which to choose, each with its own preset characters and back-story. Strangetown lets you interact with aliens (I guess that's one expansion pack already taken care of), and Veronaville takes you back to high school English lit where the feuding Caps and Montys (Get it? Get it?) already have the gossip mill abuzz with the forbidden love of their teenaged children.

Yes, teens play a bigger role this time around. In fact, each age is well represented. Your sims' genes are passed along from one generation to the next, meaning that you can control them from birth through death. Your sims' children take on their physical and personality traits, so they actually look and behave like your creations (a revamped sim creator allows for customization of everything from body weight to skin tone to eyebrow thickness to jaw structure). It's actually a bit creepy. It's also a bit unsettling in that my wife made a character who looked close to her real life visage, but then created a husband who looked like Johnny Depp, all so she could have a baby sim to take through a rather detailed nurturing period that involved potty training, reading, playing, etc. You'd think my wife would've had enough of that with our two-year-old, but I understand her motivation; while she was playing The Sims 2, I was the one who ended up changing the real life diapers.

In the old games, your sims basically just wanted to work, make out and dance; that was enough to get them by. In The Sims 2, you can select their aspirations. They have five from which to choose: fame, fortune, family, knowledge and romance. What you select affects your sims' needs and desires, and determines their day. Each sim awakens with four "Wants," which are basically a checklist of "to do" items for the day. If you satisfy one of these Wants, you get an Aspiration point which can be used to purchase...well, my wife bought a money tree with her aspiration points. This is a tree that actually grows money. You pick the money, and it eventually grows more. So, you can see where this new element could prove quite interesting.

I experienced no real glaring problems with the game, although slow performance on older systems may put off some players. Also, although the new graphics engine is pretty cool, it does pose some problems while building/furnishing your house; it's often hard to see where you are, which makes precise object placement difficult. The problem with oddly sized objects remains, making organizing a room quite annoying sometimes (placing a table in a dining room, for example, can sometimes be impossible without blocking the fridge door or making it difficult to get to the garbage can).

If this had been my first exposure to The Sims, I would've been all over this game. It's well done, it can certainly be entertaining, and it allows you play the game the way you want to: Donna Reed or Desperate Housewives, get married and raise a family or party with aliens and burn down your neighbor's house. As it stands, though, The Sims 2 really feels to me like yet another expansion pack, albeit one in a prettier shell with great new features that actually warrant an expansion pack. Fans of The Sims should certainly be pleased with The Sims 2 (provided they're not still playing on their Flower Power iMac), while those who got into the original but avoided its expansions may want to take this opportunity to give the franchise another look.

Game reviewers, on the other hand, can begin preparing themselves for the unavoidable onslaught of expansion packs that'll soon be showing up in the mail room. Indeed, Aspyr has already announced a Mac version of The Sims 2 University, while EA is working on The Sims 2 Nightlife. Well, so be it. I'd much rather get those than another stupid golf game with an inaccurately tough looking Tiger Woods on the box.

Tiger? You're a golfer. My wife's Johnny Depp sim is tougher than you.