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Review: Sims 2 Nightlife
- Title: The Sims 2: Nightlife
- Developer: Maxis
- Publisher: EA Games
- System: PC
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 7/10
The microcosm world of The Sims 2 allows players to vicariously live out the lives of the rich, popular, or phenomenally stupid. The ability for the game player to project their own hopes and neurosis onto their virtual marionettes involves a lot of set dressing. Furniture, art, electronics, wallpaper, and swimming pools are just some of the tools Sims 2 players use to tell their stories. The set pieces that players seem to enjoy manipulating the most, though, are the Sims themselves. "Nightlife" is a generous package of objects, interactions, and locations designed to make lubricating Simlish society more convenient.
Like all Sims expansions, at its core "Nightlife" is a system add-on for the basic game. The first Sims 2 expansion, "University", added on a college campus to the neighborhood as well as a young adult development stage to the life cycle of the Simlish species. "Nightlife" incorporates the highly successful dating system used in the "Hot Date" expansion for the original Sims title. Dating allows Sims to improve their relationship by attempting a 'dream date' at romantic locations like parks, restaurants, and bowling alleys. The date mechanic is extremely useful, allowing two Sims that you'd like to get together the opportunity to improve their social connection in a hurry.
Besides actual dates, you can arrange group gatherings that pull together more than two Sims into an outing. These group gatherings are even more useful for raising social standings between Sims, but can be a mixed bag. Dates and gatherings are evaluated based on how good a time the participants have. While dates, with only two participants, are fairly easy to run group gatherings can be very challenging because of the number of Sims involved. Unattended Sims have a tendency to lose track of what they're doing, and if your gathering depends on everyone being on the same page even one wayward Sim can ruin the event for everyone. While the date mechanic is lots of fun, gatherings could have used a little more polishing.
Social gatherings need interesting backdrops to be fully appreciated, and the new downtown area very much fulfills that need. Downtown is chock full of different places, each themed to a different type of get-together. Rocking out with a group of musicians can be accomplished in the park, while a date might find the candle-lit restaurant more agreeable. Each of the default areas packaged with the expansion is a well thought-out venue for socializing, and they're usually handsome looking as well.
Some more subtle system additions also allow for easier socializing. Sims now have romantic preferences, which result from turn-ons (dark hair, formal ware), turn-offs (stench, workout uniforms), astrological signs and life goals. Sims that have chemistry with each other have little lightning bolts near their names. Likewise, Sims can now have antipathy towards each other just based on their personal makeup. Sims with x'd out lightning bolts will have a harder time than normal having a successful relationship. In practice, the chemistry is just another addition that makes it easier to max out relationships between two Sims.
These like/dislike values play a large role in the life of the Pleasure Seeker Sim, a new life aspiration you can create Sims with. Pleasure Seekers want parties, fast cars, steamy dates, and expensive toys. The Pleasure Seeker Sim I made ("Hef") was a pain in the butt to keep happy. Most of the things that give him happiness are either expensive or require a lot of work to accomplish. As a counterpoint, the Pleasure Seeker isn't very good at living in the normal world. They have a hard time with jobs and chores, making them terrible room-mates. Pleasure Seeker Sims might be an interesting addition to a well developed neighborhood, full of rich families, but for a starter Sim they're just not practical.
A mainstay of Sims expansions are the objects. Adding new objects to your purchasing repertoire is always a goal for a Sims player, and "Nightlife" fulfills that goal admirably. The downtown areas come with a plethora of new objects specifically for dates and group gatherings, like the bowling alley or the restaurant host stand. There are many handsome new objects that are used in the new venues that can be purchased for home use as well. My personal favorite is the karaoke machine, which is a great group activity and painful to watch to boot. "Nightlife" even introduces a new type of object for Simlish consumption: the car. Sims can now have garages and vehicles, adding yet another layer of realism to the game and making traveling to out-of-the-house locations quicker. All aspects of car culture are there in car ownership: listening to music, tooling around for fun, and more amorous activities as well. While every Sim, it seems, ends up wanting to own a car as a life goal at some point they're not absolutely critical. For the most part they're simply convenient for the player who wants to wring every minute out of the SimCity day.
Practical additions, like vehicles, aren't the only features "Nightlife" offers. One completely useless feature the expansion adds is a vampire Sim-type. Vampires can now be found prowling around SimCity, and if you go looking for them you can get your own Sims turned into the restless undead. Unfortunately, it sounds cooler than it really is. Aside from turning other Sims into vampires and transforming into a bat, the amusement factor is sort of limited. Vampire Sims become quite nocturnal, making it difficult to participate in normal jobs and raising family members. The new "type" of Sim idea is interesting, but as far as this expansion goes doesn't see a lot of real use.
There isn't anything here that will shock a current owner, and likely doesn't have any features that might convince a non-player to purchase the game. That said, "Nightlife" is another solid expansion for the now venerable series. It adds on extremely useful systems to the game, opens up new possibilities for gameplay, and incorporates the ever-important new object sets into the title. "Nightlife" gameplay adds a lot of potential to the already entertaining Sims 2. Folks who don't already own the game would probably be best advised just to buy the basic game to make sure they enjoy the gameplay before dropping another $30 for this expansion. For a veteran Sims 2 player who has already tired of college life, though, a night on the town may be just what you need.
Well, apparently there is a patch for The Sims 2 that makes it worse than Hot Coffee.
Third party hacks? It's an in-game console command, something along the lines of "intprop SetCensorSize 0" or so.
As for the claims of pedophelia, I know there are third-party mods for teenagers (which would technically be ephebophilia IIRC) to WooHoo, including teen pregnancy patches, but again, that's third-party and it only works because there isn't anything shown in these scenes.
I agree that this fellow is silly, although I know some parents are simply annoyed at the availability of "woohoo" in-game although personally I think most are annoyed at not having noticed until 6 months after buying the game for their teenage daughter.
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