Bored with living in a house? Then the
Apartment Life is for you
From TheSims2.com:
Move your Sims into the
close-quarters drama, humor, and excitement of apartment life!
Your Sims are moving into a brand-new
apartment, and their lives will never be the same! Adventure,
fun, and drama await them as they meet new people and explore
their new neighborhood. Will they take their kids to the local
playground, mingle in coffee shops, or hit the park to learn
from the breakdancers? Close quarters mean new
opportunities-move in with compatible roomies for a thriving
social life, advance your career with the right social network,
or find true love just down the hall. Whether they live in artsy
converted lofts, the ultimate studio bachelor pads, or luxury
apartments with their own butler, your Sims will experience all
of the excitement of apartment life!
Features:
Move into the perfect apartment: a spacious loft, a cozy
place for a young couple, or a multi-bedroom flat-share with
friends.
Mingle with Sims from all-new social groups: stylish
socialites, artsy bohemians, sports jocks, gadget-collecting
techies, or edgy gearheads.
Take advantage of apartment life: form social networks
to make new friends, advance their careers, or look for
love.
Build your Sim's new reputation meter: with a good
reputation, your Sim can find the right friends to help them
achieve their goals!
Control multiple households: will you make your Sims
live in happy harmony or comical conflict?
This expansion is mostly great -- the only thing that sucks about it, oddly enough, is its relative lateness with regards to The Sims 2's life cycle. With so many expansion packs out already -- and with The Sims 3 getting closer -- it's inevitable that many gamers will overlook this one as the series winds down. It's a pity, because this is definitely one of the best Sims expansions EA's ever released. It strikes the perfect balance of adding new material without taking away from the overall game, and it doesn't feel like a completely different path but rather a cool new take on some of the basic mechanics.
Rental properties put a new spin on the old favorite, and ceilings and new objects should definitely be well received, especially by you screen shot photographers and game footage videographers. And, with aliens, ghosts, elves, vampires, werewolves, and dryads already populating the Sims 2 universe, witches and warlocks are only a natural extension to the existing mix of odd characters.
It's odd recommending an expansion pack like this with The Sims 3 coming out early next year. Yet if you're looking for more content to tide you over until the next game, Apartment Life certainly works as a solid expansion. It doesn't completely reinvent the style of gameplay you're used to, but it does make enough interesting tweaks and additions to warrant a look.
Maxis (and EA) must be stretching it a bit to maintain viable content for the Sims 2 series – especially with Sims 3 releasing in 2009. But Apartment Life is a bit more robust than Free Time was in terms of behavioral modifications and that makes it a bit more fun.
Thanks to
Metacritic for pointing me to these reviews