The
Sims 2 Nightlife is the second expansion pack
for The Sims 2. New downtown areas have been introduced, with night clubs,
bars, restaurants, bowling alleys and more.
How do you get there? Well, you could take a taxi, but
why not use your very own car?! That's right, Sims can now buy their own car
(see all five in the "Tuesday 21st August 2007" update on the Screenshots
tab). No more carpools or taxis, assuming you can afford it. You can build
driveways of varying length using special pieces, and even a garage with a
proper door!
Nightlife introduces
a brand new life aspiration to the game, "Pleasure Seeker". These Sims love
anything pleasurable and hate anything that isn't.
Your
Sims romantic attraction will now be based on star signs, personality, life
aspiration and turn ons and turn offs, so you'll have to look more carefully
to find your perfect match. Turn Ons and Turn Offs are new, and are chosen
by you - two turn ons and one turn off - such as "Blonde Hair", "Vampirism"
or "Full Face Makeup".
You can hire a gypsy who
will match you up with your perfect partner.
Take that Sim out on a date, and hope it turns
out as well as you'd hoped! Your date will be
monitored with a special meter. Try and keep it
in the green and your date will be a success. If
it is, you might be surprised with a romantic
gift. If it isn't, you may instead receive the
ultimate hate letter. Well, at least it'll be a
change from bills...
If you go downtown at night,
you may meet some Sims with unnaturally pale
skin - vampires. Your Sim can become one if you
make friends and let one bite him/her. Vampires
must stay out of sunlight and sleep in a special
coffin. On the plus side, needs do not decay
during the night. Vampires do not age.
Nightlife will "open up the
neighbourhood"! In other words, you'll actually
be able to see surrounding lots from the lot
you're currently on! No more feeling like you're
in the middle of nowhere then! Speaking of
neighbourhoods, Nightlife makes it
possible to toggle between night and day in the
neighbourhood view, so you can see what
Pleasantview looks like at night for instance.
Fed up of those boring
rectangular swimming pools? Well no more! With
Nightlife you can build diagonals
as well! It's similar to building foundation.
Nightlife comes packed with over
125 new objects to properly kit out down town
Sim City!
In short, Nightlife is a substantial improvement to
the original Sims 2 game (comparable in value with
the Hot Date expansion for the original Sims game),
providing Sims fans with many long-sought-after
gameplay features, as well as some subtler
enhancements that nevertheless make the game that
much more fun to play.
If dating is your game and "partying" is your middle
name, then dance on downtown with Nightlife, where
the nighttime is the right time for loving and
partying hearty all night until the sun rises in the
morning.
Nightlife adds a lot of content that will take some time for you
to explore, and it also makes dating its own activity rather
than a consequence of your sims’ normal social interactions.
The good news is that it has an abundance of new features that,
rather than taking over the basic goals, instead complements
them. It's an expansion that actually expands on the core game,
so if you're getting a little bored with the basic package it's
a good bet.
Nightlife is certainly worth the money if
you're the kind of player that loves the
social aspect more than the house aspect of
the game, but it's doesn't seem as dense an
addition as University was.
It's not a must-have, but if you get a lot
of enjoyment out of Sims 2, it's definitely
worth the money for the new social elements,
the great downtown, and the happy-go-lucky
Vampires.
But like every single Sims expansion pack in
history, Nightlife didn't set out to fix The
Sims' basic issues or to reinvent the wheel.
What it does do is offer plenty of new areas
to build outdoor lots and some interesting
new features and tweaks that give The Sims 2
a fresh coat of paint for its many fans.
Nightlife makes a challenging game more
challenging and an amusing game all the more
amusing. It's definitely worth taking out
for a night on the town, no matter how your
Sims might feel when you wake 'em up in the
morning.
With a host of new features, The Sims 2:
Nightlife comes highly recommended to
anybody who's a fan of the game - you'd be a
fool not to sample the fruits of your
labour!
Though certainly
flawed, Nightlife is a step up from the
previous expansion and will give your sim
some genuinely fun and challenging new
things to do with themselves and the world
they inhabit.
None of this stuff revolutionizes the gameplay model, but it
does twist things up enough to keep fans interested. If you're
going stir-crazy with The Sims 2, then Nightlife just might be
the perfect cure.
Overall, The Sims 2: Nightlife is a solid
expansion, although I really wouldn't call it a must-have
because it's a little light on content for its price tag.
Nightlife -- it's a lot of work for flashes of scandalous fun,
and not as much reward in the long run. Neither the new
Aspiration nor the dating mini-game brings very much to the
gameplay, and that's the crux of the problem.
However if you can get past the technical glitches, or somehow
manage to avoid them, then Sims 2 Nightlife is a fine addition
to the growing Sims 2 franchise.
It's a solid add-on pack, with its joys only
really curtailed by the problems of the Sims 2
itself. While you can date at home, it's most
fun when you actually make it a social event and
head out to a bar, restaurant or art gallery.
Problem is, with the lengthy time it takes to
move between any location in the Sims 2 -
especially if you're only going to be there for
the few minutes a date takes up - is
particularly taxing.
In conclusion, Nightlife looks much the same as
before, sounds much the same, and plays much the
same. On this front, we’d rather spend a night
in with the original than shell out the money
for this second expansion.
Unsurprisingly however, there's no real added
depth to the original gameplay, and behind the
complex conversation options you'll find the
same game you were playing before you installed
the expansion. Except with more bowling.
Thanks to
Metacritic for pointing me to these reviews