The Sims 2 Holiday Edition

The Sims 2: Holiday Edition includes the complete Sims 2 game and 40 supplemental holiday objects. Like The Sims game that preceded it, which quickly grew to be on of the most popular PC games of all time, you create one or more autonomous characters (sims) with distinct personalities and needs. You then create a virtual household for your sims, deciding whether they're roommates, spouses, or parents, and you move them into a pre- or custom-built house and neighborhood. Your sims will interact with each other and other sims in their community, with children going to school while the adults head to work. The Sims 2 features an enhanced neighborhood editor that lets you import custom cities from SimCity 4 (not included), and it also includes expanded building options for building bigger houses.

This sequel features enhanced appearance editing tools that allow you to customize your sims' appearance. View larger.

The genetics function takes your ability to create a family and builds it out further. View larger.

Let your sims celebrate New Year's in style with a fantastic party. View larger.

The most significant additions in The Sims 2 are the behavioral and character enhancements made to the sims themselves. While sims still have specific personality types determined by their horoscopes and adjustable individual characteristics -- such as neatness, niceness, and playfulness -- sims now have some notable major new features, such as memories, genetics, aging, and the new aspiration/fear system. This sequel also features enhanced appearance editing tools that allow you to customize clothing, hair styles and colors, and even lets you make adjustments to facial features. The genetics function takes your ability to create a family and builds it out further, letting sims pass on genetic information to their children. When creating a family, you can now have the game randomly generate children based on their parents' appearance and personality, though you can still edit those children. You can choose to re-create a real-life couple or family to see what kind of genes get handed down from generation to generation. Or you can experiment by interjecting some DNA from an alien into the family tree, as The Sims 2 includes the ability to create aliens from outer space and even marry them off to your more outlandish sims family members.

Another adjustment to The Sims 2 is the application of the aging and aspiration/fear systems. While the aging systems consequences are fairly obvious and straightforward, the aspiration/fear system can actually help your sims stave off old age. This new system allows you to choose one of five aspirations for your sims, including building a family, earning money, seeking knowledge, experiencing romance, or being popular. These aspirations are immediately realized by four simpler goals that get displayed onscreen, as well as three basic fears. Each sim has an aspiration meter which can fill up as you complete goals, or empty out if your sims' worst fears come true. Goals can be as immediate as throwing a successful party, or as long term as eventually winning over other sims as friends or spouses. Fears can be equally straightforward or long term, such as the fear of being rejected or getting fired from work.

Just as in life, if enough fears are realized, your sims lose their aspiration and go temporarily insane, although fortunately for your sims a therapist usually shows up. During this period of insanity, your sims can become unresponsive, ignoring orders you may be giving. However, if your sims successfully complete their goals, they earn more aspiration points, causing their meter to progress from green to gold and eventually platinum. The higher your sims' aspiration meters reach, or the longer they stay in the platinum range, the longer your sims remain as "normal" young adults.

The 40 new holiday objects included in The Sims 2: Holiday Edition allow you to celebrate several holidays in style. From Halloween objects, to firecrackers, wallpaper, presents, tree decorations and more, you can let your sims celebrate New Year's or even invite Santa Claus over for supper. And there is even a new movie-making feature that lets you "film" your sims in action and save the video to your computer. The Sims 2 even looks great, powered by a powerful three-dimensional graphics engine.

Price: $39.99

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