Life-Simulation Genre

I’m a huge Paradox Interactive fan and recently caught up about Life by You, their latest attempt to take a bite at the monopolistic hold EA have over the life simulation genre. After the success of City Skylines, Paradox’s city builder which continued the heritage of SimCity, I’m not surprised by their attempt and have faith that they can chip away at some of EA’s power.

Nevertheless, the Sims is a powerhouse of its own, with loyal, even fanatical fans. My sister has all the expansions for all the Sims games, has pushed 10,000s of hours into them and barely touches any other game. Similar to that one mate that always has Football Manager running in the background, life is permanently going on in her Sim world.

My own nostalgic memories of the Sims series are for the Sims 2. While we owned original Sims, it was the graphics, novelty and overall experience of the Sims 2 that really captured me. I remember fondly, playing on our family iMac G5 on Christmas day. The game itself captured all we could want from a life simulator and the subsequent expansions were a god-send for further story-telling and exploration. We were obsessed with the game and I followed through with the Legacy Challenge type gameplay which meant following a single family from cradle to grave for 10 generations.

When the Sims 3 was announced our hopes were high but the requirements were too high for my sister’s laptop on release and the game failed to capture me in the same way. I lost interest and except for a short stint playing on my sister’s computer for the Sims 4, I never really returned to the series.

However, I had a renewed interest in life-simulation games, following the Life by You trailer and learning more about Paralives, an indie studio’s attempt at creating a life simulator. Therefore this Summer my sister let me experiment with elements of all the Sims games she owned (which is pretty much everything) and I still couldn’t help but feel that the Sims 2 still felt like the most polished of the franchise.

Therefore, in this post we’ll take a nostalgic journey back to The Sims 2, exploring its unique features, how we can play it in 2023, and why it still holds a special place in my heart.

Why is Sims 2 the best Sims Game in 2023?

While at first it may seem odd to claim that the second release within the franchise is better than the two subsequent releases, there are various reasons why. However, for me it’s the small details that are captured in various YouTube shorts such as this one on pizza delivery which show that jump from Sims 2 to 3 took a backwards step and 3 to 4 was an even further fall from grace:

The endless release of Expansion Packs for the Sims 4 have left many Simmers with a sour taste in their mouth. You just need to watch the first couple of minutes of any of LGR’s latest Sims 4 reviews to understand the general feeling in the community. The developers seem to have been deliberately holding back features and then releasing them as a money grabbing expansions rather than genuinely exciting releases.

However, I’m the first to realise that the Sims 2 has some things holding it back in 2023. This is where the Sims community has picked up the slack via Mods and Custom Content.

Graphics

Firstly, it’s a 17 year old game and at times it’s really obvious just by looking at it. Luckily a YouTuber by the name of ACottonSock has put together a super useful guide to improving it’s look via Reshaders, Mods and more:

They do a better job than I could ever in explaining the various ways to get the game looking its best and I couldn’t believe my eyes when first loading up my game. The difference was well worth the couple of hours I put into playing around with these mods and I couldn’t play the game without them now. Even the shader alone makes the game looker more vibrant and clearer:

Mods

As EA no longer support the Sims 2, there are various bugs and issues that still plague the game. Again ACotttonSock goes into great detail about how to fix these issues here:

In addition to visually improving the look of the game and fixing some of its more buggy features, there are many things that the Sims Community have tried to introduce to the game that make the experience so much more enjoyable. In the end, I had installed well over 100 mods to fix various glitches, odd behaviours and to add more modern features to my game. The following are some of my favourite mods:

UX Improvements

• Auto Saving – the game will still occasionally crash and this has been a lifesaver for me.
• Job Levels Added to Job Titles – no more guessing what level a particular job is at.
• Phaenoh’s Great Clothing Migration – Re-categorises clothes to make more sense e.g. jackets in outerwear.

AI Behaviour

• Most of the Mods from CyJon (http://cyjon.net/) such as Smarter Privacy, Smarter Chair Selection, No Outerwear Spin and Less Naked Freakout.
• Autonomous Casual Romance (ACR) – It allows Sims to autonomously have relationships. I was wary this would be too much but upon playing with it, it actually made much more sense than the default of forcing two Sims to fall in love on the same day they met.

Story Progression

• LazyDutchess – Attempts to add Story Progression into the Sims 2 like in the Sims 3. I was torn between installing this and leaving it, in the end I was talked around. I played another Legacy Challenge which meant only playing on a single heir. With this enabled it meant the rest of the family went out and had their own lives which made for much more interesting storytelling and stopped the rather immersion breaking issues of Gen 5 being older than Gen 1.

Obviously there are thousands of mods and fixes which may suit your style of gameplay better. Other Simmers have put together much more comprehensive guides to fixing the game including the video above, Sunny Simblr and SimNopke.

Custom Content

What really starts to make the Sims unique is the sheer volume of Custom Content that is available and still regularly published for the Sims 2. Almost every item or design that I could think of was only a few clicks away from Mod the Sims or a quick Tumblr search (I actually created a Tumblr account just for Sims CC).

There’s literally millions of items to download but I didn’t want to take too much away from the original charm of the game and cross the uncanny valley that some of the photo realistic faces and items do. This is perhaps why I currently prefer the art style of Paralives to Life By You, but these are both in early development so I won’t pass judgement until they are released. Though Paras are an infinitely a better name than just calling them Humans…

Sims 2 Mod Organiser

The one thing I found lacking within the Sims community was any genuine guide to managing all the Mods / Custom Content I downloaded. I saw people using complex folder structures, others using spreadsheets and others embracing the chaos of having thousands of CC with no idea what they had installed.

Taking inspiration from the Sims 4 Mod Manager, which seems to have solved this issue for the Sims 4, I created my own Sims 2 Mod Manager within a Notion database:

This method took a short time to set up but a long time to maintain as my mod list grew. Using the Save to Notion Chrome plugin I could capture the webpage of the Mod, including screenshots, add tags, add any notes about downloading it etc. While this was a bit of a pain, the effort of maintaining each item in the database made me think twice about each item I downloaded. This stopped me downloading every item I saw, and actually spending time in the game to discover what I felt my Sims were missing.

I kept a Wishlist of items that I felt were missing and then would be scrolling through the blogs with a purpose rather than mindlessly scrolling. More often than not the Modders / Custom Content creators who created one item I liked, also created 50 others that fitted the same feel / theme that I was going for so I allowed myself to splurge on items I saw.

Debugging

One thing to note about my experience was that I was mostly able to play without issues for a long period of time. However, as with any game once you start modding and adding 100s of additional features to it, the game starts to have conflicts or issues.

As a result it required a few tweaks and debugging items. This is where my Notion database came in handy again:

I was able to identify in-game where I was seeing issues, have the Notion database open on a separate window and note all the issues I was having. Whether it was a piece of clothing that didn’t load textures or wasn’t showing up for a particular age group. Or a game-breaking bug where my Sims wouldn’t eat. Using my database I was able to quickly pull up the mods that impacted that particular feature using my tagging system and see where the conflicts may lie. More often than not, this was sufficient to fix the issues.

Overall Experience

Ultimately, I jump between games at an alarming rate, having still to finish Witcher 3, Spiderman or God of War on my PC. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I played the Sims 2 for a solid month or so including a few late nights, so for someone who last took a shot at the life-simulation experience around 10+ years ago, that’s pretty amazing way to capture my attention.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on the development of Paralives and Life By You. Both teams seem to have a genuine love for the Sims and are dismayed by the path that EA have gone down with it. I also think that they need to consider the freedom that modding and custom content give creators to shape their game for a unique experience for each user. Obviously, Life by You is in safe hands with Rod Humble at their head (having been a leading figure within the development of the Sims 2). And the sheer customisation options I’ve seen available for Paralives just from the teasers give me hope for the future of the genre.

Nevertheless, I still think that the Sims 2 ultimately stands as undisputed king within the life-simulation genre and it’ll be a hard task to outshine it even in 2024.