kuuleimomi's Full Review: The Sims™ 2 for Windows
The Sims 2 from Electronic Arts as a game has done more than the whole world in terms of fighting prejudice and discrimination. This game made many real dreams come virtually true. And I don’t mean becoming a mayor or a crazy scientist with a daily salary of $2,333. I mean the world that is not only accepting homosexually, but also doesn’t make a whole big deal about it. As a gay couple you don’t have to bite nails and wonder if the adoption service in your district is gay friendly or not or if law nicely classifies you as second-rate citizens. If you’re a loving couple with some dough in your account, then you’ll get a child anyway. But first things first.
This game is an improved (very improved, even) version of The Sims, the game I wasted all of my time on during my high school finals five years ago. It requires minimum Pentium 800, 256 Mb RAM and 32 Mb Video Card. But trust my word, 256 Mb won’t get you far. When you call a cab it might take a long while till you get to the mall to buy that fabulous shirt. Also, it is very difficult to operate with 256 Mb when your family grows. By the time I get a third kid I try to get rid of my least favorite member of the family (you know, fire, starvation or a bad try at fixing that plasma TV). As for Pentium 800, I don’t know, I’ve got Celeron 2.20 GHz.
Sims is the life simulation. You get some preexisting characters, who have their own lives, and you can create your own new people and move them into the neighborhood. Or you can create your own neighborhood, build your own houses, build your own malls and be the lord of the neighborhood. I’ve been playing with my own characters in existing neighborhoods for a while, but then I realized that my character Shane is lacking cute sperm donors and decided to create the Queer World, place where everyone is queer, until they are not. And this is the best thing about new Sims: you can give birth to kids and watch them grow into mini versions of you, eek, I mean the characters, they have a built-in DNA and have similar features to his parents.
When the new sim is born into this world it goes through a phase of being a baby, when the lord of the neighborhood has no control over him and the only thing you can do is change their diapers and feed them occasionally. That period lasts for a couple of days. Then the baby grows up into a little kid and then you can operate him/her. While loving parents are dreaming of teaching him/her how to walk, you can send him to explore the toilet or some other evil stuff (you can already tell I’m hell of a parent). After the kid phase the baby is an elementary school student. Watch him bored doing his homework. Also, watch him where he places his homework. My brats usually place them in the garden next to the rose bushes, and even if they dream of doing it, I for the life of me can’t find their damn homework. After seven or eight days brats become teenagers. That’s almost as scary as in real life. They go to high school, but can get part-time jobs now. A few weeks after they are adults. A month later they are old geezers on pension.
Now I probably should tell you about dreams. In the very beginning when you were creating characters you assigned them aspirations. My sims usually either sleep around (that is called romantic aspiration for some reason, though they are more like Brian Kinney to you and last time I checked he wasn’t romantic) or obsessed with money. Such a nice person I am. Every aspiration has its wishes. So romantic sims wish to sleep with as many sims as possible, family sims want kids, money obsessed sims want money and rich partners, pseudo-intellectual geeks want to study everything and reach the top of their knowledge, and popular queens want to have many friends. Sims also have fears. Their fears are the usual with all of us: rejection, fire, death or illness. Sometimes they are scared of losing friends, but my romantic sims are most scared of getting married. From the moment the kids are born till their teenage birthday their only aspiration is to grow well: learn new stuff, have cool toys, make friends, do homework, etc.
The basics though are still the same: you take care of their everyday needs like hunger, shower, toilet, communication, sleeping, etc. Sims can find a job through paper or computer. They are collected by a car. Kids can go to private school, for that matter their parents have to invite the principal for dinner and impress him with their house, food and conversation. Sims can waste their money on stuff like plasma tv, exotic furniture, pool, hot tub, etc. For fulfilling sims’ wants you get awards. By using them you can get some extra stuff, like cash or energy or extra points. To get promoted and get a raise sims have to get more points in their field of expertise. A few promotions after they can expect an award in their area: like a biotech station, that will keep giving them extra points and could be a nice time passing with their loved ones. Sims can go to the mall by calling a cab or invite a friend with them. That feature is useful if your sim want to have a WooHoo (sex that is) in public. You’ll have to make them try some outfit and invite a lover in. However we all know that the best sex is in the hot tub: even if you get none, it’s still fun.
The game has totally crazy stuff like when I tried to kill this doofus Goopy, I dropped all of his needs to nil, but still he wouldn’t die. I thought that maybe lack to communication will make him go mad and he’ll pass away. But no, he did go mad, but didn’t die. Instead a giant pink social bunny showed up. Goopy saw him alright, could talk and play with him. But if you switched to another character, the bunny was gone. Everyone thought poor Goopy was talking to himself. After a while I felt sorry for him and let him live. Though two of my other characters, whom I loved to death, almost died after a few misfortunes. Death showed up in black robes and Goopy had to ask for his lover Justin and saved him from death. Yep, you can trick the death if you click on it on time to save your loved one.
Game offers a lot: you can build house of your dream, become someone, whom you’ll never be in real life (like a scientist), have knowledge never even wanted to have, have things you never knew existed (like that ugly sculpture of I don’t know what), but mostly you can develop relationships and let them go in the ways you’ll never dare in real life.
All of the characters in the game are created bisexual. And even when Justin hit on this bloke Joshua and Josh turned him down and I thought that it was because Justin was gay, turned out that they didn’t know each other that well. A few days later they were married. Yeah, another thing, time is flying by so fast. You can get sims engaged and married, but you can also have a wedding. Click on the phone, have a party – wedding. Same way you can have birthday parties or just parties. There’s a whole section devoted to parties in store, so you can buy cakes, balloons and other stuff. Once you’ve got married, you can get divorced and that’s not an easy procedure. It will take time for them to stop crying and the kids would be mad. When Justin cheated on Goopy with Joshua their adopted son Michael hated Justin’s guts. When Justin married to Joshua, Michael hated Joshua as well. The two newlyweds adopted another kid and you can only imagine what a loony family I created. Anyway, if straight people have it, why can’t gay people have it too?
Generally you won’t see me marching with a marriage initiative and I guess my gaming habits show that, but still I think the guys who created such a gay-friendly game deserve a praise. But once again I stop and wonder why do we have to make such a big deal over something that should be so natural. Why do we have to thank people for including us too?
This has been my contribution for the annual GLBT write-off, this year hosted by Stephen Murray. Check the list of writers and their contributions on his profile.
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