The PS2 version was released January 18th. You should try and rent it first.
I was so use to playing the PC version I almost quit, but once I got a hold of the rules of the PS2 version, I got hooked again.
Little Computer People… ah, memories 
The biggest differences in the PS2 version:
- It’s “true” 3D, so you can rotate the camera freely. It bugs me that you can’t get as close to the characters as you can with the PC version, though.
- It’s more goal-oriented. You can’t play the neighborhood version until you’ve completed certain things in the “Get a Life” version, which is kind of a lengthy tutorial. You start out living with your mom and have to keep the house clean, borrow enough money, and get a job before you can move out. Each house has goals you have to accomplish to unlock new items to buy.
It’s kind of ironic that in the main menu of the PS2 version, you’re given two options: “Get a Life” or “Play the Sims.”
Actually, the Unleashed pack made some pretty significant changes, although the pets were the most obvious. The change I like the best is that it greatly expands the neighborhood and allows you to build commercial lots as well as residential ones. Unlike the ones in Hot Date, these are free for your Sims to visit. It’s been a while since I’ve played the original, but I think this is the first time you can build a house without moving a family to a lot first, so you’re free from budget concerns. Unleashed also adds gardening, so you can have your sims grown their own food.
Sure, you can’t mention the game without getting plenty of thoughtful and exhaustive critiques like Urban Ranger’s entry above, but I’ve always been impressed with the expansion packs for The Sims. Since the Hot Date pack at least, they really add new layers to the gameplay instead of just dumping a bunch of new objects and skins onto a CD.
You can always turn off the Free Will option, and order them to do at much as 8 things in order. For example, read, then watch TV, then eat, then go to the bathroom, then sleep. Woohoo!
I’m afraid to buy The Sims. I got hooked on Little Computer People way back when, and it seems that the Sims are LCP times 5…
Pretty much, yeah.
Except instead of trying to get the little bugger to play blackjack with you, or begging him to write a letter, you get to order them around like an electronic dictator.
Time for a Sim to go set of some fireworks in the living room? Never mind what they think, you just issue orders, and watch 'em march off to do your nefarious bidding…
The expansion pack that added all the gothic castle architecture and that blasted chemistry set pretty much turned me into a Dr. Frankenstein (or Frank N. Furter, take your pick) for about three weeks. I was running out of room for the little gravestones out in the back yard.
[sub]I may just have to pinch a couple of bucks outta the income tax return and go hunt down a couple more expansion packs, this year.[/sub]
[q]The Sims sucks.[/q]
Total agreement, UR (Hi!)
It was fun for the first week, and then I asked… is this is? really? That’s when I stopped playing, and haven’t touched it since.
I just bought this game (SIMS Deluxe Edition) a few days ago (new computer: WHEE!!), and have a couple of questions…
First off: Where is the Autonomy Scale that Wang-Ka (and others) mentioned being able to turn up and down? All I can find under the Options menu is a check box labeled “Sim In Background” or something similar. Is the scale on an expansion pack or am I missing it?
Second: Do any of the expansion packs let you build more than two floors? One of the houses that appears in the opening video is a rather tall narrow brick affair with windows on the third floor, but I can’t figure out how to build one like it. I’ve wanted to go the castle route like Skeezix, but only two floors and a pitched roof just isn’t doing it for me.
Third…money cheat (not that I would use it, oh no…)?
All in all, it’s sucked up extraordinary amounts of time in the few days I’ve had it (makes a nice antidote to Solitaire), but my autobiographical SIM is now in counterintelligence/special forces, and bringing home lotsa §§§. Good thing, too; I’m not impressed with the SIM police force. He called them while the robber was still in the house and they still diddn’t catch the guy. Goodbye, electric guitar, goodbye chess set…
I could be wrong, but I don’t ever remember seeing a slider to control the autonomy of the Sims. You just get a checkbox for “on” or “off”. And it’s the “Free Will” option, not “Sim in Background.” (The latter has the simulation still run without your intervention if you alt+tab out to another application.)
Nope, 2 floors is the limit. The best the expansions will do for you is give you more options for staircases between the two floors.
According to The Sims Resource, it’s CTRL+SHIFT+C, then type “klapaucius” (without quotes).
You need to buy the motion detector/burglar alarm and put it on a wall in each room. It doesn’t keep the burglar from stealing your stuff, but you do get insurance money back from it, always more than the cost of what was stolen.
“Klapaucius” works for older versions of The Sims; newer versions use “rosebud” instead. Either way, it’s good for §1000. You can repeat commands by using !, and have several commands on each line if you separate them with ;. So “rosebud;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!” is good for §10,000.
The burglar alarm can also be placed on the outside of the house, in the corner other Sims usually come from. This saves money since you’ll need one or two, and allows the police to come and catch the burglar, which nets you a §1000 reward as well as the insurance money if he actually steals anything. (The burglar is dumb. He’ll keep going while the alarm is screeching away.)
We’ve just figured out how to get a visit from Santa! 
Trying throwing a party and inviting the whole neighborhood.
But first, have your house surrounded by a massive pool and make sure that food is prepared on the other side so that the SIMS will try to make over there…then once all the SIMS, the caterers, the strippers, the clowns, the pantomine, pizza guy, the mechanic, the police, etc are in the pool…pause the game, then take away the step ladders to get out of the pool.
Now unpause the game, but don’t save it (very importanta), then watch your SIMS try to swim around to get out. Eventually they all start to drown from being too exhausted.
This is especially good to give yourself a break. And make you feel like a GOD!!!
If you didn’t save your game before taking away the step ladder, UH-OH…you have to start all over. Noah’s Ark style!!!
Wow, that’s some rock you’ve been living under to have missed both Buffy and the pc game that was the best selling for over a year
The game on PC is very addicting, as others have said, but it also can waste your time in a secondary way, once you start something as elaborate as this www.geocities.com/simthingdifferent Sure, I’ve been working on it for a little over two years (the game came out Feb 4th, 2000, but it took a while to start the site…wait, does the fact that I know the release date scare anyone else?), but every single thing on there was made by me, and I’m afraid to think about how much time it took 
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Shup
~Ferry
The game concept is sort of cool, but I personally think it gets boring quickly. But when you have all the expansions it’s somewhat unstable. If you use cheats or fansite add-ons you run the risk of trashing your save files.
Since we seem to be turning this into a “How to/Evil Ideas” thread…
As flodnak and SolGrundy have pointed out, burglar alarms on the outside of the house are a must, especially if you’re not using the money cheat, and can’t afford to replace those expensive items constantly.
[sub]“Whaddayamean, he stole the refrigerator? Who was this guy, the Hulk?”[/sub]
Staircases. Plural. If you’ve got more than one tiny bedroom on the second floor, think of any shopping mall, and install two, side-by-side, centrally located staircases. As of the last X-Pack we had, only one Sim could use a stairway at a time, even if they’re both going in the same direction. Has this changed with the latest?
Also, Bathrooms, plural. If you have more than two Sims living under the same roof, this is a must. Even then, you can still run into problems.
[sub]“Thanks, dumbass. I’ve just missed my second day of work in a row, and lost my job, because you had to use my upstairs bathroom, instead of the one right next to your bedroom door.”[/sub]
Get that bookcase right from the get-go, and forget about a job the first couple of game days. Bone up on Oven Operation 101: Cooking Without Conflagration. A smoke detector over the stove isn’t a bad idea either, early on.
[sub]However, the total freakout they have when confronted by a grease fire in the kitchen is pretty funny to see, in a dark sort of way.[/sub]
I’ll leave the rotten stuff for a later time, and other Dopers…
At least, until I’ve had a chance to find the CDs, reinstall, and do rotten things to the poor schmucks.
Owning all the expansions does significantly add to the lag factor, especially if you’re short on RAM. Surprisingly, the game lags much less since I installed Unleashed, and loads faster too.
As for add-ons, 90% of the time they are fine and safe. If you add an object or skin that makes your game crash, deleting the object will fix the problem. More advanced hacks & cheats can be dangerous, especially ones like “Grow Up” which allows your children to turn into adults eventually. It’s a good idea to learn what things in your game can be safely modified, and which websites that offer such programs can be trusted.
Good sites I’d recommend are SimWardrobe, which has programs for editing the way your sims look, among other things; and SimSlice, which has a TON of patches that fix things even better than the Maxis patches did!! (For example, making the food you buy downtown actually worth something.)
And yes, staircases only handle one sim at a time in Unleashed.
Do the expansion packs have to be installed in a predetermined order? Or can I just get one (say Unleashed), and install it without having any of the other packs?
There is a predetermined order for installation but the previous expansions aren’t required. However, if you install a previous expansion on top of a later one, you’ll need to reinstall the later one.
Hot Date also added “the love bed” which allowed Sims to get it on for the first time. Sa-weeet!
Another tip is that your Sims do not need to go to work 7 days a week. You can miss a day every now and then with no repurcussions. This is good if you find you don’t have enough time in the day to make your sim happy. Take a personal day and just let them do all the fun things they like.