TS2: NL adds a whole new level of depth to the original game and is worth a purchase for even the most casual Sim fans.
User Rating: 8.3 | The Sims 2: Nightlife PC
This review was done on a: Dual Intel Pentium 4 3.0Ghz Processor's ATI X800 XT 1024MB Ram More than enough GB Many have compared The Sims 2: Nightlife to the hit seller of the original expansion pack, for The Sims 1, Hot Date. While there are comparisons, many fans of the series will be pleased with the differences. Unfortunately, the strong idea wasn't put to its full use and it has also proven to be a rather demanding product if you want to run things at its highest settings. There are a variety of new features added into The Sims 2: Nightlife. All of these features, while not revolutionary, would be nice to have both for the present and the future. To emphasize this point, one can simply look at the base facts: The game now has a downtown you can use for your Sims to visit. The things you can do down there are not all too numerous, but come with enough variety to keep things from getting raw. This excludes you players who would go downtown two or three times per Sim day, of course. That said, a new dating system has been added along with a group outing. Both are pretty much the same thing, in that you must keep the sims with you happy, but obviously one will have more of a challenge (Hint: Keeping more sims happy might be harder). Thankfully, neither are extremely difficult and reaping the rewards from these amusing features can be well worth the time investment. Add the story potential behind these features, for you story tellers, and this is quite a bit of hefty additions on its own. Changes to the core gameplay haven't been altered and that's probably a good thing, considering the games overall success. There are some new items, some of which can get you some extra cash if you're lucky (Ex: Poker), but probably the thing that stands out most is the cars. Now I don't care what anyone else says but the fact is: The cars are cool. They don't really add any depth to the gameplay but they do save you time. And just having one of those "babies" parked on your driveway, or in your garage, sure makes things look a lot more... Natural. On that note, there are only a handful of cars available, all of which have a variety of paint jobs, but hopefully that will change as time progresses. Looking at screenshots and clips would give a player an idea of how the game looks: Indifferent from the past. There are some new nifty lighting effects though nothing significant has been done to alter the previous graphics. This isn't to say that this is a bad thing - On the contrary, The Sims 2 still looks great. But on that note, don't expect your machine to run at top settings with some of the new additions. Take, for example, the new neighborhood view. While it doesn't sound, in theory, to be like a drainer, I have noticed that things do "hiccup" every once awhile and while it isn't a big deal, it sure can get annoying after awhile. And it only gets worse when you go downtown. There are some new tunes added into the game, some of which will receive mixed opinions. Personally, I'm split on some of the music though I'll leave that judgement to each individual person. Fortunately, the key elements of the sound remains strong overall, with no obvious problems. That said, the sound is barely Great, but far from being superb. The Sims 2: Nightlife should be in the collection of any Sims 2 fan. Why? It adds enough content to be entertaining and will without a doubt, add a great level of depth to future gameplay. Whether you're a story teller, a casual gamer, or a hardcore sims fan... The choice here isn't whether you should buy it - It's when.
