| | |  | Xbox | Home » » The Sims 2 (Mac) | | | | | | | Description: | |
Features include:
•Lifestyle simulation where you manage your Sim's dreams and fears over a lifetime
•Mix Sim genes and see physical and personality traits through the generations
•Control the camera and capture the action into mini movies
•Generate unique Sims with the new Create-A-Sim feature
•Build dream homes and design neighborhoods with new building options
| | | Features: | |
• Lifestyle simulation where you manage your Sim's dreams and fears over a lifetime
• Mix Sim genes and see physical and personality traits through the generations
• Control the camera and capture the action into mini movies
• Generate unique Sims with the new Create-A-Sim feature
• Build dream homes and design neighborhoods with new building options
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Weight:
| 0.5 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.6 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.3 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.4 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.5 pounds | | Release Date:
| June 13, 2005 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 144 reviews |
| | | Game Information: | | | Platform:
| Mac OS X | | Media:
| DVD-ROM | | Item Quantity:
| 1 |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 144 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
186 of 195 found the following review helpful:
 absolutely perfectSep 15, 2005
By race_of_doom
I must admit that I just bought my iMac last Friday -- therefore, I'm completely capable of playing this wonderful game. But, still -- some of the comments on this site are a bit over-the-top. If you're not completely sure about your system, research the specs (it'll take you a total of two minutes) and, to be extra sure, download the Aspyr Game Agent at Aspyr's website [...]. Run it on your Mac, and see if the Sims 2 meets and/or exceeds the minimum requirements. If it doesn't, you'll know, and therefore you won't have to waste money on a game that won't work for your Mac.
I'm particularly bothered by the "even on top of the line specs, it still doesn't work" review. My specs are not technically top of the line (I have an iMac 17" 2.0 GHz Rev. B model, 512 MB RAM), and it works PERFECTLY. The graphics are beautiful, the music amazing, the speed consistently great -- this game is like heaven on my iMac.
Considering that the requirements (more over the recommendations!) are pretty high, I can certainly understand the complaints. But on near or "top of the line" specs -- really, use that Aspyr Game Agent program -- it works beautifully.
A brief review of the game itself: this game is absolutely perfect, as I've said a couple times before. The 3D upgrade isn't as upsetting as I thought it would be, like it was in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (I was a Windows user before last week, bleh).
The game is exactly like the first, except with many enhancements. Your sims now have aspirations and fears, which makes for great fun! An aspiration of my sim Mike is that he wants to learn how to cook Lunch Meat Sandwiches. I had him read a cooking book one afternoon, and sure enough, he gained his goal. After which he gained enough Aspiration points to buy the family a money tree. ^_^
Another great aspect of the game, at least to me, is that any two people can fall in love. It's nice to play a game where "different" sexual orientation is automatically assumed to be normal.
Also, the way you can customize your Sims is crazy. I'm not talking about the clothing or the accessories (although you get a lot of those) -- I'm talking about the Sim's FACES. You can pretty much sculpt a face anyway you'd like. It's a bit creepy when you realize you've been staring at a person's eyebrows for twenty minutes, trying to get them to your liking.
The Sims are now smarter, too. If a carpool is waiting for them outside (say, to go to work), a Sim will automatically go outside and get in the car. I remember this being a pain sometimes in the last Sims game, where they would constantly miss the carpool because of petty problems (cleaning the toilet, etc).
Basically, anything you want to do you can. While open ended, it's simultaneously not -- your Sims actually age this time and die. You now have very little time to fulfill a Sim's aspirations (and you'll want to, believe me). However, if the thought of your beloved Sims dying scares you, read the instruction booklet -- they supply a cheat to freeze the aging process, ala Sims 1.
When two Sims have a baby, the little thing actually resembles his or her (or it's...) parents. So many improvements.
And the game is much more smoother, too. The camera configurations seemed to be much better this time around -- I was swirling around rooms and zooming in and going sideways all the time, without the slightest lag.
In fact, this game makes you forget that you yourself have needs -- to go to the bathroom, go to work, go to sleep, to eat something. I can play this game all day long and not care about the time gone. It's mind boggiling how fast six hours can go by.
All in all, The Sims 2 is a rather perfect game. I can't think of anything to really improve, and the upcoming exspansion packs will just make everything even more fun and engrossing.
Remember to check your specs throughly before buying, though.
49 of 53 found the following review helpful:
If you've got the machine to play it... It's a blast!Jun 15, 2005
By D. Klinkowize
Just received The Sims 2 in the mail yesterday and I love all the improvements that the game has undergone. Its about 10x as detailed as the original (for example, you don't just serve dinner, you get to decide what you are making!!!) and the new 3D engine is really gorgeous to look at. Watching your sim make him/herself a bowl of cereal and dig right into it with flakes flying all around is so fun... it's breathed new life into a great game.
I'm running it on a PowerMac Dual 2.5 with a 9600XT & 1.5gb RAM. That's unfortunately the only drawback to the game - the hefty requirements - and unfortunately the state of the Mac gamming community. PC's have really gotten much more advanced as far as games are concerned, and porting these new games from the PC to the Mac is starting to show how long in the tooth some of our Macs have gotten (I have read on several Sims 2 PC sites that the game isn't coded very well and it is very processor intensive.) Hopefully the switch to Intel will help alleviate those problems in the future, but for now, if you've got the rig to run The Sims 2 and you're a fan of the franchise than I HIGHLY recommend it!
12 of 12 found the following review helpful:
Solid title with good game play on Mac MiniJun 22, 2005
By Tena Chen
"Mac fan"
I have been playing this game more than a week, several hours a day and can say this game plays pretty well on a system that meets the minimum requirements for the game. I have a new Mac Mini which runs on a 1.25 GHz G4 processor, has 512 Megs of Ram, uses an ATI Radeon 9200 video card with 32 Megs of VRam, and MacOS 10.3.8. You do NOT need a "new" G5 to play this computer. As long as you have at least a Radeon 9000, 1.2 GHz processor and at least 512 Megs of Ram, you should be able to play this game.
When I installed the game, the video settings were automatically set to the lowest default for the best gameplay. Startup of the game is initially quick, but loading a saved lot with a family and lots of items might take about 30 seconds or so to load. I started creating a family with two people set up in a relatively small house, and gameplay is just fine until you get more than eight people on a lot. The maximum number of family members you can have on a lot is eight. More than that gameplay gets a bit choppy, since there are so many people and their aspirations the game is trying to keep track of. When this happened, it was hard to scroll around the house and use the camera angles to keep track on specific Sims. Sometimes the control panel response during this time was sluggish. However if you went into Build or Buy mode, the game jumped back into speed again.
I was rather discouraged to see reviews below that were just trashing the game because they did not pay attention to the system requirements or researched it on Aspyr's Web site. Game specs can always change, and the ones listed on this site were probably early ones before the game went through lots of testing and was shipped to retailers. And assuming a computer will play the game even when it does not meet the minimum requirements is asking for trouble. New games like the Sims 2 usually work with the newest computer technology, and not all Apple computer models will be able to play the game.
So in conclusion, on my computer that meets the minimum requirements to play this game, it plays good and is very addictive. It is worth the money I spent and will provide many, many hours of entertainment for me and my family.
18 of 20 found the following review helpful:
A Whole New ExperienceDec 12, 2005
By Beatrice Portinari
Once, while visiting my neighbor, I used Create-A-Character to make a Sim version of her three (now four)-year-old daughter. (I will call this girl Fifi, though it is not her real name-thank goodness!) I invited Fifi to admire all the various hairstyles and clothing available to female toddlers, then "aged" the Sim-showing Fifi how her Sim would look as she became a child, then a teen, then an adult, then an elder. As I returned the Sim to her rightful toddlerhood, Fifi exclaimed in delight, "I growed up!"
Fans of the original Sims will be delighted to discover that the game they knew has, in Fifi's words, "growed up" into the Sims 2. You'll recognize many of the features that you loved in Sims 1 and its many expansion packs, but you'll also be happy to find how the game has been improved by various new features. One of the biggest additions is the aspiration system: just like real people, Sims now have wants and fears. By fulfilling their wants, you can drive your Sims to new heights of productivity and happiness; by fulfilling their fears, you can drive them to nervous breakdowns!
Perhaps even more fantastic than gameplay enhancements like the aspiration system are the aesthetic improvements found in the Sims 2. When I design a Sim now, she actually looks like the person she's SUPPOSED to look like, rather than the closest possible approximation that the designers have come up with. What's more, I can view my Sims in a fully three-dimensional world, and even "get close" to them. This allows me to better see my Sims' faces as they actually speak, smile, frown, cry, and cheer-a far cry from the impassive masks that were the faces of the Sims 1. In fact, the Sims 2 exhibits an overall lifelikeness that I never could have anticipated from playing Sims 1.
Still, it's not just the differences between the new and the old games that will win you over, it's also the similarities. As with the Sims 1, it's the little things that will endear you to the new game. I love the way my parents dance to the stereo in their underwear just after I've left for school (they're surprisingly limber for people in their early 50s), the way I close my eyes in an expression of musical bliss as I play on the family piano, the way my dad goes to work in a noisy helicopter (he's a business Tycoon) and my mom wears a silver robot hand as part of her work uniform (she works nights as Mad Scientist), the way the Grim Reaper takes out a cellular phone and calls up to verify his claim over a freshly-dead corpse...all in all, a winning package.
I feel obligated to address the way the game runs on my system. I run Mac OS X 10.4.3 on a G4 Powerbook. I have a CPU speed of 1 GHz (which is less than the requirement of 1.2 GHz given by Amazon) and 512 MB of memory, and I meet all the minimum video requirements. Notice that my system hardly meets the exacting standards many reviewers claim are required to play the game. In spite of this, the only real "bugs" I've noticed are somewhat slow loading times and some choppiness each time the "camera" pans across the neighborhood I've just uploaded. More recently, I've experienced some very severe bugs that have made gameplay impossible, but these are most definitely caused by the horrible scratches that have accumulated on the game disc-my fault, not the distributor's. I expect that the University expansion pack I ordered will fix these issues. Anyway, I'd take race_of_doom's advice and run the Aspyr Game Agent before you make the decision to buy this.
17 of 19 found the following review helpful:
Universal BinaryMay 05, 2006
By NutMac
"NutMac"
By applying the free Universal Binary patch from Aspyr's website, you can now play Sims 2 on Intel Macs without Rosetta slowdown. Two caveats: at the time of writing, included Body Shop application is not yet Universal Binary and neither are any Expansion Packs. That said, this patch made the game fly on my 20" iMac (2.0 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, and 128 MB ATI X1600). I've tried two settings, a default setting at 800x600 with mostly medium details and fully maxed out 1680x1050 with highest details. Although zooming and panning are not quite fluid (i.e., occasionally becomes unresponsive), the game is imminently playable at the highest setting. At the default setting, the game runs VERY FAST. I doubt you will need full 2 GB RAM to enjoy (although you will want 1 GB minimum), as I run other applications in the background without ill effect.
As for the game itself, it's very addictive. If you liked the original Sims, you will probably love this one. At the surface, it has not changed dramatically. Although Sims are now extremely customizable, the basic play system behind the game remains mostly the same. Except for aging. Sims now age from infant, child, teenger, adult, to elder. And any newborn will genetically inherit traits (both physical and personality) from its parents. If aging is not your thing, you can turn it off using documented cheat code (and turn it back on when you feel like it). Another change involves career. Sims no longer have to work every single day -- most careers have 5-day-a-week schedule, leaving you some time to develop skills and friendships. With higher level positions, you can even accrue vacations. There are many other small changes, all adding up to fun timeless experience.
See all 144 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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