The Sims 2: Nightlife Expansion Pack
- Sims romantic attraction is now based on personality – Figure out their compatibility, then heat up their love life with new romantic social interactions
- Give the Sim of your dreams a longing gaze, go for a slow dance and top it off with a dramatic dip kiss
- Live it up in fun and style – over 125 new items objects & items including a DJ station, photo booth, karaoke machine and more. Exotic new Sims to mingle or date including vampires, hot waiters and more
- Doll up and head out — chill out at mellow lounges, dance the night away at nightclubs, enjoy candlelight dinners at fine restaurants or hit the bowling alley with the guys and become the ultimate king of the pins
Product Description
The Sims 2 Nightlife Expansion PCAmazon.com
After the incredible success of the life-simulation game, Sims 2, gamers have eagerly devoured a variety of Sims 2 expansion packs. Get ready for another addition, with the after-dark installment–The Sims 2: Nightlife Expansion Pack–intended to send your Sims on an epic night out.
Enjoy the hedonistic side of life while you cruise the nightclub scene.
Play your ca… More >>
I picked up my copy of Nightlife yesterday, as well as Prima’s Nightlife Strategy book. The game is great. With this expansion, your sims have the opportunity to have enhanced social interactions with other sims. You can now see what sims are attracted to your sims. There is a new item in the relationship panel called “chemistry” and the sims with whom your sims have chemistry with are rated with a lightning bolt system – 1 bolt being low, 2 bolts being average and 3 being high. This helps if you’re trying to get your sim a good match. You can also ask people about their skill levels, which will be helpful for me because there is nothing worse than picking up a sim who has low skills and thus contributes nothing good to the household.
You can now go out with groups of people instead of just one sim. This functions similarly to “throw party” in that the group outing is scored. (FYI-Dates are also scored) You can create and manage groups so whenever you want to go out with groups of people, the group is already preassembled.
With a new aspiration reward tool your sims can change aspiration. In the past this could only be done with a young adult sim while they were in college. However if your sim uses this object under the gold range their aspiration will automatically be change to “grilled cheese”. They will only want to make, eat and talk about grilled cheese.
With respect to objects and building: I haven’t used anything yet, however there are now 1/2 walls that you can build to break up a room a little bit, however it does not function in the same way as a full wall does i.e. if your kitchen has rotten food on the counter top and is separated from the dining room by a half wall, the dining room environment score will be affected. There is also a new driveway tool, new doors, windows etc.
I don’t really like playing with cheats, but there are some new ones:
1 – You can give a newly created family additional funds without having to play with them. In the past you had to buy a house lot or a house, move them in and THEN use the motherlode cheat. So if I wanted to give Don Lothario $10,000 the cheat is “familyfunds Lothario 10000″. You can insert a minus sign before the simoleon dollar amount to reduce a family’s funds if you want.
2 – Give a family ALL the career reward items with “unlockCareerRewards”.
3 – Maximize motives with “maxMotives”
This expansion pack is an “enhancement” pack. It takes simming to a whole new level.
Rating: 4 / 5
As depicted in our earlier previews, Nightlife offers a new downtown/city area that you can associate with your towns. There’s only one, but it’s loaded with new buildings, restaurants, stores, and entertainment centers. 125 new objects are available, most focusing on social interaction or community lot decorating. Sims can now build driveways and own their own cars, and they can form social groups or go out on dates. In addition, the inclusion of Vampires almost makes the pack.
Graphically, there are some new perks. Although it doesn’t directly impact gameplay, you can now see neighboring lots from your own house — this makes the game more immersive, since it doesn’t feel like your house is floating in space anymore.
A new “Pleasure Aspiration” is now available as a Sim’s life goal. Typically Sims with the Pleasure Aspiration live for the moment, their wants changing rapidly based on the situation, eager to do whatever fun thing is at hand. They’re pretty easy to keep happy, but not very deep, which makes the new aspiration less interesting to play than, say, a family or popularity aspiration.
Rating: 4 / 5
When I first bought this expansion pack and played it for a few hours, I immediately came on the amazon site and rated it at 4 stars. After playing it enough to feel comfortable writing a review, though, I find I have to give it 3 stars. Let me explain.
What I liked:
*New and useful objects
*Inventory slots! Want to keep something when your SIM moves out? Put it in their inventory and take it out when you get to the new home!
*Cars! Miss the bus or carpool? No problem! Hop in the car. Don’t like the waste of valuable time that waiting for the taxi has become? No problem! Hop into the car!
*The New Pleasure Seeker Aspiration. Actually not a very difficult person to keep happy and it adds a bit more variety to a game that already has tons of it.
*The New Downtown Neighborhood. Just as the University Expansion Pack had you choose a University neighborhood to associate with your normal SIMS neighborhood, Nightlife has you choose a Downtown neighborhood to associate as well. There is only one Downtown neighborhood to choose from, but it is great as is! You can still create your own if you so desire, though.
*Vampires! Beware of night trips to Downtown! You never know when the local Count is going to search for entertainment in the same location that you choose…
*Group Outings and Dates. These add new activities to run your SIMS through which adds yet more variety to an already great game. It takes a while to get a feel for how to make them successful, but learning is half the fun!
*Turn ons and Turn offs. These add a little depth to your SIMS personalities. This enhancement had me a little worried at first, because I was afraid of how already existing SIM families would be affected. It turns out that when you install this expansion pack, already existing SIMS have a potion put into their inventory. Drinking this potion allows you to set the turn ons and turn offs so you can pick those traits that will keep your SIM family together (or tear them apart if you feel evil).
What I didn’t like:
*All of the bugs that I observed after the University Expansion are still their with Nightlife.
*If an already existing SIM owned a cell phone, handheld device, or other electronic gadget then this disappears after installing the Nightlife expansion pack and you have to buy new ones for that SIM. THAT is an inexcusable bug!
*If you create a new family in the Downtown neighborhood and then want to move them into the regular neighborhood, well, there’s no ultra easy way to do it (like the drop out of school option or graduation in University). The work around, I guess, is to make them friends with someone in the neighborhood and have that person invite them to move in.
*The price. Despite the quality of what is added, I still feel that this expansion pack is overpriced, especially in light of the bugs that didn’t fixed.
In Summary:
If I rated the new additions on just the fun and value they add to the game I would give it 5 stars. The unresolved bugs cost at least 1.5 stars though. I took another .5 for the price. It really does pain me to give this only 3 stars, but being too forgiving won’t encourage game developers to put forth the extra effort to make their products bug free.
Rating: 3 / 5
I purchased the Nightlife expansion pack after using the University expansion pack for several months, and I have to say these add-ons keep getting better! Anyone who plays Sims 2 knows how limitless the game is in nature, but these packs add so much more to the game! This edition especially shows how receptive EA Games is to its customers. A few of the great additions this pack offers are…
-Chemistry: Sims are now able to match based on chemistry. You are able to pick your sim’s turn-on’s and turn-off’s and “scope” rooms for other sims who match basic chemistry. Then, as relationships progress, you can track chemistry levels which will make or break the relationship.
-Pleasure Aspiration: A new aspiration has been introduced to create even more possibilities for your sims new party lives.
-Vehicles: Sims are able to buy cars which makes going to community lots more fun and realistic. Also, you can now build actual garages with driveways. Cars can also be equiped with alarms for an added effect.
-Community Lots: Now, you will be able to change community lots with extreme ease and speed by simply clicking on a lot across the street from the one you’re currently at. This is far quicker than having to return to your sim’s house and then out again to a different location.
-New objects: This will be very exciting to any avid Sim player! EA has obviously done their reseach and discovered people were trying to make their own sectional couches or boothes for dining. Now, these items come standard with no hassles required. Many new objects await that should definitely meet and exceed your desires.
There are many, MANY more reasons for this expansion pack to receive 5 stars, but I’ll save you some surprises! Don’t wait; Get it now!
Rating: 5 / 5
THIS GAME…OH MY GOSH! This is…THE BEST Sims game…EVER(I wouldn’t know exactly…University doesn’t work on my computer but…)! If you haven’t gotten it yet, then you are SO missing out. I know you’ve already heard about it already but…
Pros:
-CARS!! One of the last things that I wanted! Now you can actually go places WITHOUT having to pay money for a taxi and wait for it to arrive while you Sim wants to go here and there and do this and that and by the time it gets there it takes forEVER to get them there and…I’m rambling…sorry…BUT IT’S AN AWESOME ADDITION!
-Dating…it makes the Sims life seem even more realistic than before! If you have a dream date, then they’ll show up at your door and give you a boquet of flowers. If your house is already crowded, than this can be kinda annoying because you just don’t have space to put that kinda thing anywear, but it’s still a nice addition. If your date is a disaster however…well…they show up at your door furious and with a burning bag of dog poo. But yeah…dating is awesome combined with chemistry. Chemistry can either make your life a whole lot easier by unlocking actions earlier…or they could be completely repulsed by the person that you want them to love…but that’s just another thing to add to their personality…which is totally real now by the way.
-VAMPIRES! I’ve been trying so hard to get one of my Sims bitten…and finally it happened! I now have a whole vampire family who are busy biting their freinds and spreading the epidemic of vampirism! When night comes, NONE of their needs go down! NONE OF THEM! Which means that you’ve got a whole twelve hours that they can use for maximizing skills! The bad part is that they can’t really work, unless they have a home business I guess…but if you don’t have Open For Business…then you have to use “motherlode”…a lot. And sometimes, with no needs to fullfill, it gets kinda tedious…BUT I STILL LOVE IT! Oh…and another thing…once morning comes…they have to get into a coffin quick! They start to die when they’re exposed to sunlight, which gets kinda tough when you have an annoying little baby/toddler/kid who doesn’t seem to understand that they’re killing their parents when they wake them up because, A.)They need their diper changed, B.)They woke up from a nap, or C.)They want them to cheer for a report card.
-The awesome downtown. They’ve got tons of new places to go to! It takes FOREVER to load downtown then the place, but that can be solved by living in a house downtown. Then you only have to load the place, which takes considerably less time.
-All of the new outfits and hair. There are so many new choices! It’s really cool! You can even have their hair dyed different colors by going to custom hair when they change their appearance.
Cons:
There’s really not much…but I suppose…
-You can’t save when downtown. Not a new concept…but it’s still extremely annoying.
-The lack of vampires. I have a few Sims that spend every single night roaming downtown in search of vampires for the purpose of becoming one, and only one succeeded! ONE! Other times, I found one on a Sim that wasn’t for that purpose, which made me really mad because if I had only been there with a one that was meant for it…
-Toddlers, kids, and teenagers can’t be vampires. I suppose that it’s because they have to go to school, but couldn’t they have had a night school or a special school for vampires? I even had two vampire parents have a baby, and it wasn’t a vampire…but I guess I’ll just have to wait…
As you can see from the extreme lack of cons, this is an AWESOME game and I love it!
Rating: 5 / 5