The first Sims Game I played was Sims Bustin Out for GBA (Gameboy Advance). I absolutely love it, it'll always be my favorite game, and maybe in the future it will inspire me to make something. Next came Sims 2 on PSP, then I played TS1 on Xbox (the first one) a LOT. The only Sims I've played on PC was Sims 3, and I played that a lot as well. I've always preferred the portable Sims more though. :3
I really think Sims 2 beats the original. Three great cities with their own weird but also awesome stories that make you want to play them endlessly. In The Sims 1, all sims were the same but with different character models. In The Sims 2, every character had their backstory. The Pleasant Family: would you let Daniel hook up with the maid? The Curious Family: how would you raise an alien child? The Capp and Monty Family... and the list goes on and on. The Sims 3 really enhanced the experience by giving an open-world aspect that made the game special. You could see how Sims around you were going on with their lives, aging, dying, having kids... a never ending evolution of the city. The Sims 4 really goes back to The Sims 1 in terms of lack of backstories. Sure, the Goth family are still there but there's nothing special about them anymore. They're just different character models in the Sims 4 world. The other families? Nothing special either. They're just there. TL;DR TS2 is, in my opinion, the best Sims game ever made thanks to the multiple backstories that make you want to continue them. TS2 > TS3 > TS1 > TS4
^ I agree, mostly. I voted for TS3. Open-world aspect was like a very huge thing for me, something to hype about. For example, I never really moved around much in TS2. Visiting public lots, vacation stuff etc. was obviously a nice part of the game but it's nothing you'd do often because the loading times were a pain. Especially when you had all the expansion packs. I hated that loading screen, it took way too much time than it should. And then TS3 comes out and you can wander around the city without that fear of getting stuck on a loading screen for a couple of minutes. I loved it. I spent way too much time in TS1, nostalgia factor kicks in, obviously. It was one of the first games I played in my life, actually. I remember the days when everyone was hyping about it, spending the night at my neighbors house because he had more expansion packs than me. Computers were shit by then (ever started installing a game from CD and then went to meet up with friends, then go back home just in time for installation to finish? I did, Windows 98, man!), borrowing CDs from your friends at school with movies and games just to copy them for your own use was a common practice, since Internet wasn't that common and getting a pirated copy of anything was damn hard (not even starting on games being quite expensive too). Well, you could go to a marketplace in a big city and get counterfeit copy of anything for a fraction of a price - don't judge me, that's how I got Vacation (CD broke after few installs anyway) back in 2002. I'm not promoting piracy of course, just getting a bit sentimental about my past. ^^ Back on topic - TS1's gameplay was dead simple, graphics were simple too but it was damn good looking, still is. And with a little bit of child's imagination, mixed with photo album feature and "export to HTML" feature, you had a powerful tool for making stories. You could say that in Sims there were these kinds of people (players): - let's build a huge, cool house, using cheats and such, and then get bored - let's waste half of your life creating a story of your family, getting them married etc., feel like these guys who get paid for writing scripts for Bold and Beautiful, but without getting paid - KILL ALL HUMANZ I was a little bit of second and third I suppose. Anyway, TS1 will always have a special place in my heart. It reminds me of the good days, you know. There is no Sims game I wasted more time on than TS1. I don't even remember half of the expansion packs TS3 got. While TS4 has some interesting ideas about gameplay, I never felt drawn into it. I played it for two days (free weekend on Origin or something like that) and I didn't feel impressed. These two days were certainly enough. And the tutorials... gamedevs, please at least add a switch in settings to disable it. ITS SO ANNOYING! WHY T_T Old games never had these, nobody needed a tutorial to figure out that clicking on an object in build mode allows you to move it etc. So for me it's like this: TS1 > TS3 > TS2 (sorry, loading times) > TS4
I really wish EAxis would release more portable Sims games in the style of The Sims Bustin' Out or The Urbz (at least for Nintendo Consoles). The console ports of the "original" Sims series always lacked a lot of personality for my taste, yet Bustin Out and the Urbz were great! I loved them on GBA and the PS2 version were a lot of fun too. In my opinion the best thing about those games were that they were so different from the original series. You had those quests/mission to do, the cities and jobs were done in a very creative way and there had been things in them that took years to be available in their PC counterparts (driving vehicles, tattoos and piercings, different color objects/clothing, etc.). Sadly since the release of the console version of Sims 2, there as never been something quite creative as those GBA games... The console versions became more and more stripped down versions of their PC counterparts and there has never been a The Sims Bustin' out 2 or The Urbz 2 :/
I Really wish they made a sims bustin out 2 and urbz 2. i didnt really enjoy sims 3 on console. sims 2 and 1 on the console were great too!
Have you ever heard of the legacy challenge? In my opinion it's the best way to play The Sims 2 and 3.
Yes. Unfortunately it doesn't work in TS1 for obvious reasons, so you'll only be able to play one generation til you earn everything you've dreamed of in that case. Since you have infinite time in TS1, I guess you could spend it trying to build gameplay around all expansion elements, with superstar and makin magic probably being the hardest to "complete".
My favorite is either Sims 1 or Sims 2. Surprisingly, FreeSO, nor The Sims Online were mentioned. I like Sims 2 because of how much freedom it gave you with what you could do to your sims. You could drown them, burn them, starve them, etc. The Sims 3 returned this feature in many new ways. I also liked the Sims 1, 2, 3, and 4 for the architectural aspect of the game. In my opinion, each game in the series got increasingly better in this field. The Sims 1, 2, and 3 kept it relatively the same with how you interact with your house, though with the sims 4 I welcomed the new feature of pushing and pulling the walls of your creation to make it the way you wanted it to be in the first place. And how you could move your house was a nice touch, though it never really bothered me all that much where my house was on the lot, I'd just make the surroundings of the house based on where the house was. When I was playing the earlier sims games, I never really thought that I needed the move house feature, but its there and I used it all of 3 times. In short however, I just liked the Sims 1 and 2 because they both didn't have a slew of un-needed/ Unnecessary expansion packs/Stuff Packs like, Katy Perry Sweet Treats. The Sims 1 and 2 kept the Expansion quantity and quality in check. The Expansion packs in the Sims 2 felt more realistic in what they added, like Open for Business. Whereas Sims 1 added some fantasy aspects like, Makin' Magic. I found they additions in The Sims 2 to be more fun and interesting than that of Sims 3. Sims 4 just feels like a cash grab since they are pumping out 3 Stuff packs per month, each for $20 USD, when I can get similar things from CC websites for Free. Either way, both expansion packs from the Sims 4 really didn't really interest me. But the core gameplay of all 5 sims games, Sims Online included, I really enjoyed, just some more than others.
Rhys - I didn't know about that, but sounds like an awesome way to spend time in the game. Honestly, I never managed to get to 10th generation, I just used to make a lot of families and never got beyond 2nd with any of them. I should totally try that when I'd have more time to waste, this game can suck me in for hours ._.
To be honest, I like TS3 more then TS2 as well and would have voted for that equally alongside TS1. My only criticism is the engine's performance. Holy fucking crap.
