Product Description

The Sims 2: Nightlife Expansion Pack PC Your Sims are on the town hitting all the swanky hot spots. Whether they are dancing until dawn, romancing that special someone, or striking out at the bowling alley, it will be an unforgettable night! Let your Sims loose to enjoy their favorite after-dark activities as they pursue a life of pleasure. Determine their love lives as you discover the chemistry between Sims. Will their life aspirations and personalities click or clash? It could be the beginning of a stormy affair or a dating disaster. Ready for fun and romance? Bring on the night!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1993 in Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Model: 014633149708
• Released on: 2005-09-13
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Windows XP
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .90" h x 5.75" w x 7.75" l, .35 pounds

Features

• 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

Amazon.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 cards right, and you could meet the Sim of your dreams.

Get busy with the DJ station, one of over 125 new objects and items.

Right out of the box, your characters will be ready to hit the town and all the swanky spots. Whether they're cutting a rug until the morning light, flirting with the opposite sex, or getting nowhere throwing gutterballs at the bowling alley, the Nightlife expansion pack will deliver an unforgettable night on the town. With Nightlife, you'll have a better opportunity to discover the chemistry between Sims. Will two people click or clash? Is there a future beyond the night or is it just a steamy affair? If you're ready to add a fun, romantic, splash to your Sims simulation, then look no further than Nightlife to lift your spirits and start the party.

Your Sims' romantic attraction is now based upon personality, life aspiration, and zodiac signs. After you size up a mate and determine likely compatibility, try to throw your Sims' love life into the red zone with new, romantic social interactions such as the longing gaze, the slow dance, or the dramatic dip kiss. If you've done well, success might bring your Sims a romantic gift. Strike out and your Sims might just get a pile of hate mail.

Ahh, hedonism. Choose the all-new Pleasure Seeker life aspiration for your Sims and live vicariously through your characters. Deliver these Sims all the blissful amusements the world has to offer--hot dates, fancy parties, fine dinners, hot tubbin', and more--these Sims know how to live it up. Be careful, though! These pleasure-seeking Sims are terrified of pain, embarrassment, and effort, so anything outside of the realm of "PARTY!" is probably going to deliver quite a blow to their fragile egos.

Partying doesn't just happen. Looking good and hooking up with the right person takes work. Whether it's a girl's night out or an important, romantic date, your Sims will need to get dolled up and dressed to kill for their epic evening in the all-new downtown area. What's the mood? With all the new choices, they can mellow out in lounges, kick up their heels at hipster nightclubs, enjoy candlelight dinners at fine restaurants, or hit the bowling alley with the guys. No matter how they feel, Nightlife has something to offer.

Sims 2: Nightlife Expansion Pack has tons to offer to help your Sims live it up in fun and style. The pack delivers over 125 new objects and items, including a DJ station, a photo booth, a karaoke machine and more. With all the choices your Sims should be ready to impress. Plus, there are loads of exotic new Sims to mingle with or even date, such as vampires, hot waiters and others. So get out there, have some fun and find romance--even if it is just for a night.

Customer Reviews

Great Addition to the Franchise
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.

Keeps getting better
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.

More objects and features...and bugs
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.