Product Details
 | The Sims 2: Open for Business Expansion Pack |
| List Price: | $19.99 |
| Price: | $19.09 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by smart-gamer
186 new or used available from $1.96
Average customer review:
Product Description
Set your Sims up in their own businesses. Build trendy boutiques, bustling bakeries, hip salons, thriving cafes and countless other businesses. Hire a staff to stock the shop and sell goods to a variety of customers. Will they build the favorite neighborhood shop or the next entrepreneurial empire? The Sims™ 2 Open For Business is loaded with over 125 new objects to help your Sims get down to business.Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2718 in Video Games
- Brand: Electronic Arts
- Released on: 2006-02-28
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platform: Windows XP
- Format: CD-ROM
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.25" h x 5.50" w x 7.75" l, 999.00 pounds
Features
- The third expansion pack for The Sims 2
- Turn your Sims' skills and hobbies into careers - even children can run a business!
- Cultivate an audience for your wares, from window shoppers to niche markets
- 125 new items to decorate your Sim's house or business
- A new radio station featuring famous bands singing in "Simlish"
Customer Reviews
Fun new addition to the growing Sims 2 library
Before the Sims 2: Open for
Business, Sims owners could be in control of every aspect of their sim's
life, save for one: work. They would make relationships, gain skill
points, go to college, even become vampires, but for a few hours every
day they would dissappear from view, leaving a hole in the day for the
game's players. Well, that's not the case anymore. With Open for
Business, you can now govern their economic ambitions, too. What it
becomes is a fun, if more challening than expected, mini-game that tests
the micromanagement skills of Sims players.
You can open up any
number of business types: from bakeries to furniture stores to salons.
You can even charge sims to just come over and hang out at your place if
you want to. The flexibility is there for you to sell almost anything
(because that's essentially what it all comes down to); I personally
found it easiest and most profitable to sell televisions and artwork
(somtimes in the same store), but you can do whatever you want. You can
hire managers to do the work for you, you can buy real estate and sell
it, you can sell cars; there truly is a lot to do in the game.
Now
there are some game imbalances to take notice of. First of all, you
need a truckload of cash to start a business. Without cheating it's
usually quite difficult to pull the money together to start even the
most basic of businesses. It would have been nice to have some sort of
investing process, where you could invite others as investors or even
stock owners, but as is, it's a pretty basic business simulation. The
second imbalance comes when you do eventually create a successful
business: it's so successful that you have more money than you know what
to do with. Granted this isn't really a gripe, but it's certainly in
stark contrast to the beginnings of your business.
The actual
running of the business can be one of two things to different players: a
fun, challenging break from normal sims gameplay or a boring, tedious
excercise in micromanagement. I personally felt the former, but I could
see why it could be tedious. Not only do you have to worry about your
own needs, you need to worry about giving your employees breaks, and
making sure your customers are happy. Also, they are in constant need of
reminders why they are in the store in the first place; the sheer
number of times I used the "sell" command on various customers is
staggering. However, this is all exectued quite well, and it is really
rewarding to see repeat customers coming in everyday to buy your cakes
and pastries (although it gets a little suspect when they buy a new
television every day). I enjoy the challenge and feel that most people
will. It's a departure from the guarranteed-to-win dating mini-game from
Nightlife, also.
I also have to mention the awesome robots that
have been re-introduced to the series. You get to build your own robots
from the ground up, from cleaning robots to fully functional Servos that
work as people without needs (with the exception of the occasional
recharging).
Other people are having trouble with bugs in their
games, but I have yet to run into any (other than standard Sims 2 bugs).
I did find it particularly difficult to run some businesses, though - i
never could get that trendy new nightclub/salon off the ground. Oh
well.
Pros:
Great new mini-game for Sim owners
Adds a lot
of new content and options
Fun
Rewarding businesses
Robots!
Cons:
Lots
of micro-management
Some might find the challenge a turn-off
Buggy
for some people
Slight game imbalances
Great fun except for some major bugs
There are some things I just
love about this new expansion pack. It's great to be able to easily
choose the formal wear when our sims get married, I was getting really
bored with that default wedding dress. As a result I've downloaded many
beautiful wedding dresses from the fansites. And finally we're able to
change appearance for the toddlers without needing a hacked mirror. Yay!
Thanks Maxis. Also with this expansion we now get a twins cheat AND a
food to increase the chance of twins. Maybe now there will be a slow
down to the influx of all the twins threads on the BBS. Maybe not, but a
girl can hope can't she?
The businesses are really neat in some
ways but I'm not so much into the tycoon thing. It's very challenging
and sometimes it seems frustrating to let your sim have a social life
outside of their business. It is fun though.
It's a shame about
the bugs emerging. They're so bad that they could potentially toast
neighborhoods that gamers have worked so hard on. Here's just a few I've
seen around-
-Sims getting "stuck" while at their community
business. When the taxi arrives to take the sim home the sim won't get
in the taxi. Instead the sim waves his or her arms in the air and yells
like there's a problem. You have to wait for the first taxi to leave,
then call for a taxi to take the sim to another community lot and then
home. Supposedly this happens when you save on the business lot. I
didn't save, just did some remodeling of the lot and this happened
anyway. Thankfully I had not taken the sim to the business in his car,
otherwise he could have been lost in some sort of limbo until we get a
patch.
-Bakeries are really messed up. Dessert items disappear
from the owner's inventory, making it difficult to restock. You can only
make desserts during certain hours. In real life bakers start before
sunrise so sim bakers should be able to also. And like the other review
mentioned the sims who buy the desserts cannot eat them. What's the
point of a bakery then?
-The new Mission furniture is beautiful
but seems to have some problems. The loveseat shows as black and doesn't
have any of the color or wood options like it's supposed to.
-Some
business lots completely disappear like they never existed. Gone, poof.
I'm not sure what's doing it but it could be related to problems with
assigning uniforms. It hasn't happened to me yet (knock on wood) but I'm
definitely not assigning any uniforms until more information's out.
Hopefully this will be addressed in the future patch too.
I know
there's a couple other bugs I'm forgetting at the moment. At least it
appears that Maxis is right on top of this and will hopefully have a
patch in just a short amount of time. I'd recommend if you love the sims
like me go ahead and buy the game but watch out for the problems. Read
the BBS over on the official site to stay updated on the bugs and the
workarounds. Others may want to wait (hopefully just a week or two)
until the patch comes out.
More Fun and
Variety with some more Frustration.
I'm still not tired of
playing Sims 2 and it's in large part due to the immense replayability
that the original game had plus the additions of these expansion packs.
Open for Business adds a number of new things to a game that already has
loads of replayability and variety.
Pros:
-New Items
-Ability
to run a home business (despite the negatives below, I do have to give
the sims team kudos for adding this ability).
-Ability to buy real
estate and own community businesses.
-Ability to hire townies
-robots
Cons:
-Bugs!
What does it take to get some clean, well tested software these days?!
-Running
a Sims business is quite challenging. I play pc games as a way of
resting and relaxing from a hard day's work. Running a sim business in
Sims 2 at times feels more like work than play especially once the
business starts having loads of customers coming in.
-The number of
townies available to hire doesn't keep up with the business' needs.
-As
with the other expansion packs, I felt the price was a bit high for
what was added.
-The "own 5 successful businesses" lifetime
aspiration. Running one is such more work than play, but 5? Any Sim of
mine that comes up with that aspiration, gets their head stuck in the
ReNu gadget for the purpose of getting a new one.
-As pointed out by
others, sending someone to work a full day at a community business and
then having them come home at the same time that they left is kind of
wierd (of course we already had that with the original game and
Nightlife with Sims going to community lots. University at least kept
the Semester clock running).
Despite the fact that the Cons got
more space than the Pros, above, I think this is, overall, a good
addition to the Sims 2 lineup. If you want to fully enjoy the business
operation side of this expansion, I would suggest creating a new
neighborhood, associate it with custom University, Downtown and Business
neighborhoods (that way you don't have to deal with all of those
pre-made sims) and then run only one family. Keep the initial family
members employed at the standard jobs that came with the original game,
getting promotions and rewards and then build up a large income and pool
of friends. Once that is accomplished, then you might get a younger
member of the family to start a business with a good supply of capital
and Townie friends to hire. That takes away the two most
challenging/frustrating parts of running a sim business and allows you
to concentrate on the fun aspects of the game. That's my two cents
anyway. 4 stars for fun (the "work" as opposed to "play" frustration
that running a business gives at times in the game led me to take a star
away), 3 stars overall (Lost two stars due to bugs and price).
No comments:
Post a Comment