What is Life Stories?
- stand-alone version of The Sims 2.
- There are two guided stories in the game and a free-play area where pretty much anything goes! You have to play part of the first story (Riley’s story) to unlock the second story (Vincent’s).
- PrincessRozeeS wrote on the BBS “Without giving anything away, you basically follow their stories and fulfil their goals. The story is devised to go a certain way and you follow it. You get rewards of items along the way. It's a nice little game to wile away a few hours. This is not to say it will take two hours to play. If you play this game as intended, following the goals, fulfilling Wants and achieving a lifetime aspiration, this game will probably take a couple of days to complete both the Stories of Riley and Vince, and that's for those of us familiar with the Sims. I suspect this has been aimed at new people to the Sims or those who want to play the Sims on their laptops. That is not to say that experienced Simmer will not enjoy this game. I loved it! It was nice to get back to basics. No worry about sending Teens off to college or any of the other things that come with all the expansions. It's a nice game to play and chill! I think it has the right combination of interactions and items.”
Let’s talk about what it’s not and the myths that are floating around the BBS.
I have a list posted on my website as well as on my myspace blog that detail some of the very common myths on the BBS about Life Stories.
(read list with less snarky tone)
How is it Different?
- There are quite a few differences between Life Stories and TS2.
- AspiredSim wrote on the BBS “The Sim's Life Story was brought to life with all new characters. Even though there is a similarity to the Sims 2. It does not have every thing like the Sims 2. The Sims didn't have all those added extra's except the built in camera and then again you couldn't download CC into the game because it wasn't created that way until fans asked for more in the game because no one wanted a little bit of this and that. They wanted more thus we got it with the Sims 2. What I have noticed if I were to truly compare the two would be this. It does include the base of the Sim's 2 built with less weight to carry which enables the game to work much more faster on a lower system that has a much lower processor which does handle it quite beautifully I may add. It doesn't have body shop, a camera or even movie maker. Family Size is much smaller too and you can't have big families. Think of it this way it's much easier to handle four sims at once then eight. Also you can spend more quality time with them in a smaller group and that is less Sims to fight over one bathroom. Just imagine eight Sims trying to get into one bathroom and that's not even counting the outsiders that come to visit when you first move in. “
- Aspiration rewards do not require a sim to be above gold to use them. In other words there are no consequences to them.
- You get 40grand to start rather than 20grand
- Hot keys…wonderful precious hot keys. Greet your guests with one button press. Clean the nearest dirty object with the press of a C key. Make them fill their hunger with the H. (get list from box)
What is the Same?
- Stories is built using The Sims 2 so obviously it looks like the Sims 2 and acts like The Sims 2. Even the tutorials are the same in both games.
- There are the same aspirations as in the base game.
- the same values on the wants. For example, earn 100K is still worth 30,000 aspiration points.
Game play tips
- some of the main areas people get stuck on are: (get file from group)
Blogs
I know of two specifically.
Clarity251978 - closertofree.blogspot.com
Karin - karintempelaar.nl/sims
A BBS?
- there currently isn’t a BBS for Sims Life Stories. The main site thesimstories.ea.com just says that the community is coming soon. As a result, I’ve started a ygroup dedicated to the Stories line of games…not just Life Stories but the upcoming Pets and Castaway games as well. People are welcome to join SimsStoriesStuff on yahoo. It’s a publicly listed group so if you search yahoo groups for Sims Life Stories or Sims Stories, it’ll come up. We’re listed just below the group that has taken the objects from Life Stories and made them available for TS2.
What’s Next?
Sims Pet Stories coming out at the end of June/beginning of July
Sims Castaway Stories coming out sometime in the winter.
I was new to the Sims and I got The Sims Life Stories and I really love it! The only thing that makes me mad is the household size limit (four) and I can't use some of the downloads or cheats for regular sims 2. Also you can't have any expansion packs added on.
ReplyDeleteNAVIGATING: One thing I have noticed is that you can navigate by using the a and d keys to rotate around. i have found that extremely useful. I don't know if that is something just on sims life stories or not, but my friend has regular sims 2 and she cannot do that. Overall, The Sims Life Stories is a great game and I would highly reccomend it!!!