Sims 2 for the PC continued the best selling series by improving upon graphical quality and introducing deeper gameplay into a game about the day-to-day mundane life. Much of what makes of Sims 2 special and fun was its open-ended nature. It was a sandbox of possibilities where you can create your own narratives with the tools provided. Your characters could become criminals and saints, get abducted by aliens, or become entangled in tawdry love affairs of a daytime soap caliber. Another hallmark of the Sims game design is the Sims characters’ free will. It allows your character to go about their daily activities on their own without your intervention. It’s often fun to just let your Sim run around the house on their own and observing what they’ll do next. With the translation of this unique Sims gameplay to the Playstation Portable, much of the magic has been lost. In addition, this PSP version of the Sims 2 is plagued with technical issues that often render the game unplayable.

Gameplay
From the very beginning, you get a sense that you’ll be in for a very bumpy ride. When you first create your Sim character, the level of control you have over your character’s appearance is very close to the PC version – which is impressive for a portable system. That’s where the praise stops, though. Creating a character in Sims 2 for the PSP is a bit of a pain since it needs to load each visual feature (hair, shirts, pants, etc.) for your character on the fly. As you are cycling though feature categories, there will be a two to three second pause. This short time may seem manageable, but the problem is that it happens so frequently. Every piece of your character needs to be loaded as you select it.

In a major departure from the PC version, Sims 2 for the PSP actually includes a story that guides you through the game. Completing goals allow you to progress in the story and to new areas. Another difference in the portable version of Sims 2 is that you have direct control over your Sim at all times and it never roams free. You control your Sim from a 3rd-person camera and move about the game world talking to other Sims. Talking to other Sims is necessary in order to gain friends, goals, and move forward in the game. One of the primary ways to become someone’s friend in the game is to play a social game wherein a Sim says something represented by an icon, and you have to match that icon with a press of a button. Now, you only have a short period of time to match the icons and this is where the frequent loading times appear again. The game needs to load the voices for the Sims that are talking and it also needs to load the icons that you need to match. This problem is so bad you’ll wish that the Sims never talked at all since there are so many frequent loading times.