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| From: Electronic Arts
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $14.99
You Save: $5.00 (25%)
New (16) Used (35) from $11.00
Rating:  141 reviews
Sales Rank: 537
Platforms: Windows 2000, Windows Xp
Genre: strategy_games;action_games
ESRB: Teen
Media: CD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 1.2
MPN: 14917
UPC: 014633149173
EAN: 0014633149173
ASIN: B00077VDS4
Release Date: February 28, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 141
Good Gameplay - Even Better Additions Overall... March 29, 2005
Brittany Rose (Winnipeg, MB)
24 out of 28 found this review helpful
The Sims 2 University has recieved a lot of positive hype - for adding a new dimension of gameplay to the Sims 2. It has also received some negative feedback - people questioning its necessity to the game, or complaining about how rushed it was in its release (The Sims 2 was launched a mere 6 months earlier).
All in all, there is a new dimension of gameplay - that's for sure. You can now choose to make your teenage sims 'grow up' into a young adult life stage, which only takes place if they decide to go to college. You can then place your sims on one of three Maxis-built campuses, or build your own - but where they live isn't all that important as moving to a new campus is easy as pie.
From there your young adult sim goes through 8 semesters of college, with one class a day related to their major (11 in total which require you to build different skills depending on the subject). Each semester is 72 sim hours long - and there is plenty to do in that time, from writing papers, to throwing parties, to joining sororities/frat houses, to falling in love, to streaking, to working at a local coffee/alcohol bar.
At the end of it all there are 4 new career paths, available only to those who graduate from college - natural science, show biz, artist, and paranormal.
To answer the complaint side of it all - yes, there is a question of necessity for the Sims 2 - University, but after all, it is an expansion pack...and it does expand the game and waht you can do with it. After all, my favourite features of the new expansion pack haven't so much been the college experience (thus far) but little nuances like the following.
There are a number of new instruments added to this expansion pack - drums, bass, and a guitar. Your sims can now 'perform' jazz, country, or rock music for tips, and even play together - synchronized - in a band format!
While we're speaking of music, the two new music channels - jazz and college rock, give us some of the best sim music ever produced. The college rock station features actual artists who have re-recorded their songs in simlish for your sim's listening enjoyment.
The aspiration aspect of the game takes on a new level - as new aspiration slots open up as you pass through college, and the new 'influence' bar allows you to control other sims. Not only that, but there is a lifetime aspiration. If completed (and most can only be completed in old age trust me) your sim will achieve platinum mood status for the rest o ftheir lifetime.
Overall, the Sims 2 - University is a decent expansion pack. I've had very few bugs or errors, although I've heard of a few (but not many). There are longer load times, especially when visiting University community lots, and yes, I think Maxis could've expanded the hairstyles/clothing more for young adults, but you can't expect them to get everything right.
If you liked the sims 2 and are looking for a new level of gameplay, then try it out. If you are satisfied with the Sims 2 the way it is, then don't worry about it for now.
Lots of nice added features June 10, 2005
Skydreamer (Somewhere, USA)
23 out of 25 found this review helpful
The basic gameplay is, naturally, a lot like Sims2. So if you love or hate that game, you're likely to feel the same way about the expanasion pack.
As for the things it does differently...
This gives your teenager sims a chance to go off and spend 4 years away from their families as university students. Depending on how well they do at it, they may have advantages in the existing careers and access to several new careers.
It can be tough if you try to play with a student who's just been generated at the college level. To gain good grades you have to do things like attend class or do assignments (or use influence to make another sim do assignments and write term papers for you), but there's a cap on how high your grades can go in a given semester depending on whether you've met particular skill requirements. A sim that you've raised from a very young age will probably have plenty of skill to meet most of these (depending, of course, on how well their major matches up with what you've had them practice), but someone with no skills to start with will have a much harder time.
The most interesting new items available are the portable mp3 player, cell phone, and portable video game. The cell phone sometimes caused me some irritation by ringing and waking up a sim who was trying to take a nap during the day, but generally it's nice to not have to make them walk to a phone to make calls. The portable video game can be used to play vs other sims who also own it, which is a nice added feature.
They've done an awful lot of nice things with community lots, such as make it possible for multiple sims to play music together, and to get tips for playing music. It also includes the option to hustle people at pool, make money for tutoring, and get money for being a personal trainer. All of these new very social options really add a lot of flexibility. The unfortunate thing is that the load times for going to a community load (first a load time for the map of the campus, and then a load time after you pick what lot you want to go to) tend to kill most of my interest in making that kind of trip. Since each semester is only 3 sim days long and time spent at community lots does move the semester countdown (understandably so, since it'd be way too easy to get a lot of extra time to do your work otherwise) it's difficult to spend long periods of time at a community lot without having to move to a different one or go back to the dorm to practice / do / learn something else. With the load times as long as they are, it's just an awful lot less irritating to stay in the dorm and buy everything you need.
If your computer has a hard time dealing with all of the sims who show up at your parties already, you'll probably want to stick to a smaller dorm to reduce the number of sims being tracked by the system. They made a good effort to limit the strain on your computer by making the dorm rooms of the sims who aren't under your control look empty unless you actually enter them. Still, if you don't have a high end computer and you want to throw big parties, moving into the 12 person dorm probably isn't the best plan.
Greek Houses are also a fun feature, particularly when you can convince someone to pledge and can order them around for a period of time before they become an official member. It's a little bizarre how often they just wander off to some mysterious place on campus and come back with pizza, but it's certainly convenient that there's rarely a need to cook.
Also, even if you don't plan to play the university areas, you can still take advantage of the greatly expanded collection of items available, including both old items with new looks and entirely new things such as the pool table. It's also very nice that they have a built in option to move one family in with another from the neighborhood screen, rather than having to get them to be close friends and convince one to accept an invitation to move into the house.
On the whole, if you didn't have fun playing with your copy of Sims 2, the University expansion probably won't make it much better for you. If you enjoyed the main game and would like to have some more variety of gameplay however, University is certainly worth buying.
 Relive your college years! March 7, 2005
Lady Naava
22 out of 26 found this review helpful
The sims 2 go to college and you can too with the latest Sims 2 expansion!
New Stuff: Great new 'do's for your Sims, a few more faces, clothing, music, and dorm-style living. The Sims now have cafeterias and professors to please, as well as a few new funky careers such as the Paranormal career. Personally, Its great not to have to worry about cooking your own food and cleaning the bathrooms! They've also added some mod new skins such as tattoos for the men and ladies!
My Sims are still freshmen yet, but I've spent several hours of enjoyable time planning their careers and love life. The only downside to this game is it does take a while to load. But once it does... Its well worth the wait! A++++ Game. You'll love it if you liked Sims 2!
 University Drops-Out March 8, 2005
Kit Disney Ballantyne (El Paso, Tx United States)
22 out of 38 found this review helpful
I am a HUGE fan of The Sims. There was no question that I would buy this expansion for The Sims 2. I must say that I thought the price was too high for an expansion, and it comes with an ad for a future expansion. I installed the expansion properly, but my sims can never enter the dorms to actually begin the game. It just sits there and loads forever. I tried it with my system at normal, and also with all my startups disabled. Same result, so we know it is not a background program causing the problem. The manual says I can email tech support, but of course there is no email address in the manual and I could not find it on their website. I read the FAQ's online and tried all their solutions. Nothing. I will not pay long distance charges to call tech support. They were awful, rude and unhelpful last time. My system exceeds the requirements in every way. I have an hp pavillion 724c, with a 2.53 ghz processor, 1 gig of RAM, an ATI All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro and about 380 gigs of free hard drive space. I also have all the latest drivers. My recomendation is not to buy the expansion until they put out patches or solve these problems. With shipping I am out nearly forty bucks for something that doesn't work which isn't even a game, but rather an exapnsion. They obviously did not bother to do enough beta-testing, and put out a product with great flaws. I want so much to use this exapnsion and send my sims to college and all that. I have not requested a refund yet. I still have my hopes that EA will do the honourable thing and make this work. I will NEVER pre-order a Sims 2 expansion again. I will wait until Nightlife is out and the bugs are fixed before buying the next one. See? They know how loyal we SimFanatics are and they took advantage of us.
 Backup your files before you install the Expansion Pack March 3, 2005
Rachel
21 out of 25 found this review helpful
So, being overconfident that I'd get through the installation flawlessly, caused me to lose all my saved games from Sims 2 because I had downloads that, I assume, conflicted with the expansion pack. When I sent my sims to college they just stood there on the curb, not moving, like zombies. I had to uninstall both the EP and Sims 2 and re-install everything. Fortunately I salvaged a few of my built homes and my "Downloads" folder. If you're like me, who downloaded A LOT of custom walls, floors, clothes, skins, furniture, etc. If you can salvage anything before having to uninstall, move the "downloads" folder to your desktop or something.
I re-installed both games now and am currently going through my downloads to try to weed out the bad downloads that cause my EP to not function correctly. So far, most of my downloads I was able to put back into the current "downloads" folder and get the game to work. However, I can only seem to enter one lot every time I load the game. If I exit a lot and try to enter another lot, it gets hung up on the loading screen, at which point I go into the Task Manager and close the game, so I can re-start it again. If anyone knows how to fix this problem, PLEASE let me know.
I haven't gotten to playing the actual expansion portion for too long, cuz I want to include as many of my custom downloads into the game first, but it seems interesting. I already saw someone streaking up and down the stairs of the dorm. It was pretty funny. I will probably update my review, once I put more play time in.
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