Personally I love this game and it's modding community because it lets me channel my inner control freak Sims 3 and Sims 4 piss me off because the first has too many rabbitholes and I can't stand being apart from my simmies so long And the second has a really particular (and actually pretty) style I don't feel like breaking but it's too cartoony for me. Also my computer is not good enough to handle either that long

Sims 2 though, even playing vanilla it was love at first sight :lovestruc And with how long it's been around the mods and programs are better, in my opinion.

Having all the games for free helps too because I'm insanely cheap

Stories to tell, pics to take, cc to try (thanks creators!), stuff to build, ideas to share, worlds to create.

The ability to shape stories from characters you create and to enjoy escaping into a world where you control everything (except ACR..).
Plus, it's fun.

My Sims are my best friends. I can't live without them.

And, this forum is my social media -- I've never felt the slightest desire to join Facebook or Twitter.

I've been playing Sims 2 since I was 9. Literally there's nothing more keeping me coming back than it just feeling like a part of my life. Some people unwind and watch TV, or check social-media - I play Sims.

What keeps me coming back? I never left...

My TS2 game is a bit like that old but very comfortable armchair you sit in every day and refuse to throw out, even if it clashes with the rest of the furniture, and with a few pillows and a blanket gets oh so much nicer to relax in.

I have played a bit of TS3 and TS4, but on the side, never as a replacement. They're like the more modern sofa that you sit in occasionally but never quite manage to relax in, and if you do sit in it for too long, your butt starts hurting.

At least, that's what it feels like to me...

What keeps me coming back is the joy I feel when playing or creating for the game (even though I sometimes take long hiatuses from both), the wonderful people I've met throughout the simming community (which are quite a few since I've been playing the Sims off and on since the first iteration), the almost endless customization options for this game, the wonderful and seemingly impossible content that keeps getting made for this game year after year, and the fact that no other Sims iteration (or any other video game for that matter) has kept my attention the way Sims 2 has.

Lame as it may sound, Sims 2 really is the first love of video games for me (the Halo series is a close second).

It's a game that won't blow up my computer.

I agree with Bulb in terms of Sims 3. That's why I stop playing it. My CPU and graphics card would go crazy every time I loaded up Sims 3. So, I uninstalled it and went back to 2.

I played Sims 4 when it first came out. It was fun for the first few months, but then the honeymoon effect went away, and I realized how dull it was. I quickly went back to playing Ultimate Collection. However, I did try the sims 4 again, when I heard about the Master Controller mod. Even that mod couldn't save the game for me. I went back to the Ultimate Collection and haven't looked back.

Seconding OP on this one: TS2 was indeed love at first sight!

When I started playing I just remember thinking: "WHERE HAS THIS GAME BEEN ALL MY LIFE?? I NEED THIS!" almost immediately! I was playing vanilla back then too - my first sims had the default heads (I didn't even change the makeup) I was just so in love with this idea that I could build an entire little world, with 'real' people living in it and interacting with it, and I could name them all and everything in it and decorate it and oh man... I'm excited just thinking about it! << is that creepy?

Once I discovered cc - and later mods, and finally modding, I was hooked. My ship was sunk, it was game-over, KO. I am a sims 2-er for life. I can see myself playing in my grave. LOL!

(I'm picturing someone walking past a graveyard and hearing the theme music from UNDER ground... XD)

I like TS4, but the forums on here are a cesspit and it really takes away from my enjoyment of the game. It's a totally different playstyle too, and that was a hard adjustment to make coming from TS2s marvelous sandbox world, to this kind of, more limited in terms of world-building, but more varied in terms of sim-building style of play. I dunno, I like both games, but I play them very differently, and for different reasons.

I hated TS1. It's the only game that I returned to the store. LOL

But then I heard about The Sims 2 and it seemed to fix all the problems I had with TS1. The Sims grew up! The camera moved (very important to me, I hate static cameras). It was so pretty (and that was base game with no content! So imagine my joy when I figured out about CC. I was one of the first people to sign up to MTS. I remember the splash screen that Stuart had up before the forums existed. I remember he started the site with his girlfriend at the time.)

I drove two hours there and two hours back to buy the game on release day, September 14, 2004, and I played the game every day for years. I have not watched television in 25 years. The Sims 2 was my evening entertainment. Now I play a little less often, but I always come back, because as another poster above said, I never left.

I have countless hours in this game. I feel like I have a master's degree in simming - and I am STILL learning things from those here who know more than I do.

I even built a career around simming. It is my perfect work. I get paid to play The Sims 2. What joy. What utter, absolute joy. ❤♥

I remember Pescado saying somewhere that Sims 3 needs a frame-rate limiter or it might melt your graphics card. I know nothing about such stuff or I'd help you find one.

Ahmm >cough< Lol, you know why I am responding Jessa.

But never mind, I had no idea either!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Jo.

Keeping me humble since 2009. LOL !

❤♥

I came back because I played SC4 and Sims 2 Castaway in my early teens that I was impressed with Maxis.
when Sims 2 came out I brought it and waited 1hr loading for it to load a single lot.
I went away for about 2 years because I drove my parents up the wall with it and the family computer couldn't handle it any longer with just 2 expansions (pets and apartments).

I came back in 2013 after spending 500 on a cheap terrible computer that shouldn't have been able to run it but I forced it to anyway. Then I found CC. Not leaving again.

So in a statement: Childhood Obsession with my first game series.

Every time one of you talks about Sims 2 being your childhood you make me feel very old! My childhood was the Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island and a game of Pong at the neighbours!

That sounds about right. It's crazy how unoptimized Sims 3 was/still is.

Thanks, but the computer setup that I build for the Sims 3 in 2009, is now very ancient. So, I'm waiting until I save enough money to build a newer computer, to reinstall the game. I'm willing to give Sims 3 another chance. Sims 4, no way.

Because you cannot have 200+ families in a hood in sims 3 - or 4.

The Sims 2 is one of my favorite game and it give me full hope, happiness, joy, fun, laugh...etc and i've been playing it since 2008

I have lots of my sims and they are all my best friends

I've never left either, but I do play TS3 as well. In spite of all the obvious similarities, however, I think of the two as completely different. My TS2 games are like rather awful melodramatic soap operas while my TS3 games are all about stable families, stable relationships, etc. etc. (OK, soap operas again, but of a rather different type.)

The only real similarity, as far as gameplay is concerned, is that I always play my 'hoods until they explode. I've been playing my most recent TS2 'hood for more than a year and enjoyed it a lot though, sadly, I know it's on its last legs - but still, much better than my new TS3 'hood which is a few weeks old and shaking (sometimes literally) all over.

The sandboxiness. Even in pure vanilla, there's always a new hood to play or create, new 'culture rules' to try out, a new story to tell. With mods, there's even more variety, and I've barely touched the surface of what's available.

Other than how much I love it? The realization that my mental health suffers when I don't have the outlet it provides, and the accompanying realization of how much playing it does help me process a world that often seems terrifyingly out-of-control.

I've never deliberately turned off free will (it was turned off when I first installed the UC, to my confusion until I realized the problem). I have ACR, InTeen, and Chris Hatch's naughty bouquet, embrace autonomy-improving mods, and pay attention to wants, fears, and aspirations. I don't want the game to be entirely under my control, both because it's not fun and because it's not satisfying that way -- and I think therein lies the way it helps me handle reality. Just because it's not entirely in my control doesn't mean I don't have any control...just like in Real Life, where I can't control anything, but can work with the way things go in an effort to fulfil my wants and avoid my fears. Of course, in The Sims, I'm in a safer position as the Watcher, giving me a more comfortable distance from what I cannot control. It also helps me see how diverse events and streams of cause and effect tie together into a loosely-woven but securely intertwined tapestry of the overall storyline, which also makes Real Life and the actions and interactions of people in it more comprehensible.

TS2 is not the first game I've used like this; after an early bad experience with a very buggy version of TS1, I acquired the Complete Collection at what turned out to be a very good time. It sounds strange even to me, considering how comparatively primitive the socialization mechanics were, but I learned how to construct an appropriate algorithm for social interaction from playing that game. I didn't exactly have a self-Sim; what I had was a beautiful, independent woman with a lot of money and a black cat named Rosebud in honour of the source of that money. She and Rosebud lived in one of the more beautiful houses; she had fancy furniture and a butler (first Alfred, then a much more competent CC one), joined the military because I wanted her to be an astronaut and took to heading Downtown in her uniform once she became an officer and had a snazzy one, and was a witch. She never did get to be an astronaut, but attempted to seduce Gunther Goth by taking him on vacation, found him highly annoying and unfriendly (which was probably because she/I couldn't figure out socializing properly) so she turned him into a toad and declined to kiss him. I figured out socializing with tourists during that vacation, and upon returning home, honed the art with Cornelia, who seemed much nicer than her husband. Somewhere along the line, I figured out that, "oh, maybe this is how people keep other people's attention?" and it actually worked better than my previous incompetence had in Real Life. Just before that computer failed, she married Cornelia after Gunther died in a massive fire during a party at her house (I have the "visitors have resident rights" mod, which might have had something to do with that).

When I installed TS1 on my next computer, I recreated this character (easy to do with TS1 customization!) and gave her a family as well: an evil aunt who was now the one who really had the money, creepy-twin child nieces (one was blond, the other raven-haired, and they shared an ornate double bed and a taste for Magic Town dresses) who enjoyed tormenting each other using a modded chemistry set, and of course Rosebud returned. They all lived in that house on the hill; you know, the most expensive one? This version never had a romantic relationship with anyone, because she didn't need to -- I didn't need the affirmation of pairing up any more. She balanced family dynamics with neighbours (sometimes I used the twins' antics and aunt's downright hostility to cause angry neighbours so I could figure out how to handle that), and eventually I got interested enough in the premades that I decided to try playing them too. I was so scared the when I moved Michael Batchelor into a house, and when I played the actual Goths, I felt like I was going to break something...which quickly happened, as the kitchen caught fire, Bella died, and I quit without saving in a panic. (That house was a terrible firetrap!) Eventually, I figured out how to play them without freaking out or going broke without rosebud and started doing pseudo-rotations (timing wasn't equal, but didn't much matter without ageing) and making a dramatic storyline since I always took a lot of pictures. The Goth house did go up in worse flames during a party and killed several important people, and this time I decided to roll with it. Having introduced tragedy into the 'hood, I felt empowered to make more dark stories, and created a large fake-noble (bought titles and very tacky taste) family in a McMansion I built from an actual house plan, who had really...well, twisted stuff going on behind their grand facade. That was way worse than the worst storyline twists I play now in TS2, and I'm not entirely sure what I was tapping to bring that to the surface, but they brought in a tangled mess of substance abuse, multiple varieties of child and animal abuse and neglect, a war between vampires and slayers where both were morally ambiguous and fighting for a control of a boarding school, brainwashing Cornelia Goth into thinking she was a cat and using a litter box (the latter two using some strange and inspired mods), culminating in a (mostly staged for the pictures) political assassination Downtown! Major soap-opera stuff that introduced me to the cathartic value of such things. My original created family sort of faded into the role of a sarcastic chorus to the tragedy.

I've never had any sim who serves as a self-sim-like avatar in TS2, and haven't had any desire to do so. The less-intense dramatics of my storylines are quite satisfying enough, and I only make characters when I feel there are gaps that need filling. I doubt I'll ever make as horrific a family as that fake-noble one was, although some premade families turn surprisingly nasty. I do find myself identifying with certain characters, which is sometimes useful; while I could never be as cold as Melody Tinker is toward her family, I get her exasperation at being tied down by everyone else's problems, and I've mentally reprimanded myself with, "What would Miranda Capp do in this situation?" when fighting cowardice and social phobia recently. (Hey, the thought of her incredulity got me out of bed and onto the first plane trip I've been on without my parents, as well as through the conference it was for -- which included a scary disassociative episode in a subway station after my phone battery went out and lost me access to a comprehensible map, having to get myself food in a strange neighbourhood of a strange city, and locking myself out of my hotel room when getting tea and having to go to the front desk to ask to be let back in!)

Right! I admire how you can rotate between 200 families, though, I'm losing my mind with just my 40-ish sims at the moment

It's a fantastic way to tell stories - and have new ones tell themselves to you.

Never really left my sims for long.
Was playing late last night and fell in love with my sims 2 all over again !!! <3

In my current hood -- which is somewhat post-apocalyptic -- one of my shy, loner playables has started his life in a wonderful lot from Kativip called "New Life".
A townie walked by and she was just 'the one' for him !
She's a social sim and is helping him to meet new peeps and get out more.
He makes toddler "Spin & Play" (or whatever it's called ) toys and bots--- and trades them for food or supplies at the local community 'Trader Joe's Barter' lot.
She is currently producing pottery and will also be selling vases in a booth when she has enough.

Whole worlds to delve into and I'd rather do sims than just about anything else.