Maxis Announces The Sims 2 Holiday Edition For PC

You know, do we really need to pay 1/2 the price of an EP for a booster pack that we'll use 1, maybe 2 months out of the year? I thought this thing was gonna cost about $10, seeing as how it will all be availiable for download hacked and recolored two days after it's released.

 

I'm with you, Kristal. Considering that almost a third of the items are already available for free download and also that wall and costumes can be made to any desired pattern we are left with a 15 buck santa and a fire hazard (stockings on the mantel) ... as if sims needed any more opportunities for a conflagration.

When the booster pack issue was first raised a few weeks ago I envisaged a couple of dozen brand new objects at least a third of which would have some sort of meaningful or useful interaction. Menorrahs and Horns of Plenty don't quite cut the mustard if that's (almost) all that's on offer.

I won't be going to any effort to buy this one. If I chance to see a copy and I like the price (under 8 quid) and I have the cash spare that'll be another matter .... (I only take cash into supermarkets these days - it forces me to concentrate on thriftiness ... and also drives the store batty when they can't identify my demographic detail )

 

I'm sure this was an experimental pack...and an easy one to whip together. They should have gone all out for it though. I can see many ways they could have packaged it. They could have created everything to build a magical world. It could have been Currier and Ives perfect or even the whole gingerbread town that exmen created on his pay site. Or they could have made it so that it was inclusive of holidays around the world. I know on Neopets, with 40 million registered players from every country in the world, they, too, left out most of the world's cultures. They finally added oranges, red envelopes and firecrackers for Chinese New Year. While many cultures are fascinated by the U.S. version of Halloween, they forget that perhaps many English cultures are just as fascinated by other countries celebrations. I would love to have Sweden's St. Lucia crown of lights or items unique to Asian holidays. Even Santa is different around the world. I remember someone from the Netherlands studying in Canada going to extreme lengths to order unique candy and items to give to friends. I enjoyed hearing about Black Peter and Sinterklaas. It would have been a lovely and educational thing to have spotlighted other customs. Throwing in a menorah isn't quite enough.

 

Yeah what about diwali and eid as well. (I live in a totally multi-cultural area and this year Diwali, Eid, Halloween and Guy Fawkes all occur within a couple of weeks.)

Hey! No sweat, I'm gonna celebrate them all!

 

I think it would be cool if, instead of human holidays, they created "simish" holidays like Simorial Day, Simsgiving, or Simmish New Year. There could be all kinds of non-human-denominational decorations, interactive holiday items, and simish holiday parties/celebrations with associated actions/wants (like mourning headstones, cooking turkey or singing simmish carols around the bonfire.)

As Krystal and Mirelly pointed out, it would be worth $15 bucks for new types of *interactions* rather than just getting decorations that will be available two days later for free as re-colors. And by creating non-religious simmish holidays they would avoid the pitfall of omitting any particular human religions and offending anybody.

 

That would be cool, but how would you actually celebrate a 'regular' holiday in the Sim world, since they have no seasons/months? Just a thought.

 

Well, I'm no programmer or anything, but I bet they could use the pc clock/calander. Set it up so that on certain days of the (real world) year your sims have "Holiday Party" as an option on their phone. Or (for those of us that wish it could be xmas every day) It could be triggered by purchasing an interactive holiday object (like roman candles or a bonfire for Sim New Years) much in the same way that buying a bar or buffet table turns on the bartender and caterer options in the "service" menu.

 

Since we have Washington and Lincoln's birthday here in the states in order to celebrate historical figures who contributed a lot to our country's way of life, the Sims should have a Will Wright day in Sim World. They should get a day off work for it, always a Monday. And, of course, it naturally follows that my sim neighborhood should celebrate Lynet's birthday with a day off work.

 

Oh, that is so cool! But what I meant was, I would like it so that the holidays could be celebrated more than once in a Sim's lifetime, assuming the player isn't using the aging_off cheat. It would be cool if we had seasons, so players could make their Sims celebrate real life holidays at the appropriate time of "year", but I guess with the right items you could do it anyway, any time you wanted. I love the idea of Will Wright day!

 

I too am kind of surprised they went with real holidays. I think Simmish holidays would be much more appropriate.

But I think it's aimed at kids, like mine, who adore Halloween and Christmas. I don't know if it includes Hannukah but I think it should, if they're going "real world" on us. I also think birthday presents would be cool ...

I'm wondering how it will work, also (the timing of holidays, that is). How did it work in Sims 1?

 

If I remember correctly, in sims 1 it was object triggered. You had to buy a fireplace, xmas tree, and plate of xmas cookies and place them all together for Santa to come at midnight. The only problem was that the fireplace kept catching the xmas tree (and eventually Santa) on fire!

 

Yep, that's how it worked. Although I never caught anything on fire because I never lit the fireplace... it was too much of a hassle to interrupt a sim's routine to light the fireplace, especially since it didn't stay lit for very long. Actually I still can't usually be bothered to light them even in TS2.

When I played TS1, I made it so every 3 sim days was a month, and actually kept track of what month it was. So in "October" I did Halloween, Thanksgiving in November, Christmas in December... I pretty much had some kind of celebration or decoration scheme for every "sim month". Unfortunately a scheme like that is a little harder to keep track of with the introduction of days of the week in TS2 (in TS1 since the bills came every 3 days I used that as a marker for the new month). So, I just do holidays at the same time they happen in the real world, and they are like once-in-a-lifetime occasions for them. I don't get a whole lot of time to play, so most of my sims live at least a year... lol. I still have some Maxis-made Pleasantview sims alive, although they are dying off... just lost Angela Pleasant, Lilith is not far behind, neither is Dustin Broke (actually, he was ready to die the same day Angela did, but apparently the game can't handle two sims in the same house dying at the same time, so it added a couple more days to Dustin's life). The youngest "technically" Maxis-made sim I have is Brandi Broke's third-born, and even he is an elder.