Not the regular adventure game
I bought the Sims 2 for PSP because I read that this release has no close relation to the existing versions, this is a more adventure game than a simulator. Personally I like adventure games with logical tests and clues to reveal mysterious secrets. The Sims 2 for PSP is almost a perfect one, because while you are investigating you are getting tired, bored, hungry, and so on, and of course you have to use the toilet regularly like in the normal life. It was a very missing thing for me from the currently existing adventure games.
So let’s examine Sims 2 for PSP as an adventure game. The main weakness is the very simple method to reveal secrets. You have to develop a closer relation to somebody with chatting and flirting and you can interrogate him/her also for the deep dark secrets. Sometimes you can find other personal secrets about someone at an other person but mainly you have to do these types of communication with everybody. It might sounds good but the communication means pressing square, X and circle, the same as your partner has in a bubble over his/her head. Sometimes you have not the exactly matching icon within your answers, in these situations you have to select the closest matching object, like jail for prisoner, bird for fish, moon for werewolf, etc. The first few person is an easy ride, but later some character has fewer initial sympathy towards you so you have to give them gifts or you have to improve your abilities.
Abilities! An important part of the game. To solve a task or to make conversations with others easier you have to improve your body, charm, logic skill, etc. To do this you have to use equipments around the whole game area, in the beginning at you neighbors later in your house (after you bought the special equipments). The more you are practicing the more your ability is improved. But meanwhile you are practicing, one of your urgencies is getting more urgent, like when you are learning logic at a computer you will have headache, so you have to sleep some or have to buy medicine.
Urgencies! As a living person you have urgencies. If one of your urgencies is flashing in the upper left corner you must hurry to fulfill it, because a terrible thing can happen, like if you are in the last minute to go to a toilet, the pee will go into your trousers and everybody will laughing at you.
Needs! You have needs which are sometimes close to your tasks but sometimes not. E.g. your task is to build a closer relation with somebody and one of your needs is to reveal a personal secret. So let’s go and do them at once. If you fulfilled your needs your sanity is increasing.
Sanity! It is measuring your well-being. It has four different stage, at red you can’t learn anything and you have to watch out what you are doing, one mistake and you have mental problems (insane). In green stage you can do anything, but improving your skills is very slow. In gold stage you have enough power to learn things quickly but the best is the platinum where your needs and urgencies are not disturbing you. If you lose a chat/flirt/interrogation game with someone, your sanity will decreasing. If your sanity reaches the zero point you have an option to pay $500 to go back from the hospital and some of your urgencies will be messed up.
Money! An important thing to buy things and to apologize for the interrogations. You can collect money with solving secrets for somebody or sell secrets for others (but watch out, old secrets are known by everyone and selling somebody’s secret to a third party can cause bad connection with the secret’s original owner). An other way to collect money is to play mini games in the pub, in the laboratory, at the sect or in front of the house. These games are easy but you may have to have some special perk or skill to reach higher levels.
Perks! Special stuffs for your body and for the investigation. First you will find a mobile as your main perk. Then you can by more for sanity points (if you buy a perk the sanity meter will not decrease, you will lose just some sanity points). Perks are important to fight with zombies and to be more resistant against your urgencies.
Some final words. Sims 2 for PSP is not a bad game. But it is important that you need patience and patience and more, more, more patience for this game, because the UMD is continuously spinning and the game is continuously loading. You can get very angry easily as if you are chatting/flirting/interrogating with someone the game will stop a while (for loading) and you have to be very fast to select the correct icon to not lose. Sometimes it is very disturbing that a conversation with someone is 60% game and 40% loading, but it is possible to finish the game easily. If you are defeated in a conversation it is not by your speed mainly it is because you have not enough skill to impress your partner!
I read a lot of review about Sims 2 for PSP. All of them said that this game is a crap because it is not the same as for the PC and for the PS2 and the lots of loading is killing the game experience. I don’t think this. It is not the best game for ever, but I could easily play 5-6-7 hours continuously with it (sometimes till early morning) and this game was a great pastime for me.
+: brilliant graphics, easy gameplay, not the regular adventure game
-: lots of loading, lots of loading, lots of loading, lots of loading