The Sims 2: Apartment Life
from: Electronic Arts
List Price: $19.99
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Your Price: $14.99
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Average Rating: 
Sales Rank: 270
Sales Rank: 270
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Video Games : The Sims 2: Apartment Life |
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  | Key Features
|  Decorate your apartment View larger image  Make new friends View larger image |
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Rating:  - * SecuRom Scam ... I have bought every single Sims to date (back till the origninal sims) but I will NOT buy this one. I will not buy from EA until they remove manditory SecuRom downloads with their games. SecuRom will slow down your system and cause problems with other games, NOT just Sims. It is very comparable to Malware, and once it gets on your system dont expect to remove it unless you are very proficent with computers. A class action suit against EA has been filed for SecuRom issues. ***Buyer BEWARE*** Rating:  - * Sims 2 goes out with a bang ... The "unofficial" word is that Apartment Life will be the final expansion pack for the Sims 2 line. I don't really know if that's true, but if so Apartment Life closes the series on an up note. Along with Seasons and Nightlife, Apartment Life is one of my favorite expansions. I really like the apartment feature, it's been long overdue. It's so much easier now to start off a sim newly graduated from University by having them live in an apartment. It's so much easier to get them suitable living quarters. I am so glad we finally have spiral stairs and playground equipment. They were both very much needed 4+ expansions ago. The social townies can be kind of annoying in a way, but the reputation feature is nice. One thing I don't like is how the new social greetings will mess up the greetings from locals at the Bon Voyage vacation neighborhoods. It's very rare now for my locals to do their normal greetings, instead they do the new social ones and my vacationing sims have a harder time of meeting the "learn local greeting" want without cheating on my part. But it's a minor frustration. Witches are pretty interesting. I like the neutral spells but some of the evil and good witch spells are kind of blah. Plus, I'm really not into the skin overlays with the evil and good witches. I don't like the green or sparkly skin so I use a mod to stop it. But overall I do like the witches and am glad we have them. They're the only paranormal creature in the Sims 2 line I've had more than a passing interest in. Apartment Life is a great EP and given the choice I'd gladly buy it again. I think it will keep my creativity & gameplay with Sims 2 going for a very long time. Rating:  - * Great EP ... This is a fun game. You can only play 1 family at a time but you can work on relationships a lot faster. Not sure if this is gonna be the last ep until sims 3 comes out, if their is, I'll buy it too. Rating: - * Love the expansion pack. but it's not worth the DRM hassle! ... I purchased two copies of this expansion pack because both my son and my wife are Sims 2 addicts. Both of them loved the extras BUT then the problems began! As a 'PC expert' I was called in when my son's copy would not load. It seems that he had re-installed the game at least four times because he had installed corrupted custom content on his new Sony Vio laptop. He then found he could not get Apartment Life to work at all. I tried and every time I insert the disk it ejects and the message 'Insert a disk' appears. I tried my wife's copy and got the same result so it wasn't a bad disk. I investigated the problem on Internet and found EA have protected the game using SecuRom - the same software which caused the Spore DRM controversy. According to what I found SecuRom does not like: (a) Nero software (Yes my son had Nero 8 on his machine and yes it has stopped working properly) (b) It can cause problems if there are repeated installs - Now up to at least 5 that I know of. SecuRom is NOT easy to remove. The removal tools provided by EA and SecuRom do not do a complete removal. EA games is not very helpful either, offering a variety of non-relevant solutions such as telling me that the game would not work on his laptop because of it's video card. (It already had been working). All in all it took me several hours to fix the problem, my time being worth a great deal more than the games cost. I still have an Apartment Life disk which messes up computers and prevents other legitimate software working. There is a way round it, but that involves un-official copies of the game which I can't condone. My recommendation is that if you are an average user who just plays the standard game then go ahead and buy it but if you want to build your own Sims and use custom content - give this expansion pack a miss - it isn't worth the hassle. Rating: - * Fun.. Fun Fun.. ... How to describe the new add-on to the endless Sims 2 series in one sentence? Rental housing at its best. Despite being the eighth expansion pack for The Sims 2, Apartment Life has really interesting features. You will love the beautiful architecture and you will be surprised at how much fun, magic can bring into the normal lives of the ordinary sims. This is more entertaining than Free Time and the apartment roommate element spices it up a touch. That's the farewell gift from the team - next expansion is inevitably expected somewhere in 2009, but for "The Sims 3." |
But don't worry, there's plenty of wizardry and action in Goblet of Fire. When the deadly Triwizard Tournament is hosted by Hogwarts, Harry finds his name mysteriously submitted (and chosen) to compete against wizards from two neighboring academies, as well as another Hogwarts student. The competition scenes are magnificently shot, with much-improved CGI effects (particularly the underwater challenge). And the climactic confrontation with Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, in a brilliant bit of casting) is the most thrilling yet. Goblet, the first installment to get a PG-13 rating, contains some violence as well as disturbing images for kids and some barely shrouded references at sexual awakening (Harry's bath scene in particular). The 2 1/2-hour film, lean considering it came from a 734-page book, trims out subplots about house-elves (they're not missed) and gives little screen time to the standard crew of the other Potter films, but adds in more of Britain's finest actors to the cast, such as Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody and Miranda Richardson as Rita Skeeter. Michael Gambon, in his second round as Professor Dumbledore, still hasn't brought audiences around to his interpretation of the role he took over after Richard Harris died, but it's a small smudge in an otherwise spotless adaptation. --Ellen A. Kim
On the DVD
The highlight of the two-disc set is a half-hour conversation with actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. They discuss their reactions to the film and other topics with British writer Richard Curtis . Then they answer questions from contest-winning fans, such as what are their favorite kids' books (Watson bypasses the obvious answer in favor of Roald Dahl and Philip Pullman) and what scenes are they looking forward to in upcoming films. More routine extras include the "Reflections on the Fourth Film" featurette (14 min.), though it has comments from some of the other young cast members, and "Preparing for the Yule Ball" (9 min.). The 10 minutes of additional scenes are mostly skulking and skullduggery, plus a long musical number from the ball. The remaining material is grouped along the lines of the Triwizard Tournament, with behind-the-scenes looks at each of the competitions (about 22 min. total), two longer featurettes on He Who Must Not Be Named (11 min.) and the workday of the other contestants (Robert Pattinson, Stanislav Ianevski, and Clémence Poésy, 13 min.), and four games, playable with the directional arrows on the remote control, that can be frustrating to figure out. --David Horiuchi
