Let me first say that I think The Sims 2 is really good as a game product. Great graphcis, great production values, great attention to detail.

But I don't seem to get it.  First off, it strikes me as unforgiveable that the game doesn't feature a "go back 1 day" type feature so that if a key sim dies (like the guy I've spent 2 days building up) because of a ghost or some other silly thing that I can go back and try to correct it.  Sure, it's not realistic, give me the option still.

Secondly, I didn't play the first one. I.e. Sims 1. So as a result, I don't understand a lot of what I have to do. The manual for The Sims 2 seems almost as if you are have expected to have played the first one.  For instance, throwing parties. A big thing in the game. Yet I have no idea what the key to a good party is. It suggests a buy a "bar". Where do I get a bar? I couldn't find one in my list of things (probably in there somewhere).

It is very addictive but it is just incredibly frustrating that a Sim can seemingly die for no reason.

Let me give you my first experience here with The Sims 2. I have no previous experience:

I load up the game and spend about an hour building my own family. There's tools to make it so you can have people that look like your real family and after a long time, I managed to get a pretty good visual representation of my family in there.

Within 2 minutes though, a fire breaks out in the kitchen. I click on the fire and choose extinguish. He doesn't do it and my Sim dies. (I later find out I have to click on the fire icon at the top left). I exit out and come back in to see if I can restart. Nope, my guy seems to be dead.

Okay, I start over. Rebuild the family (not quite as detailed this time) and get it going. Within an hour my kids have been taken away by social services because they didn't do their homework.  I try to get my kid to do his homework but he always says he's "not in the mood".  Where's the "Make kid do homework?" Did any real parents have a hand in this design? My kid never wants to do homework either but there are ways to force him to do his homework.

So again, I start over, rebuild the family again. I have my wife and I work and hire a maid and nanny. Once again, a fire breaks out and the nanny and maid die. I come home from work, call the fire department who put out the blaze. Within another 10 minutes, my wife and I are dead for some reason due to the ghosts of these two incompotents. I had nothing to do with their demise.

Remember, I'm just a newbie here. So I'm sure there's plenty of things I "should have done" but they sure didn't seem apparent to me and I design, play, and code computer games for a living. 

I recognize a great game when I see one and The Sims 2 is clearly a great quality game. But I'm just having a hard time getting it I guess.