Aspyr Media Inc. on Friday announced that its long-awaited Mac conversion of The Sims 2 has gone gold master, and will soon begin shipping. Aspyr will provide further details including a ship date sometime next week.
The Sims 2 is the sequel to the blockbuster game that puts you in charge of Sims, simulated people who live out their lives in your computer, pursuing careers, creating families, making friends and more. The Sims 2 is an entirely new game using a sophisticated new 3D graphics engine and introducing many new attributes to the game that will challenge experience Sims players.
“This game uses the most sophisticated 3D graphics we’ve ever put in a game,” Glenda Adams, Aspyr’s director of development, told MacCentral . The detailed OpenGL shaders used in the game exceed even that seen in Doom 3, she said. Despite that, the game runs well on a wide variety of Macintosh hardware thanks to myriad optimizations.
In The Sims 2, players pick one of five “aspirations” that will take their Sims through an entire lifetime: Popularity, Fortune, Family, Knowledge and Romance. Every choice you make affects the Sim’s fulfillment and happiness. Also new in this release is genetics, which passes the DNA of Sims from one generation to the next.
The Sims 2 is rated T for Teen by the ESRB and costs US$49.99.
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