High: Fun new game play with new experience to be had.
Low: Basically requires Nightlife to experience Open for Business fully.


When it comes to traditional gaming, The Sims 2 has always been outside of the box. By design, it's a game that isn't: A true sandbox title that gives players the ability to guide virtual characters through life and love without ever bogging them down in real world difficulties. Now the latest expansion, Open for Business, dabbles with complexity for the first time. It's a departure that is both fun and challenging, but also risks alienating casual players in favor of dedicated fans.

Up until Open for Business, "work" in the Simverse simply consisted of sending your sim off to a mystical place for a set number of hours each day. Where they went and what they did was relatively unimportant--it was out of sight, out of mind. With Open for Business, you can not only take your sim to work, but you can start a business from the ground up.

To facilitate the commerce system, Open for Business adds three types of stores to the Simverse: Pay Per Item, Pay Per Use, and Pay Per Time. By using one of these three models you can create virtually any type of retail store. For example, Pay Per Item is the traditional retail model, such as a flower shop. Here, you need to worry about purchasing inventory, stocking shelves, and selling items to the customers. Pay Per Use stores are service oriented, such as a salon, while Pay Per Time stores are places like nightclubs which charge visiting sims by the hour.

Open for Business has a surprisingly open-ended system, allowing you to create a home-based business or open a store in a separate location. Either way, you still have to worry about hiring employees, buying (or making) items to sell, convincing customers to buy, and hoping that those who are happy with their purchase will come back again. Though the depth is to be commended, the early stages of launching a business take quite a bit of micromanaging if you want to be successful.

One of the major new features is the talent system. Talents are work-related skills that help make sims better businesspeople. When hiring employees, it's a good idea to review their talents in order to find a good fit for the job. For example, if you are running a beauty salon, hiring sims with a cosmetology talent will be to your advantage. That said, sims can improve their skills by doing things over and over, so when you find a solid employee, keep them happy.

Management is more than just nurturing good employees though. Sometimes you get a bad apple and if that happens, it's time to give them the pink slip. Just like in real life, firing an employee causes a lot of negative feelings, so be careful when hiring friends to work in your shop.

The new workbench is a novel addition as it allows you to craft items for sale in a store. Some of the items you can create include toys, robots, and flower arrangements. Crafting takes more time, but yields a higher profit margin than buying finished products wholesale. As your store grows, you gain the ability to negotiate lower prices and better deals with your suppliers. What starts out as a local Mom and Pop shop can eventually become the Wal-Mart of the Simverse.

Another new item is the robot that acts like a clone of the Sim that turns it on. The robot can help around the house and work longer and harder than a normal Sim, but eventually it has to recharge by standing outside in the sun. All in all, there are more than 125 new items in the expansion pack.

If Open for Business has any faults, it's that not everything is as intuitive as you would expect, for example, you cannot simply set working hours -- you have to manually open and close your store. You've also got to send employees home after work. If you have a home-based business, your customers don't respect the distinction and will happily wander into your TV room and plop on the couch or explore your bedroom.

There's also the issue of how it works with the other expansion packs. By itself, Open for Business is fun, but it really is designed to work with a game that already has Nightlife installed. Without the second expansion, you can't open a car dealership and your selection of nightclub and restaurant items is severely limited.

Despite these issues, Open for Business is sure to appeal to the long time Sims 2 players out there or anyone that like business and/or economics. The economic model is robust enough to keep things interesting and the complexities of running a business will keep players hopping. If you don't yet own any expansion packs, I would pick Nightlife up so you can take full advantage of Open for Business. Open for Business is a great open ended game and adds lots of life to The Sims 2 franchise. We would still like to see pets though.

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Reviewed By:EG Admin Reviewed On: Tue, 07 March 2006 17:09:01 Read:

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