It's not even been out a week and it sucked 35 hours of my life away.

I (only slightly) dread to think what the number will be in 10 years...

Yeah it's pretty good.

First of all, to clarify what you get in this port of the Sims 2. You get all Expansions and Stuff Packs minus the IKEA stuff pack, and minus anything that came out of the Sims Store. So it's not quite 'All content', but it has all the content that matters.

Secondly, the port is suffering from a 'Your Mileage May Vary' scenario. On the current patch (31st May) I have only two bugs, and it's that the cheat to force alien abductions doesn't work, and sometimes when returning from school, the game auto-teleports all of the Sims inside the house, with no homework (Thankfully this has no negative impact on grade.) Both are not game breaking for me, so I'm not concerned! But I must therefore warn you that you may have a vastly worse experience compared to me.

In terms of the game itself, it's Sims 2, with almost all content! It's cheaper than buying The Sims 4's offering, and I'd argue a much more fun experience. I've maintained that The Sims 4 should be called 'The Sims Bustin' Out 2' because, especially on launch, the comparison between Bustin' Out 1 and Sims 4 was not flattering for Sims 4.

The hours on Steam so far are just me playing all the Pleasantview Households, I'm sure before long I'll be in Strangetown following the storylines there and making chaos.

In my opinion, the 3rd best game Supermassive have done, behind Until Dawn and House of Ashes.

A solid story with some interesting twists and tidbits for Dead By Daylight fans and Supermassive fans (of which I am both) and some really niche endings and outcomes for supermassive fans to explore.

The big problem is that the game feels like a lengthy act 1, a solid act 2 but an act 3 that lasts less than an hour and feels like it was heavily cut down - it feels more reacting to sudden choices rather than giving you options.

One last note is that Supermassive seem very much into trying to trick and bluff the people who've played a lot of their games with character death decisions - There are a few choices where the correct option is the one that makes less sense. They're somewhat telegraphed if you've played particularly House of Ashes and The Devil in Me because they hit a lot of the same beats beforehand.

Even so, fully recommend.

Original review below. Since 4.0 I've revised my opinion on Stellaris from positive to negative.

Simply put, the economy changes have massively worsened the game. The economy is leagues worse now because resource output is super swingy and it is much harder to resolve economic crises without taking 20 years to constantly try and make small but steady adjustments for any economic shock.

At times, you'll swing from +50 Consumer goods to -200 without a clue how it's happened so suddenly. Rather than being an engine you can set and only tweak at times, it requires even more micro than before, requiring you to manage each individual planet, since the AI can't do it.

This still takes me back to the tile system of Stellaris on release, where they *forced* you to cede control of planets beyond your first five to the AI, despite the fact that system was the simplest and easiest version that you could've easily micromanaged then forgotten about in the late game, because it was resilient to shocks and would only need fine tuning.

Instead here it's adderall micro from Year 1 to year 300. Have fun figuring out why you're suddenly 300 Energy credits in the hole, bucko!

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85% Achievement completion at time of writing. Some 0.1% Achievements as well.

Yeah it's pretty good if you got in Day 1, and steadily bought the expansions as they dropped like I have. And you have a bunch of friends to play with.

But, seriously, I know waaaay too much about this game, and I dropped £10 here, £20 there over the years. I think it's well worth the investment, but then again, I saw how many features got added and reworked over the years. I know what they were, you know what they are. Not a single 1.0 Mechanic has survived entirely untouched since launch.

Also, fun note. If you have a friend who is like me and owns all the DLC, you can play MP with them and you'll get access to all the DLC for that playthrough.