The Sims 2 University is the first expansion pack to the sales-record-breaking The Sims 2 (review 93%) game. This expansion pack adds a new College Town for your Sims to study. Yep, the Sims are going to college! Wild parties, skipping class, streaking at will... college is great, isn't it? They enroll into university before turning into an adult, and they attend to their classes in the "Young Adults" age. With a ton of new objects, locations, and gameplay features, this expansion really adds a plethora of new activities for your sims.

Here's quick list for everything this expansion adds to The Sims 2:

* New Life Stage - University adds a new age level for your sims: Young adulthood. There are two ways to create Young Adults. One way is for existing teens in your neighborhoods to enter college, at anytime they become a teen (they must enter college before the transition to Adulthood.). The second way is to create Young Adults from scratch on the Create-a-Sim screen within the College neighborhood. Of course, newly created and Townie Young Adults will provide more challenge than teens from the neighborhood, since they do not have any skills. Once a sim becomes a young adult, they have the ability to do many of the things that they could not do as teenagers. But there are a few things that they cannot do. Those things are: Adopt, Get Married, Try for Baby and Have a Career. A Sim's college life lasts 24 sim-days provided they don't get expelled or drop out. That's buckets of time to work on job skills and things to help you out with your career, but more on that later.

* New "College Town" - There're three possible pre-created Universities: Académie Le Tour, Sim State University and La Fiesta Tech. When sims enter college, they go to a new college neighborhood. This neighborhood has a school library, dorms, frats, sororities, coffee houses, gyms, and much more. These college neighborhoods are fully customizable, so you can mold the college into whatever environment you choose.

* Lectures - There are a total of eleven different subjects in University for your Sims to study. The majors are History, Physics, Literature, Political Science, Mathematics, Economics, Biology, Philosophy, Art, Drama and Psychology. Class occurs off-screen, so most of your management involves keeping students studying and making sure they unwind with some parties. You must keep your class performance up by doing assignments, studying, learning new skills, writing term papers, and doing research. Each semester is "72 hour" long and at the end you need to show up for finals. Pass with good grades you get your grant. If a sim fails, they go on academic probation. If they fail in two consecutive semesters, they are expelled.

* New Careers - 4 new career tracks (Paranormal Career, Business Career, Artist Career, Natural Scientist Career), all available only after graduating at University. All these careers are fun for your Sims, but the career rewards they offer really are fantastic. For instance, the show business career rewards you with a home plastic surgery machine, the artist's career rewards you with an old camera, the scientist path gives you a plant that saps life from rival Sims and gives it to you and finally the paranormal career can get your Sim a Resurrectonomitron! Call up the Grim Reaper, and you can bring back to life any Sim your Sim knows and has passed away for whatever reason -  you're then asked to bid for your loved ones and if you bid a measly amount Grim Reaper might have the last laugh and zap them back, but not as you expected them! Needless to say, the more money you give, the bigger the chance the returning Sim will be alive!

* Lifetime Wants - The Sims 2 added a desires and fears feature, which lets sims acquire various items depending on how many desire points they get.  "University" expands on that by giving them a life goal. There are multiple lifetime wants per Sim so not all your Sims with the same aspiration track will have the same lifetime want. The Lifetime Wants: Reach Golden Anniversary, Have a Family Reunion, Have X Children Abducted by Aliens, Graduate X Children from College, Max Out 7 Skills, Have X Lovers at Once, Have X Best Friends at Once, WooHoo with X Different Sims, Have X Grandchildren, Have X Babies, Marry off X children, Earn §100,000, Reach the Top of the Career.

* Influence meter - Influence points that work similarly to the pre-existing aspiration points. While getting aspiration points is essential in keeping your Sim happy and having access to some beneficial items, influence points enable you to influence people to do something for you. This can be all from cleaning the house to pulling pranks. Of course, the more friends you have, the more influence points you can hold and spend on others.

*  Money / Jobs - Every semester ends with a final, which determines a sim's grade, thus determining how much scholarship money they get, or whether a sim should be put on academic probation. Fortunately, there are more clean ways how to make some money: teach in the library, server in the coffee house, coach in sports areas, mini jobs in the lounge, play in a band (you can play on the drums, guitar or a bass!), cheerleader, print money or use a computer to make fake money :)

* New Items - arcade machines, pool tables, Juice kegs (in place of beers), bubble blowers, Sellafone Kiosks, mobile phones, MP3 players, fire sprinklers (to help turn off fires), bonfires (which are great for social events), mini-fridges (which are handy for bedrooms), all communal showers (even the most shy sims are forced to shower with everyone else), new exercise machines, band instruments (drums, bass, and a guitar). There're also new decorations such as psychedelic sixties style, new clothes and so on. There's over 125 new items in total!

Overall, the Sims 2 University is a decent expansion pack. I've had very few bugs or errors (mostly graphical glitches) and two crashes (in 3 weeks of playing), although I've heard (forums) some people have had more problems with the game. There are longer load times, especially when visiting University community. I think this is definitely a worthy addition to any Sims fan's library of games. While there's some room for improvement, it does offer a great deal of new features. If you liked the Sims 2 and are looking for a new level of gameplay, then try it out.

related links: homepage, cheats, trainer +10, The Sims Resource, Snooty Sims, The Sims 2 review (93%), The Sims 2 University CDROM.

Minimum system requirements: PIII-800Mhz, 256MB RAM, T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM , Win98/ME/2k/XP, at least 3.5GH free HDD space.
Note: Before you install the game, don't forget to disable CloneCD, Alcohol 120%, VirtuaCD, etc. Also, if you have any "hacked" / third-party objects/patches in your game, you MUST remove these BEFORE attempting install of Sims 2 University.