E3 has always had a party atmosphere, so what better place to debut the latest The Sims 2 expansion, Nightlife? The Sims 2 Nightlife will let your sims go out on the town in the pursuit of pleasure, look for love, or simply appreciate a nice, quiet dinner out.  If you played The Sims then this may remind you a little of that game’s Hot Date expansion and comparisons to that game are not unjustified.  You get a new Downtown area, new objects, and new dating interactions, after all.  However, Nightlife is more than an updated version of Hot Date and The Sims 2 fans can expect it to bring a few changes to gameplay along with it.  EA gave me a demo of the game at E3 and I can tell you firsthand that The Sims 2 players are going to like living the Nightlife.

All those lights make me want to dance!

The first thing you’ll see in Nightlife is the addition of a new neighborhood named Downtown in a nod to the classic Hot Date game.  Downtown provides your sims with a place to go to relax or let loose, go out with the gang or meet someone new.  There’ll be plenty of options to do all that and more in Downtown’s restaurants, lounges, nightclubs, and even bowling alleys.  As always, if you don’t like what you see or you have your own vision of what the next hot spot on the club scene should be you can design and build your own custom Downtown destination.  To help you bring your dreams to life the game will provide over 125 new objects, including never before seen half-walls, curved booths and couches, and diagonal swimming pool lines.  And since lighting can really set the mood at a hotspot, Nightlife includes a new light model that allows for disco and colored lights as well as appropriate mood lighting for that romantic restaurant where your sim will want to take that someone special.  Another aesthetic change in store for you in Nightlife is that the lots will no longer appear to be isolated.  As you move around outside a building you’ll be able to see the other buildings across the street and down the road.

I was shown a nightclub and a restaurant at E3 and both locations looked pretty impressive.  The restaurant made use of curved booths and mood lighting to create a romantic atmosphere for sims to dine in.  The nightclub had a fountain outside to lend it a touch of elegance, and the interior featured a bar complete with stools at which sims congregated to quench their first and meet new sims – new bar interactions help with the latter activity by making flirting easier.  The nightclub also had a dance floor complete with all of the flashing lights and spotlights you’d expect to find at a hip dance spot. Sims were out on the floor enjoying the music and checking out each others' moves. For sims that want to have a little more fun as well as impress other sims could make use of the new Electro Dance Sphere object.  This spinning, gyroscopic contraption could make your sim look like an automated dance machine … or unceremoniously toss him onto the floor into a heap of embarrassment.

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