When your vacation is over, your sims check out of the hotel and can return home with plenty of mementos. Aside from purchased or scrounged souvenirs, which may appeal to pack rat players who simply must collect everything, your sims may have photos taken with the game's new photo camera, which lets you snap family photos (or ask a kind passerby to get a group shot for you). In addition, if your sims had a great time on their vacation, they'll be able to choose useful bonuses to their abilities on returning home, such as increased productivity at work, faster skill learning, and, perhaps most useful, an additional slot for their immediate "wants"--the short-term personal goals each sim carries around that, when fulfilled, can lead them to true happiness.
Having a great vacation can let you unlock additional bonuses for your sims.
The expansion looks and sounds about as good as you might expect from the consistently high-quality expansion packs we've seen for The Sims 2. The tourism lots and the resorts are all very colorful and look very different from the standard neighborhood lot, though some of the higher-end, amenity-packed resorts and some of the tourist areas, like the winding, mazelike temple ruins, are sometimes a bit too crowded with objects and people, so sometimes you'll have to play with the camera a bit more to keep tabs on your family. Since the game still lacks much in the way of further optimization, the sometimes-sluggish Sims 2 camera still has a tendency to slow down when there are lots of objects onscreen, especially at crowded locations. Fortunately, you can edit any of these vacation lots to your liking if you care to. The expansion's music is as upbeat as ever, and some festive holiday tunes have been added that fit seamlessly into the game, along with the new nonsensical "simlish" voice samples your characters will make as they try out new activities like playing pirate or meditating.
Most of Bon Voyage's additional content comes in the form of lighthearted and handy extras that don't seem to fundamentally change the way The Sims 2 is played. Still, the expansion adds enough variety and ease of use to be worth playing. Obsessive Sims 2 fans will probably want the expansion for the collection-based gameplay and the prospect of bonus want slots; casual Sims 2 fans should enjoy just getting out of the house and taking a holiday.
The Sims 2: Bon Voyage (PC):
%20PC%20Game%20reviews%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/pc-games/the-sims-2-bon/4505-9696_7-32462744-2.html){kind=small}