Just played it for around an hour or so, and I'm liking it so far. From what little I played of the original Sims, this plays much like it. The 3D camera takes some getting used to, and I haven't gotten the chance to even figure out all the nuances of it yet. All the 3D models in the game are outstanding, and are better than I would've expected. The animations are pretty good also, with a wide range of facial expressions that help you know what's going on with your sim at any given point of time.
The problems I'm having is understanding sometimes what my Sims are trying to tell me, but I either figure it out or it works itself out.
I also initially tried the movie maker function, which ran pretty good. You can basically record the video of what's going on at any given moment. I have since went to view the movies, of which were of absolute horrible quality and of very small size. I'm assuming the lowest setting is defaulted with the game. At the lowest, it records the movie at 128x128 at 36kbps and 10 frames per second. Pretty shoddy. But, with some of the computers people will be trying to play the Sims 2 with, it's understandable. I will try the other settings later and post back with my results.
EDIT: As for recording movies, there are two main options. The quality of the recording, and the size of the recorded video. On medium size and medium settings, I was able to get a decent framerate, although it's still not good enough in my eyes. This feature, like any other video cap programs (fraps), is hardly useable within intense 3D games until we start getting a lot more processing power and bandwidth inside the comp.
I also took a pic of my sims by using the printscreen button.
My Sims. That is in game, running at 1600x1200 4xAA/4xAF at around 60fps (this is an educated guess, I'll fraps it later to get a better estimate).
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