You can only have the default "Four Corners" neighborhood, whereas in The Sims 2, you can have literally infinite neighborhoods. Once you get into the game itself and explore its depths, however, you'll notice the price paid for the performance boost. In this, nothing has changed between Life Stories and the core titles.
There is an array of objects and decorations to buy, and you can build your Sims' houses with a variety of wallpaper and carpet options. You can trigger all sorts of nasty things to them in the process, with fires and the like, if your tendencies are more destructive than constructive. Adult Sims can have kids, and all Sims age, grow, and eventually die.
You'll control your Sims' every action, from washing dishes and watching TV to going to work and going to the toilet when appropriate. Gameplay wise, this the same Sims 2 you know and love.
Free Will, the option that turns on artificial intelligence for your own Sims, actually seems improved over the core game. Mirrors can reflect what's actually in the room, and shadows are more than serviceable. Lighting has color to it, and emanates from the sources they should that is, lamps seem to give off light, rather than rooms being magically bright just because a lamp object is there. Every object and character in the game is three-dimensional, unlike The Sims 1, where only the Sims themselves were three-dimensional (everything else was a two-dimensional sprite). Life Stories was built on the Sims 2 engine, which means a major performance boost is no small feat. This still holds even if you want to run the game in windowed mode (which is actually the default), allowing you to play the game while doing anything else on your computer, such as using instant messaging programs or writing something in MS Word (not that we'd ever encourage blowing off homework or office work for a game, of course).
Even with full graphics options enabled, the game ran well, with only a few hitches here and there when many Sims were on the screen at once. We tried the game on a couple low-caliber machines, one laptop and one desktop, that barely met the minimum requirements. The idea here is that Life Stories can be played on laptops and under-the-gaming-curve PCs, which ordinarily would be unable to handle the game. Indeed, The Sims has historically been one of the worst resource hogs outside of first-person shooters, especially when you throw in all the aforementioned expansion packs.
The question, of course, is whether you need this one if you've got the others? Life Stories is billed as "PC Laptop Friendly" on the front cover of the case. The Sims: Life Stories is a new, stand-alone game, and brand, that does not interact in any way with either of the other core games. Until now, we've only had two core Sims games on the PC: The Sims and The Sims 2. The next one is The Sims 2: Seasons, which should ship to stores today. Let's be clear up front… The Sims: Life Stories is not an expansion pack.