Product Description

Requires The Sims: 2, The Sims 2: Special DVD Edition, The Sims 2: Holiday Edition, or The Sims 2: Deluxe to play.

Whisk your Sims away from their everyday routines and take them on exciting trips to three exotic locations! Whether relaxing on a lush tropical island in a luxury suite, camping outdoors on a pristine mountaintop, or exploring the culture of the Far East, your Sims will enjoy all-new activities to relax and rejuvenate them. Send your Sims packing for the trip of a lifetime!

• Travel to Three Dream Destinations: Each location offers unique landscapes and local residents, such as the Fire Dancer and Ninja, for your Sims to meet and learn from. Try local cuisine and admire cultural landmarks as your Sims explore these new locales.
• Send Your Sims on Tours: Glass bottom boat rides, adventurous van tours, and other excursions are fun new activities for your Sims, but there may be some surprises in store!
• Buy or Find Unique Items: Shop for unique objects found only on your Sims` travels, including rare jewelry they can wear or take home as gifts. Stumble upon hidden locations, collect shells on the beach, or dig up treasure.
• Stay at New Travel Accommodations: Splurge on the luxury suite for your Sims or save Simoleons and choose a more cozy lodging. Your Sims will enjoy the comfort of room service, get pampered at the spa, and more.
  
  

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #628 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2007-09-06
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
Whisk your Sims away from their everyday routines and take them on exciting trips to three exotic locations! Whether relaxing on a lush tropical island in a luxury suite, camping with the family on a pristine mountaintop, or exploring the culture of the Far East, your Sims will enjoy new activities to relax and rejuvenate them. Transform them from bumbling tourists to savvy international travelers as they learn new customs including local greetings, dances, and more to take home and teach to their friends. Send your Sims packing for the trip of a lifetime!

Customer Reviews

Not original but great
Yesterday, my copy of The Sims 2 Bon Voyage - the sixth expansion pack for The Sims 2 - arrived. The basic idea of The Sims 2 Bon Voyage is that you can send your sims on holiday.

Ashamed as I am to admit it, I'm a big fan of The Sims and I've bought every expansion pack for The Sims and The Sims 2 released to date as well as various versions of The Sims for consoles.

Being the Sims fanboy that I am, I realised fairly quickly that this expansion pack was based on the same idea as an expansion for the original series. I remember playing The Sims: On Holiday (as it was called in the UK; vacation isn't really used in British English) for many hours and I can easily see myself doing so with Bon Voyage!
Accommodation and resorts

Much like The Sims On Holiday/Vacation, in Bon Voyage your sims can choose from staying in a hotel or tent. Unlike On Holiday, your sims can stay in a private holiday home but sadly Bon Voyage lacks On Holiday's igloos. You can also builds your own hotels.

Sims have the option of visiting a mountain resort, the Far East or a tropical island. Each resort has unique attractions; the island has two ancient monuments whilst the Far East has zen gardens. Each resort has unique customs which your sim may learn.

The game also adds holiday memories where you receive `badges' for all the different places and things you do. For example, you would get a badge for getting a tour (there are various types) or making an offering to an ancient monument. After a good holiday, Sims will feel refreshed and they may opt for benefits (such as better productivity or getting over fury) but after a bad holiday they will feel less refreshed. Holiday frequently and you could find yourself with a frequent travellers card!
New objects and characters

The sixth expansion pack adds pickpockets who will pry on unsuspecting tourists (i.e. your sims). A number of other new NPCs are introduced such as a fire dancer (who will, for a fee, teach your simple to fire dance), wise man and local residents of the holiday resort.

The game introduces many new items such as a rolling log, axe-throwing `dartboard', sauna, massage table, secret maps, far east-themed and hotel-themed furniture. The far east decor is fairly refreshing; the closest thing in prior versions was a mini flag of South Korea!
Criticism

My main criticism of Bon Voyage isn't the lack of igloos but rather the fact it adds an extra screen to the loading process. This screen has marketing on and to actually launch the game one must press a button in this application. It appears to be an IE-based shell but I really don't think it's necessary considering connectivity to EA's community site for The Sims 2 is integrated into the game. There are added preventions from running the game off a `back-up' disc which might make disc-less play through hacks a bit harder.

I realise that preventing the game being played off back-up discs is a copy-prevention technique but it's quite annoying. I've had it accusing me of using a back-up disc once already... when I wasn't!

Another slight disappointment I have is that time on holiday isn't classed as normal game time (sims don't age on holiday and they can go regardless of how many `vacation days' they have). Also, it annoys me how the word vacation continuously occurs throughout!
Conclusion

The game does, though, have many of the frustrations of a real holiday... such as sunburn. Fortunately, we don't have to take our sims through an airport (and therefore no security controls :) ).

System requirement wise, it's about the same as prior expansion packs: 512MB RAM, 1.5GB HD space, DVD ROM drive, DirectX 9, 1.3GHz processor for 98-XP (2.0GHz and 1024MB RAM for Vista) and 32MB of modern graphical memory.

Bon Voyage is the second favourite expansion so far (following University). Let's just hope they don't keep re-releasing Sims 1 expansion packs or they might get to Superstar or Makin' Magic... (shudders)!

Fun but riddled with bugs
Potentially this is the best expansion so far. And it would be if it wasn't riddled with glitches and bugs. It's a sad indictment of the attitude of games publishers, too eager to ship a product before it has been thoroughly tested. There are some great new features but I would advise not to purchase the game until a patch has been posted on the Sims 2 official website.

have a holiday with a nice slice of malware...
The game looks pretty snazzy but a little piece of software EA put into it without telling us to stop people using piracy can totally destroy your computer. SecuROM is a piece of software made by Sony and they've been sued many times over it and its tendency to destroy computers to the point they need reformatting, which is just a hassle not worth it and the fact EA are sticking their heads in the sand over it isn't helping it. My advice - get the ARR version; at least then your computer isn't at risk.