We were doing alright. Better than alright, I suppose. I mean, any business that lets you jam in the afternoon with your pals and your new robot acquaintances must be doing well. Centre stage stood Chris, with his thumbs riding the gentle breeze that swept Peaceful Prosperous Palace, the tentative name for our empire, which stuck in the end, mainly because we didn't know how to change it. Chris was happy with his creations, Eric and Andrea 3000, Eric who was incredibly good at the guitar and cleaning toilets and Andrea 3000 who was sublime on the ivories and even more so on the ivory tiles in the kitchen. Yes, robots - they are the future. Of course, no Sims outing would be complete without Geoff on the drums, and me playing bass, who recently had a makeover at Fat Tony and Guys.

Before, back in the Nightlife days, I was merely a backdrop in Geoff's little dating game; he brought them home, had some fun and who was there next day to pick up the pieces? I was. A few months have passed however, and I've grown my hair. I've also grown a whole new fashion sense and a more business orientated mindset. Although everybody at Peaceful Prosperous Palace played a part in its peaceful prosperity, you could say that I was the brains behind the whole operation. Dexter the Great. It could have all been thanks to the haircut. But I like to credit our fortune on spotting that market niche. What was that gap in the market, I hear you cry? The manufacturing and selling of robots. Mainly female robots, fembots - although the user had the right to set the gender before the first ever boot up. Before this plan to deal in robots even hit pen and paper, Chris started to make an army of toy robots - and so it began.

You see, Chris could put his handy hands to good use in creating these little toys. In doing so, Chris got his robot making skills up and eventually earned a bronze robot making badge, which allowed him to make other types of robots, like cleaning robots, or cooking droids for example. After hours and hours of determination, Chris worked his way up the ranks, using his creations to keep him awake and to keep him in a serene mood to make more creations - it was like a circle of life. Eventually the gold badge came and with that badge came the ability to make a human replacement - a Servo.

The robots were ready. They were on the shelves. I was pricing them up, looking around the shop with my all-important clipboard, pondering on what might sell well and what might not. At $7000 per Servo, Geoff would really need to wow the customers as they came in and baffle them with sweet tasting trickery to really clinch the deal. We were just an hour away from opening up. Christopher made the call, the call that would turn this lot into a community lot, which would send an instant wave of customers our way. In previous Sims, community lots were AI controlled places that sold services - food, good times and products - they still can be controlled by AI too. In Open for Business though, you actually get to be the founder of your new business, doing as much or as little work as you want when it is up and running. You could do it all yourself, or you could employ people to run it, or just to give you a helping hand. We were in no position to employ anybody, though. The three of us could run the business smoothly - or the five of us, if you count the two robots we had under our wing. Geoff was in the perfect pose for a metaphor. The whole thing would be a juggling act, but if we could pull it all off, it would be spectacular.

We were now 'Open for Business' - this sign controlled the flow of customers. When this sign was turned to the open position, the customers could come spilling in very quickly. If you closed the shop with the sign, people in the middle of buying would finish up and time wasters would clear out. This new sign is just one of the many new items Open for Business adds to the game. There are lots of things to sell, including robots, toys and flowers, all of which you can make with special kits. Other business-orientated things are available too, like lemonade stands for kids and salon chairs. It's worth mentioning that you can actually sell most of the things you can buy in the Sims catalogue. When your lot becomes a business, you have plenty of business options in the right hand corner of the screen. One of the buttons up there lets you buy items from the catalogue at wholesale prices to sell and then to make money on. It's fantastic, absolutely fantastic, that you are not limited to just things you can make to flog. Sell easels for artists, sell instruments, lights, furnishings, cars, you name it.

You might wonder, if you're a reader of the Sims 2: Nightlife review, why Geoff has suddenly got black hair. Well, I wasn't the only one who had a trip to Fat Tony and Guys - the local salon down the road. Geoff got a dye, from brown to black. The reason was simple - he was on the run from his demanding maid girlfriend. Instead of leaving the country like any sane man would, he just got himself a new guise in the form of a new hair colour. I think the maid has fallen for it too, Geoff. While she is oblivious to our new business venture, Geoff is working his charm on the first customer who is wondering if she should spend $200 on a toy robot. A little overpriced, but if anybody could sell one of those to an elegant lady, it was Geoff. Starting off with a little chatting, Geoff quickly got physical and she obviously enjoyed the whole 'customer service' routine, if you catch my drift. See, in Open for Business, when people are thinking about buying an item, a little buy bar appears above their head. Sometimes they will come to their own decision and just fill their own bar up themselves - you know those types of people, the people who hate salesmen - I'm one of them. But others, like the lady above, need a little bit of a arm-twisting. Geoff nailed this sale, filled up her bar and she left with a bag full of robots, and Geoff's personal cell phone number. All in a day's work.

I soon put our earnings to good use. We expanded big time, from a modest shop selling robots that Chris made himself to a massive entertainment park full of fruitful things people would happily pay per hour to enjoy. Through the little robot shop and out the other side, the entertainment park was there, right in front of you, home to a bowling ally, a bunch of hot-tubs, a gaming bar that served exotic drinks, an army training course, half a dozen racing cars to drive and a centre stage where people could jam for cash, or for boos, depending on their skill level. There were toilets and mixed sex communal showers too, but nobody wanted to partake in those slightly German amenities. How did we make money from spending money on luxury things then? See that little machine above? Well, as soon as people entered the entertainment park, if they liked what they saw, they'd go and get a ticket. When these people had tickets, a set hourly fee would come into our bank. These machines are reliable, you cannot cheat them, people will pay if they like what they see and sometimes it's nice to offer the public a different type of service other than a shop or a salon.

All those nightclubs you built in Nightlife, well, why not buy them for real now and own them with real estate. Pick up the phone, put in a bid and buy the club from the community. Go plant a few of these ticket machines down and watch your cash load build up. See how I used Nightlife there? Getting all excited at the prospect of a pay-to-use nightclub, employing people to be the DJ - using robots to serve drinks? I can vouch that all of this is all well and good, but a clear flaw in Open for Business surfaced just about now. You really need to have Nightlife, and possibly University, to fully enjoy this new expansion. By adding other expansions to the mix, you're able to open shops in universities and you're able to use all the entertaining objects that Nightlife gave us. Without Nightlife at least, Open for Business would be pretty dull. It's a shame too, as this expansion combined with the others would give Open for Business ten out of ten without a shadow of a doubt.

In our business venture, we were highly successful. We even earned special business perks for doing so well and having such a good customer satisfaction rating. With business perks, you can spend newly earned points into special trees, increasing cashflow, decreasing wholesale prices, or even increasing the amount of people that come to your shop - just to mention a few perks you can buy. Giving the customer special treatment, like great sales, friendly advice and bargain price cuts engenders customer loyalty - once you have that nailed, you've got your business covered. Hey, because our new entertainment extension did well, we had enough money to go into real estate and buy Fat Tony and Guys. The salon was even more successful when we took over. People came to us from far and wide and we gave them makeovers how we saw fit - we could actually redesign people's faces! You can make them look as attractive or as unattractive as you desire!

Graphically the game remains unchanged, with no noticeable improvements, but I can't say that I'm bored with the gorgeous 3D front end that The Sims 2 manages to produce. All the new items look lush though, and just like the expansions before it, all the animations that come bundled with this addition look perfect. Of course, you have robots now too, also looking very good - the overall effect is great, and you should appreciate the fact that new textures and animations are subtlety making our experiences even better. The sound is just like the graphics really, in the sense that not much of the sound is entirely new, but a few new things have crept in, some going unnoticed, some standing out - some songs get remixes and the whole package feels like The Sims, and that's alright with me.

Where Maxis might take the three of us next is anybody's guess, but you can count on AceGamez to bring you the next exciting tale of the AG3 when that expansion arrives. We've all had fun making a bit of crust for ourselves and not making large corporations a lot of crust for themselves. Is that the moral of our story this time? Partly. The other moral is that if you're going to run away from your girl to start a business, dyeing your hair is a good place to start, and if you want a good chance at success while running your business, get your friends involved for free labour! If you want the thrill of running your own business on The Sims 2, Open for Business is for you. It's a fantastic expansion, probably the best to date, especially when combined with the expansion that came out prior to this, Nightlife. In any case, fans will lap this up and newcomers will have something different to keep them occupied other than just cleaning toilets. We're going to go all Terminator on you now - and leave you with the simple phrase that made Arnie famous…

"We'll be Back!"

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).