Weirdness is something that pervades TS2 and something that we love. The game and every EP has come up with its own unique brand to add to the mix. The vanilla version of the game came with aliens and ghosts, University added Zombies, Nightlife added Vampires, the Holiday Party Pack added Santa Claus and Open For Business has its own addition.

In "Nightlife", we also saw the return of Mrs. Crumplebottom, who was one of the famed NPCs from TS1's "Hot Date". In this EP, we see the return of another familiar figure from bygone days.

Servo.

In TS1, Servo was an autonomous "do-it-all" robot who cleaned, gardened and cooked. In TS2, Servo looks the same but is somewhat different. Servo can now become one of the family. However, short of cheating, you can't simply look in the catalogue and buy one.

You need to build one and that requires getting up to a Gold talent badge in Robotry.

Servo is the top of the line in robots. Before you are skilled enough to build one, however, you will be making all of its family.

Without any talent badges, you can build small toy robots. These can be put up for sale in a store or simply resold (deleted). It costs §108 for the parts and they sell by deletion for §120. Not much of a profit for someone to live on, although the more skilled the robot maker is, the faster they can make one. There are two interactions with these. Play and Repair. I have found that my sim-toddlers love them, but they have a tantrum when it breaks and sometimes need rushing to the potty before an accident takes place. For an unskilled robot maker, they break quite often and just fizzle a bit. After your robot maker has made 10-15 of these, they are rewarded with a Bronze Talent Badge.

With a Bronze Talent Badge, your robot maker is skilled enough to make "Rover Bots". This class of robot includes hydrobots and the more expensive cleanbots. Hydrobots are gardening robots and Cleanbots are cleaning robots.They come with their own base station where they return to when not in use. Once turned on, Rover Bots trundle around the lot doing their duty as and when required.

Cleanbots are very efficient. Just too efficient at times. Zoltan gave one to Ivy to use in her flowershop. When a customer had to wait in the queue for too long and just dropped his bags and left the store, the cleanbot whizzed over, hoovered up the bags and then went back to its workstation. Had Zoltan or Ivy been able to get the bags themselves, they would have recovered the value of the goods the customer would have purchased. As it was, because their cleanbot got there first, they made a loss.

Again, these bots can malfunction and go somewhat rogue. They start themselves up and generally create mayhem. Hydrobots squirt water all over the place and Cleanbots spew rubbish piles all over the place. Your sims will be frantically running around trying to turn them off and return them to their basestation. Once repaired, however, the Cleanbot will go around and tidy up after itself.

After making about 10-15 roverbots, ensuring you make at least one of each type, your robot maker is awarded a Silver Talent Badge.

With a Silver Talent Badge, your robot maker is skilled enough to make "Hover Bots". Their movement is not impeded by stairs or even elevators and are somewhat more versatile than the hoverbots, but that versatility comes at a price. This class of robot includes munchiebots, who leaves the lot and brings back food if your sim is hungry, and sentry bots, who protect your property. Should burglars ever threaten your lot, a well-placed sentry bot should be able to deter him or her from ever troubling you again. Also, in theory, you should not be troubled by sims kicking over your garbage can or trying to steal your garden gnomes.

Unfortunately, these malfunction as well, although I am yet to see it. A malfunctioning Munchiebot brings back spoiled food, which still has to be paid for, and a malfunctioning Sentrybot targets a innocent sim as if they were a burglar. Not quite as bad as ED-209, but I think you get the idea.

And after making about 10-15 hoverbots, again ensuring you make at least a few of each type, you are awarded a Gold Talent Badge and with one of those, you can make a Servo.

Don't make any long term plans for your sim once you have started on a Servo. It takes a very long time to build one. Days in fact. Once activated, Servo can be classed as male or female and takes the personality of the one who does the activating. He can even become one of the family. You can develop relations with him/her and as regards woo-hoo, Servo (or Serva) is "fully functional". Servos cannot try for babies but they can die, they can be resurrected as zombies and they also can become vampires. How on earth a vampire can dig his fangs into a titanium alloy neck is beyond me, however. Whereas vampires are afraid of the light, Servo thrives in the light and needs daylight in order to recharge his batteries. This does make me wonder how a "vambot" can properly function.