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.