Except it isn't because they are cartoony. The Ottomas family grandmother is a good example of an overworked face not a cartoony one and most times the twins inherit her facial structure which when combined with the others produces weird cheeks, eye sockets and chins. Any overly worked sim face (think celebrity ones) will produce ugly offspring.

Jerry Martins unreleased/rejected tracks give The Sims 2 a sense of gravitas, a sense of life through generations, and by extension a more timeless presentation in my unpopular opinion. I don't care if it didn't match the cartoony look they went for, it matched the generational gameplay and grandiose budget that went into making TS2--a game that has transcended a generation itself. The kitschy Rugrats-sounding music always irked me (and I did watch The Rugrats growing up and loved it!)

I don't know how you judge an opinion to be truly unpoluar because there are always fans on gaming forums that defend against them. Shallow random generation in skyrim. No graphics whatsoever with 4 gb of memory use and unbounded random in crusader kings. Greatest games of all time for some.

I find the face generation barely workable because of no blending and few elements. Why make a character that is 200 kB when there are only a few possibilities from the parents. On the other hand, if there was blending, the faces would tend to the same average over a long time, like what the realistic replacements look like or when you give a click of most faces. I wonder how many "elements" there are to faces in reality. There has to be more.

I think in real life proportions, in terms of where features sit on the face and in relation to each other, is a big one for making faces look different from or similar to each other. (Paying attention to that certainly helped me make the faces I draw look less samey, at least.) But it's hard to work with that in The Sims 2 since fiddling too much there can make offspring look downright bizarre and I think that's a shame. And asymmetry. If I recall correctly there are custom sliders that allows some asymmetry in sims faces, though I've never tried any and I've never seen if and how that affects genetics.

Once applied to a Sim, all custom controls work independently you having them or not and are inherited. It’s true that the simpler and more Maxis-like a face is, the more likely the offspring will look "normal," but I personally don’t mind if some combinations result in weird outcomes. I prefer that over everyone looking the same. xDD

The fact that faces can be fully customized with custom controls and that the changes stay in the game even after removing the controls is a big advantage, and one of the things I love about The Sims 2. That same lack of limits is what sometimes leads to odd results, but I’d much rather have that than not have the option at all. xd