My other life.

Today's post is more a game review than anything else. I've been slacking on reading up on articles, so instead, I'll entertain with a little story of my favorite PC games of all time and a review of the latest installment of the popular Sims franchise.

Before I delv into the new, however, let's first bask in the glory that is original Sims for a moment:

It was first released on February 4, 2000. I remember borrowing from a friend and instantly falling in love with it. I was a master at "greening" my sims--although I do remember accidentally killing one of my early sims when she became too depressed and the horror as I watched her become a tombstone and the empty lot. I even made a storyboard in Junior-year English class for Macbeth because I can't draw worth crap. It tok a long time to get all the period costume but it was well worth it.

Fast forward to freshman year in college and the same friend got me into TSO. Yes, it had its faults--the graphics being one of the biggest drawbacks, especially when I tried going back to the game in 2005 and could barely stand it. But, it was built on the same engine as The Sims 1, so what do you expect. Other than that, I enjoyed it for a long time, particularly the teamwork games.

Unfortunately, it became more of a online dating platform fairly soon and the different Sims mafia sprung up all over the place. (People will try to bring real life into pretend life whenever they can, won't they?)

After about a year, I moved onto another MMO. But that's a different story.


Next, it was 2004, a few months before my birthday, I found out about The Sims 2's release in September that year (just after my birthday!).

The base game had a lot of new innovations compared to the first game and the garphics certainly looked much better. As time went by, more and more expansion packs came out that introduced so much more both in gameplay and building design (one of the biggest draws of the games for me), it became a great medium for storytelling. Many people write stories based on their sims, and I know I'm not the first one to make a comic, and I definitely won't be the last using The Sims 2 to make videos.


Finally, it's June of 2009, almost 5 years after release date of The Sims 2. I had planned on holding off buying The Sims 3 because I was convinced my PC would not let me play the game at the caliber I wanted to for such a revolutionary installment of the franchise.


And then I made the big mistake--or fortune--of checking out some video game pre/reviews on youtube. I've only gotten about 2-3 gameplay time so far, so this is more of an initial impressions review. For those of you who care.




Character Creation


This is the logical starting point because that's the first thing I did, even before I changed the resolutions and graphics settings. Several things jumped out at me:

1. Highly customizable colors for hair color as well as patterns for clothing items. (+)


2. Love the ability to control body fat and muscle mass; really makes it the sims that you can make more like real people. Although personally, I always made skinny sims... (+)


3. I kind of felt like the sims faces were mostly the same but then I messed around a little with randomizing faces. Generally, I like the highly customizable facial features, but I wonder if there is any way to create your own face kind of from scratch without having to randomize until you get one that is kind of similar. To me, even when I customized the features, they still more or less looked like the same person. (*)


4. I found myself wishing for a way to only adjust bust or hips size. After all, not everyone who is skinny have A-cups and not everyone with a big butt is fat. *Note: the Sim on the right is a skinny sim with the muscle mass bar maybe 1/5-1/4 of the way up. (-)


5. I'm also pretty sure there is not way to change height while creating a sim. That's something I've been kind of hoping for, especially for videos. Certainly hope that can somehow be implemented in the future. (-)


6. The male sims were rather disappointing so far. I had a hard time finding a face that I liked and the clothing selection was both too limited as well as unflattering on the sims. The former I expected but the latter I had expected more from. It could've been the relatively more muscle mass I put on my sim but... I think it was more the clothing. (-)


7. *Note: Screenshot of my male sim. It's not a great picture of him but I forgot to take one while creating him.

7. The ability to clone a sim in the character creation screen is definitely a plus if you are making twins off the bat or need multiples of one sim for a video. (+)

8. The new trait system adds some new elements to the game that's really different from previous installments. Each trait gives you different possible lifetime achievements to pick from as well as prompt different moods and possible events in the "Live" mode. It almost feels like a.... rpg! (+)

Live Mode

First, let me just say, one of the awesomest things (so far) about this game is the ability to go from your own house to another lot/property in the city without having to deal wtih the annoying load screen. There is no wait time once you've finished creating your sim. From the moment you put them in a lot, you can zoom freely in and out of their house and into the map screen where you can see the whoel time. At one point I sent my sim to the theatre and I think I saw him physically walk down the street to the venue.

This is very much like SimsVille that was in production before they chucked it for whatever reason (I looked forwards to it for a long time until The Sims 2 was announced). It's also great to finally physically see the workplaces of the sims, instead of sending them off to the ether whenever the carpool picked them up. You can even zoom right to the work location when you are on the look for a job screen.

One strange/nice thing is, instead of placing the newspaper randomly on the ground, the sims will now place them in their inventory, prompting me to repeatedly ask the question of, "Where did the newspaper go?!" when I was trying to find my other sim a job.

Skill building and the daily life is mostly the sims as before. Although certain traits will allow your sim to learn some skills faster than other sims and the biological needs of the sims don't need to be met nearly as much as before. (Less bathroom time, essentially.)

And I am not ashamed to say that I was hoping for more from 'Whohooing.' I feel like it was steamier in The Sims 2 than Sims 3. Literally. Please see the following video.

This is getting a little long. So I'll break it up so I can talk more indepth about the other aspects of gameplay in a different post. For now, let me just conclude with a section about what makes The Sims 3 so much better for filming.

Video Capture

As someone currently working on filming in the sims 2, I have to say this game is so much more conducive to filming on a low-end machine. There was absolutely no lag when I press that "V" button and the video recorded with a resolution of 1024 x 600....something (sorry I don't have my notes in front of me!), which is awesome resolution. I can't wait to try it on another, better machine at home.

Here is another video with some gratuitous nudity.

And as smooth as that video looked, it was as smooth as it was during recording. I can't express enough in words how much I love that. The quality went down a little once she started moving but it's not really that bad at all.

Stay tuned for more the next few days.