Friday, July 30, 2010

Off The Simulated Wagon

I finally broke down and bought a copy of The Sims 3, thinking it would be a fun way to keep myself awake late this week while I work on switching over to night shifts (which I am then on approximately forever).

Well, this plan worked very, very well, but it may still have been a bad idea. How could I forget for a moment what unbelievably addicting time-sinks these games can be, especially when they're still new to you? I'm just going to keep telling myself, no more till tonight. No more till tonight. No more till tonight. I have things to do, dammit.

Not that anybody's probably interested in a game review, since I'm no doubt the last person who enjoys Sim games to actually play it, but I'm pretty impressed with it so far. The differences take some getting used to, but they do make for a greater feeling of realism. Interestingly, it feels to me less game-like in many ways than The Sims 2 -- there's less of a sense that you're doing things for points, for instance -- but it's a also a lot more challenging, requiring keeping your attention in multiple places and juggling multiple goals, and thus also more game-like.

And, yeah. Addictive. I really should learn.

2 comments:

  1. Its funny.. I found Sims to be the opposite. Took my wife to remind me that it was just like raising a bunch of kids (no dont drink the poison under the sink what the hell were you thinking?!?!) and that was a full time job already.

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  2. Maybe for me it's a substitute for having kids, although I thought that's what the cats were for. Come to think of it, I always did sort of think of my sims as pets...

    What really got me was the realization, after I first got the original game and had played it for several days straight, that while I was dutifully making sure my sims were fed, rested, and living in tidy environments, I was unwashed, sleep-deprived, and living in squalor. Oh, the irony!

    The Sims 3 seems to be much less about providing adult supervision, though, and more about helping your pixel people achieve something with their lives, which is nice.

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