There's currently 4 websites that keep me busy (not counting 2 dutch ones. Its to hard to link those and expect everyone I know to understand them). These are the common sense sites which mix every day news and pop culture with humor. As an ode I'll link them here now.
Fun facts - The wacky colums of Cracked
Nostalgia - The works of Angry Video Game Nerd, Cinemassacre
Gaming - The down to earth view on things by Escapist
Mindless fun - From the school of College Humor
Now, I value honesty, open mindedness and non-corperate bullshit. However to keep these pages running they can't avoid having adds on them (kinda like I have on my blog ... however I just have it to look professional). I also believe in paying for things that are actually worth something. Thats why I don't support EA's Sims 3 commercial, currently plastered on the background of College Humor.
Let me tell you why and I warn you ... I'm not proud of what I'm about to say, but it has to be done. It might even scare you a bit to hear this, but here goes.
I own every single Sims 2 content on original disk.
Yes, I fueled that housewife cocain that is now the biggest offline hype in gameland. Now to explain why Sims 2 was worth it and why Sims 3 is a pile of garbage, I'll have to go into a bit of history.
History Lesson 101
Remember Maxis? .. I mean before the big EA monster came and beat them into submission? .. I do .. They used to be the name that was linked with everything that including the name sim in the title. SimCity and SimFarm being the only ones I want to name cause after that I can't really say the Sim-whatever series had anything impressive to add.
I'll make it easy for you cause Wiki has a nice timeline pre-made. Now let me point out which games where actually interresting and landmarks in simulation.
SimCity was groundbreaking. Underappreciated at the time cause of it being a hard game to understand or just too boring for people to get into. Remember this was at the time games like Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Street Fighter and such hit the home console too. However it had its following just like Civilization and Railroad Tycoon and became an icon in the simulation world on how things should be done. But every great idea (even back then) soon becomes a milking cow. SimAnt did something fun with the concept, but SimFarm was pretty much the big one when the first Sim-era came to an end.
SimCity 2000 was a graphical marvel at the time and set another small landmark. However it was basically a remade version of SimCity and didn't bring much new to the table. After SimCity 2000 everything pretty much went into a grinder to milk the product as much as humanly possible. Even up to SimCopter, a game where you could fly over your own SimCity without (as far as I remember) any purpose but eyecandy. I skipped almost everthing from SimCity 2000 up and I'm pretty sure I didn't miss a lot. I only got to play SimCity 4 years after it came out and I'll say its probably the best build SimCity thus far. However, since SimCity 2000, Maxis was part of EA and this kind of shows in the way the product got hyped. Spore was for me what should have been SimCity 5, but failed misserably.
Sims Uprise
Between SimCity 3000 and 4 (talking about weird numbering of sequels) came The Sims. Probably the biggest thing in gaming history when it comes to simulations. For the first time you'd be able to be a god. Not just the kind that plunks down houses and factories or makes armies to destroy other civilizations. Ofcourse, back then I was still too macho for this kind of thing and didn't pay much attention in "Biggest hype since baked bread"-class. So a few years passed by before I got my first sniff.
Pretty much the first thing I did was make a family and try to find all the ways in which to kill them. Yes, typing that still brings a smile to my face. I also got it with all the expansion packs cause it was about half a year before Sims 2 would come out and I wanted to know what bandwagon I was climbing onto. I actually enjoyed it a lot. More the creating houses bit than the actual gameplay, but I managed to digest pretty much all of it.
So I bought the Sims 2 and enjoyed it as much as it allowed me to. However I felt some things where missing. Things that the expansions had already clearly made the first one better in small details. However Sims 2 was far superiour to its bulky ancestor. It introduced the Wishes system, improved graphics, gameplay mechanics and brought a whole new generation and society into gaming. I even downloaded huge amounts of drivespace in user made content and (back then still free) DLC from their website. Sims 2 was great.
The Brickwall
EA's marketing scam hadn't dawned on my yet with Sims 1, cause I didn't know about the whole setup and release of the addon sets yet. This came on the release of Sims 2. What I noticed was blank spots in the game. Things where I just felt "hey, something is missing here". Like for example certain actions. Now this at first wouldn't be such a big deal, but after installing the first addon / expansion it became all too clear that those wholes there are just too fitting not to be planned. All of a sudden blank space was filled with a new action button.
With every expansion this became to dawn more and more on me. Basically the finished product had been ripped into pieces and as time progressed and more expansions come out, it got stitched back together again. However I forgive them for this now. I bought all the content and got the full game that works. Somehow it doesn't take away the fact I feel a bit ripped off for buying a not-even-half-finished product (remember my rant on the Fallout DLC). Would this be an online game like Warcraft where the world slowly catches up by leveling and end-game just becomes dull, it would be something else. Games like that sometimes just need a refreshing push forward. This game however is static. There is no end-game and the only reason to do something like this is pure marketing.
However where the unfinished product hit a wall and needed addons to complete, thats where the DLC and the community added to it and made Sims 2 what is now in my book as a great game which I enjoyed dearly. So I was looking forward to Sims 3. I really was. Till it came out and I got my grubby hands on it...
MOOOOO
Thats right. The milk factory has opened again just like it had 20 years ago with SimCity. The first thing you notice after Sims 3 is done installing is that the graphics haven't improved a lot from Sims 2. They did add more changable features to a character by the means of sliders, but thats about it. The base package of clothing, hair, etc. are very low. Yes, you can now change clothing texture and you have a very deep ability to change colour all over the place, but it still feels incomplete.
Thats when the alarm bells will start ringing. Yes, expansions will yet again make this a complete game. Since I was already used to this abuse I just ignored it for now and went onto making a house. You know ... the expensive kind where you can only cheat your way into by getting enough money from killing off sims and taking their money. That is untill you find the money cheat code.
The features here have improved somewhat. You can now put up furnature crossward instead of only horizontal or vertical. As with the clothing you can change textures and colour to your liking. However, here you'll also notice that the selection is rather minimal. Then it becomes annoying. So I asked myself where I could get some more stuff. Turns out DLC is now payed for. There's still an Exchange like in Sims 2 and thats probably where you still get stuff for free, but I'm very scared since there's actually a Store page too that features things you need to pay for.
Look at it this way. To use downloaded content in Sims 2, most of the time you needed the base-model it was build on. If this base-model can only be bought at the Sims 3 Store online you're pretty much screwed out of your money straight away. So thats double money. First for the upcoming expansions, now the DLC too. The game already misses more then it should.
So after noticing all this I was pretty much set on destruction mode, but I still had to play a bit first. The promised "less worry about (example) your bladder and more fun with the wish system" totally failed on my part. The first day the idiot I made went to work smelly and in a dire need of a piss. Naked sims now have more censor then a japanese porn movie. Guys there was nothing wrong with the first 2 censors. Why are the ones in Sims 3 bigger? Have female sims got breast enlargement that might destroy my screen if their censored razorsharp nipples run along?? The open-world city you work in doesn't allow you to do anything. The game still goes into turbo mode till you get home. The open city itself is a nice new feature you won't hear me complain about that, but they could have at least included the work into it somehow. Now that would have been a real new feature. How funny would it be to piss off your co-workers by paying them a visit on your day off.
I was so fed up with Sims 3 by now and I only had been playing for maybe an hour or 2, then my pc itself got fed up with the game all together. No kidding. My pc actually went back to windows and shut down the game.
Conclusion
Back to the EA Sims 2 commercial. It states:
"The best sims game yet" - PC Gamer
I didn't even know PC Gamer is still around these days. Nice of these guys to jump the corperate bandwagon. Little tip guys. Its passed the year 2000 and offline magazines are wastes of paper. You're destroying the enviroment.
"...Sims 3, Remarkable, Blows past its ancestors in every way" - Time Magazine
First of all Time should stick to their own kind of journalism, cause gaming definatly isn't it. Sims 3 is Sims 2 with a minimal engine upgrade. Second of all Yep, Sims 3 sure blows.
"The latest sims game is also the greatest" - Gamespot
I knew I hated Gamespot for a reason. I always thought it was just their crummy logo. Now I know its due to their lack of game knowledge.
And thats just from the commercial. Gametrailers give it a 9.0 and IGN give a 8.9. Two sites who are to me the information sites when it comes to gaming. Both have just dropped off the face of the earth now for me for some reason. For the part of Users Scores go. Ever thought that maybe the kind of gamers that play Sims have lower standards and/or anyone can vote for that score including developers themselfs. The only site I generally use for patch downloads that actually had the best score fitting was GamersHell. To be exact their score was this N/A ... Not available.
Before people piss on my parade of being a bad reviewer. EA had this funny story about the pirated version being a "demo" and not containing the full content. So let me clear up one thing right away. Yes, I had this "Demo" and got the full version right after I heard this. Both versions where exactly the same to me. So either I had luck with my download or its a hoax. I had access to all released content and I even consulted a fellow WoW-friend of mine, with a full version of the game, about her findings (yes, an actual female of our species ... Thanks Lenouk!). Basically we both came to these conclusions on all points.
As Zaphod Beeblebrox would say "Okay. So, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, huh?"
PS: Did you know the current patch while I'm writing this is already v1.4.6... The game isn't even 3 months old and already it had 4 patches needed to fix the crappy first release.
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