f13.net

C'mon, don't try to hide it... every last one of you either has it pre-ordered or is running straight to Best Buy after work/school. keke!! ^_^

Thanks, I'll pass. As far as I am concerned, that genre had its peak with "Little Computer People".

It's shipping today but won't be on store shelves until tomorrow (9/15) unless a store releases it early.

LCP 2004 is something I would buy.

Sims 2 ? If I want to watch retarded people who are to stupid to know when to use the bathroom and who fail to take shower at least once a day, there is always Reality TV.

I'll pass.

Perhaps the blatant sarcasm in my initial post was too hard to decipher...

There ought to be some people "playing" that crap. You are as good a guess as anybody else, my dear.

....right.

Anyway, I heard from a friend who used to work at Origin that they will be using the Sims 2 engine when they do the graphical overhaul for UO.  Now that's just sad.

I heard from someone on the sims 2 team that as of a month ago it was not ready and was being rushed out the door unfinished.  How much they managed to do in the last month is unknown.  I should ask him now if it is a piece of crap.  The problem is I don't really care.  All it means to me is I am bound to get some Sims 2 shirts next time my wife goes out to visit his wife.  He still had boxes of sims and sims expansion shirts he was trying to give away last time.

My fiance has been playing this the past few days and she seems genuinely impressed. As someone who was horribly sick of the original Sims she expected this to be more of the same, and was pleasantly surprised.

The whole "get X friends to make more money" system is gone, replaced by you choosing the general goals for each character, and those guiding their advancement. There's also random sub-goals, such as gain a skill point, that will increse your Sims "score", making them happier and opening up special personal items. The short term goals seem to keep the momentum going so that you're never left sitting there just waiting.

The house-building and landscaping controls have been refined quite a bit and the selection and quality of available items is decent. She spent about 2 hours just making her characters and decorating the house. She was pretty impressed that they even have you configure the makeup for each Sim. Sounds to me like Maxis spent some time warming up to their audience.

She's pretty opinionated about what she does and doesn't like, so I have a feeling this game is going to be as much a hit as Sims was, if not more. At very least, it will buy my days and days of uninterrupted gaming goodness as she is distracted. :D

Yes but would the graphics look good in Britannia?

Yeah, heh. All I have to say is this game kept me up from 2AM until 6AM. I hate you EA. Why must you make my sim want to fuck 3 chicks? IN PUBLIC NO LESS!

Evil. Very evil.

Review in process.

Heh. My fiance made the male Sim in her house a "Romantic" and now he has those same urges, including having sex in public with every female Sim he's met so far. I give them credit for correctly approximating what most men consider romance.

She also told me the cops pulled a Rodney King one a robber they caught in the house.

The social context is unending.

The engine is decent, but nothing I'd try to slap a 'real' game into. In the true spirit of the Sims, the engine doesn't seem to scale well to large volumes of objects on the screen. Although, maybe it was the fact my fiance's computer is behind the tech curve a bit. (GF3 64MB, 256 MB RAM)

Installed it the other day, tried it for about an hour and was as bored with it as the first one. I just can't get into games like these. Maybe the SimPlayboyTycoonEmpire game this fall will satisfy me in some way this "life simulation" game cannot.

The reviews that I've read so far have been raving about the game.  Scores are all very high.  I think it looks fun, and since I enjoyed the first one quite a bit, I'll be picking this one up soon - probably after I upgrade my rig in the next few weeks.

I have never installed, owned, or even demoed any version of The Sims.

Unless Little Computer People counts as make-up credit.

You may want to give it a try and get accustomed to it now. My spidey sense tells me Maxis will develop The Matrix, originally advertising it as The Sims Forever. After 88% of the population has concurred that Sim life is better than real life cerebral implants will be mandated by law and the migration will begin.

It will be a disoreinting first few weeks if you don't have some experience.

You'll shit yourself for sure, RKDN. Either that or set yourself on fire.

Oh my god...this somehow became a serious topic.

Get a hold of yourselves people...it's the Sims! I hear My Little Pony - Pretty Pony Adventures is shipping soon...

Really?! Well shit, now I have to find some spare cash...

Ditto. The concept of The Sims has always made me uncomfortable. I have no qualms about ordering simulated soldiers to their deaths, or slaughtering countless innocent bunnies with a fire sword/minigun, but the idea of telling some guy in t-shirt and jeans when to take a leak and who to make a pass at crosses some line in my head.

You people who talk smack about this game are missing out on a good gaming experience.  If you think playing The Sims somehow compromises your manhood, well, you've got issues!

Begrudgingly, I agree.  I'll probably buy it so that my fiancee and I can have a game that we both can enjoy playing.

I don't think it's about manhood or manliness, it's about fun.  Playing a knight in armor, a wizard, or even a poorly implemented Star Wars rebel provides a nice vehicle to escape[/i] the rigors of daily life.  It's the "in-your-face-this-isn't-real-setting" that makes the game a nice departure from real life.  Paying money to work, wash dishes, date, and mow the lawn online or on my computer just isn't the type of gaming escape that I am drawn to.  


Ok... I did play ATitD which some would argue is almost a job.  At least it was set in ancient Egypt.

I warezed the first Sims, and uninstalled it about 2 hours after trying it. That is not a game, it's a fucking pixel aquarium full of semi-realistic looking retards who piddle on the floor and talk with emotes. It's an ant farm with a sex drive. I'd rather watch webcams and masturbate than spend time nudging AI to feed itself while playing virtual Barbie's Malibu Beach House decoration.

What I don't get is the VH1 ads that show the Sims 2 and at the end says something like "VH1 and the Sims: A Perfect Match." Which product is this trying to market, the Sims 2 or VH1's neverending cavalcade of "Remember When People Gave a Shit about Members Only Jackets?" programs?

Or what he said...

My local EB doesn't get it in until tomorrow.  Damnit.

I know... I really thought it was going to be on shelves today.  They've been advertising "Sept 14th" as the release date when in reality that was the ship date.

I have too many games to play now... Fable, Sims 2, Madden NFL on the PC, and now too many MMOG betas...

Bruce

Tried it, found that it still had all the things that bugged me with the first one, unistalled it.

It was pretty and all, and it was even fun to build a house even though you still couldn't place anything near a diagonal wall, but the gameplay... oh the horror....

You can unload that pesky WoW beta account on me if you think it'd help at all. ;)

My stress test WoW beta hath ended.

Bruce

Things I learned from Sims 2:

Always cuddle before you woo woo.

I for one will be buying it once I'm satisfied it's not too buggy (aka, after you guys tell me it's not crashing everty minute).

Hasn't crashed yet. Of course, I got Fable so Sims 2 hasn't seen much light yet. But it did require DirectX 9.0c. Still trying to figure that out, particularly since Doom 3 didn't require it.

So did the Tribes:Vengance beta. Didn't have any obvious adverse effects on my computer at least.

Whether or not the Sims 2 is a good game, I found this (http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3134465) to be hilarious.  Most people's related stories about this game that I've seen so far tend to be, though.

So, I just picked up the Sims 2, but the manual doesn't answer a fundamental question for me.

Do Sims who move out of your house continue to age and have lives "off-screen"?  Or do they only age when you load them up?  Because I'm curious if I get married and have a kid and the kid moves out at say 18 if I play another 40 years and then my character dies, can I go play my kid at age 18 or will I go play him at age 58 where he already had grandkids and so on?

Bruce

That's a good question... I'm going to assume that you have to be playing a particular family/sim for them to advance.

(http://www.internetweekly.org/images/bubb_rubb.jpg)

Bubb Rubb can dig it.

Oh lord,  just when I had forgotten the horror... Why? WHY?!

I'm pretty sure only the sims that are living in the house that you currently have active age.

I had a kid in my house who aged into a teenager, and all of her friends who had been the same age as her did not turn into teenagers.

Only the Sims in the Active house age.  I bought the DVD version which comes with a bonus disk of interviews. They make a point of explaining in detail that they expect you to move around the neighbourhood playing various families in order to keep the ages similar.

Also, there are cheats to turn off aging if you don't want your sims to get old.

I'm enjoying it so far. Got me a slacker that works nights at a gas station and spends his days wooing the mail lady.  Damn was he pissed when the maid service sent over a freakin guy to clean the house though. His major want in life flips between woohoo and lunch meat sandwhiches.

His female roommate is now an executive assistant (she makes all the $) who spends her evenings trying to romance all the young ladies in town, which really seems to piss off thier boyfriends.  Her major wants seem to be getting up in time for work, and buying lawn ornaments.