Sunday, October 16, 2005

The Sims 2

This is going to be a long post. Well... I've had 'The Sims 2' for awhile, although for the longest time I wasn't able to play it. For the first few months I owned it, it would not work on any computers except for my dad's. That was fine, unless he wanted to use his computer. Or watch TV in his room. Or sleep. Or anything. So, there was renovations.

For months my dad struggled to get everything the stupid finicky game needed in order to work on this computer, and it finaly worked. It still wont work on my computer, but I'm just happy that I have it on this one. Now, if you don't know what the Sims 2 is, I'll try to explain it. It's a PC game, and it's like barbies for the people who are too old to play barbies without being scorned. You create people and families with the Body Shop, which is so advanced that Sims pass down their facial features and other genes to their children.

There are sliders for changing features, and lots of hairstyles and clothes to chose from. You even pick their personality, which creates their zodiac sign, and you also pick their aspiration in life. Like, will they be family oriented sims, or will they be focused on education, or are they popularity sims? It's up to the creator. When you're done, you can build a house or pick one of the premades, and then you add objects. There's different colors and styles, so you can actualy decorate. And when they're all moved in, you play.

They have stats you have to maintain (bladder, hunger, energy, act...) and relationship stats with other sims. They can get married, have children, and die. If their death comes too soon (house burned down, drowned, hit by a falling asteroid, ehatever) other family members can plead with the grim reaper for their loved one. Sometime, it works, sometimes, they die. And then sometimes, their ghosts pop out their graves and scare other sims out of their mind, after which they have the shrink visit them.

Seriously, that's not even one twentieth of the game, but I'm tired of this explaining thing. I recommend this game to ANYONE.

When my computer was fixed, I roared out of the starting gates by creating a ton of new families that I'd been wanting to make (based on characters I already had, and a few new ones). Veronaville is now populated by the Lioncourt family (the gay vampires x3) Lenwe (an elf based on Tolkien's Legolas) and a countless bachelors who I never got around to playing (some of which I know exist, but strangely never meet my other sims).

And, like I always do, I fell out of playing it. But lately I discovered Sims 2 downloads, which got my back to playing the game. Armed with more new clothes and colours than I know what to do with, I created a grand experiment. It's the Veronaville Housing Projects. It's build on the biggest lot in town, and there are actualy about six seperate house/apartments on the lot. Almost all the space is taken up with a public pool, barbeque areas, homes and public kitchens and whatnot. But the main thing is the people that go in it.

I love them muchly.



That's the group picture, for when the game is loading. Sorry the quality is horrible, I only found out a few minutes ago how to change the size and quality to high instead of medium. In the picture, the shy looking girl with brown hair is Becky, the watermellon girl is Gabby, The waving guy with the leather jacket is Gabby's new boyfriend, Davis, the dapper fellow with the cornrows and rather flower jacket is Julio, and the really, really black man is the landlord Eden and his daughter, May.


Eden.
Eden's got extremely dark skin and bright blue eyes so nobody can figure out what crazy nationality he is. He's kind and decent, and he doesn't mind if the rent is late and to be honest he doesn't even care if they pay rent at all. He tends to blend into the foreground and doesn't play a big part in the overall plot of the Houses.


May.
Eden's daughter. At one point she disappeared cmpletely from the family due to a glitch, but she came back eventually with a few days of school missed. She had to work extra hard for awhile to make up for it, and for days she was crying randomly about her D+ report cards. But she's generally a cheerful wittle girl who enjoys jumping on things and teasing Julio. Julio resents this, but would never be anything but friendly towards her.


Julio.
A stylish gentleman right from the random sim button of the Body Shop. I loved his appearence right away and had to base a character around him. His outfit is one of my favorite downloads. Although he's a little different from the other Sims in the Houses (he's gay, although he's having trouble finding a boyfriend right now) he seems to fit in really well. He's best friend is Davis and he loves to be the center of attention by playing the piano in the public living room, which everyone seems to enjoy. Don't tell the others, but I think he's my favorite.


Davis.
A romance sim to the very core, his fondest wish at the moment is to be in love with three sims at once. (three of his 'wants' are "be in love with 3 sims", "make out with 3 sims", and "woohoo with 3 sims"(the polite way of saying something else in the Sims 2)) I'm trying very hard to keep him from cheating on Gabby, but every time I turn my back he's inviting other girls over or trying win over Becky. He's a problem sim, that one. He's fine in the romance department but hopeless with everything else. He's always using Julio's fancy bath/shower because he can't keep his clean(much to Julio's occasional delight and Davis's accute embarrasment).



Gabby.
Gabby is a watermellon enthusiest. It's her style. She collects anything watermellon and when her birthday rolls around, you can bet that she's not a hard Sim to shop for. She's Becky's best friend, Davis's girlfriend, and can gossip up a storm. (Did you know, Julio burned a batch of omelettes this morning? Did you know, Marius was caught cheating on Lestat, who was cheating on his husband Louis, who was cheating with Marius? Le gasp!) She has a bad habit of early morning drinking.



Becky.
Shy, artistic, and hopeless with guys. She has a crush on Eden but doesn't want to change her freindly relationship with him, and can't seem to find a single guy who's interested in the things she likes. She spends a lot of time working in her studio, but she likes her Housemates a lot and will often get up early to cook breakfast for them. She's a fantastic cook as well as an artist. She confides everything in her best friend, Gabby, which is possibly not the best idea. Hopefully Gabby won't be loose with her secrets.


Well, now that was a huge post. Allow my to make it a little huger! Snippet based on a half-dream I had last night (those not quite dreams that float through your mind when your about to drift off)

Julio opened the door and leaned in the doorway. He was wearing nothing but his boxers, which were striped red and darker red and had the word LOVE repeating across the top border. Davis, who had knocked on Julio's door that morning, was pretending not to notice.
"I was wondering if I could borrow a bottle of shampoo," he asked, and added, "I'm going to the store later," by way of explanation.
"Sure," Julio said in his disconcerting, vaugely femenine voice. "What kind do you want?"
Davis shrugged.
"I don't know. The kind that smells good?"
Julio stared at him for a long moment before saying, "Please tell me you're kidding. Really, Davis, do you just use anything that says "shampoo" on the label? How do you keep your hair so nice if you treat it like that?"
"I don't have to take this. I'll ask Gabby, at least I know her shampoo will smell like watermellon." He started to walk away, but Julio stopped him.
"Wait, wait. I'll get you some. I'll be right back."
He went into the house and emerged a minute later with a bottle of golden colored shampoo. He tossed it to Davis and said, "It's for preventing dandruff and split ends, but dont worry, it also smells like dandallions. Enjoy."

And I'd just like to clarify that a lot of Sims 2 is playing pretend. Half the time when I'm playing, I'm seeing things go on in my head that aren't happening in the game. Like, say, my Sim walks into the backyard and on the way passes the maid. In my mind, I see him say, "Almost finished?" and she says, "Yep, I'll be out of your hair soon." And my sim says, "No worries, you're not bothering me. I was just wondering." and then goes on his way. While actually, none of that exchange really took place. Sims speak in Simish anyways, which is fancy talk for giberish.

To sum it up, Sims is better if you have a bit of imagination, but it's not required. ~_^

btw, HTML SVCKS! >_> This took almost an hour of fromatting and reformating and putting spaces back were they were mysteriously deleted, not to mention wondering why the first round completely butchered it into some like frankenstein coding. It didn't work, of course. I just dont now how it got big, uneffective CAP LOCK codes out of my perfect html. It's enough to drive me crazy.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey I just discovered your site and you write so well! (much much better than me and I'm twice your age! yikes! How did that happen?) I soo remember being 15 it was such a hard time. It gets better I promise! So I just had to confess I'm hopelessly addicted to SIMS too! We couldnt' get the version 2 to work on our computer either, well, it worked sort of, but unless you didn't mind not having a head or a roof to put over your non-headed sims then it didn't work! I seriously would spend hours on sims, neglecting my kids and hubby and creating fantastic houses and complex relationships only to tear them down later. My favorite sim (luna pagan) just won't be nice to the other sims, I've tried everything, but she's a snob. So no one calls the house, and no matter how long she talks, people are always glacing at their watches and dying for an appropriate moment to dash away. She spends most of her time crying and waving at me to "for god's sake, give me some social interaction" (I force her back into her garden) well enough out of me, just really enjoyed reading your blog!

Sarah

4:41 AM  
Blogger Vienna said...

Lol, your sim sounds like me! x3 I'm familier with the Sims addiction. Like, sometimes, I'm playing and realize that I was supposed to be out the door ten minutes ago. It's hypnotic, I swear. @_@

12:37 PM  

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