My plan worked, you know. I burned out on the Sims. I play it once a week now, if that, and only for an hour or so. But it didn't have to be this way. I blame Hot Date, the newest expansion pack for Macs.
See, it's a lot harder to make and keep friends now. I mean a lot. The interactions are much more complicated. The rules changed. The game designers made it more like real life. If I wanted real life I wouldn't buy a game, I'd go outside. Honestly, the supposed improvements have ruined it. I could go back and just play the older version, and in fact I tried that for a while, but all the best clothes and objects are coded for the latest version.
It makes me kind of sad to play now. I don't like the Downtown area at all because if you have one Sim invite another Sim to go Downtown, you only control the inviting Sim. You can't send the guest off to the bathroom when they gotta go, you have to instruct your Sim to visit the public restrooms and hope the guest follows you and knows what to do. Half the time they don't. There are all sorts of Non Player Characters there who get in the way and take up your Sim's time while their guest is just languishing there begging to be entertained. You can buy stuff, big deal. You can eat a meal, but it takes forever and you have to keep an eagle eye on the topics and change them once in a while because now, god forbid, Sims don't figure out how to chat with each other on their own. Oh, and they don't like repeated actions. So you can't work up friendship points by telling four jokes in a row, or dancing with someone over and over. Plus the gossip option? Hate it.
None of my Sims have been in the mood for sex since I got the expansion pack. Everyone's so much fussier. It's like a group therapy session: "What about my needs?" I try, I really do, to work with the new options. I worked out pairings of housemates that would naturally like each other, so within a house things usually go well. But since advancing in a job requires an increasing number of friends I have stopped bothering with making my Sims get jobs. They can't make friends or keep them when they've got all their free time to devote to it, why would I jeopardize their friendship points by reducing the time limits for social interactions?
Don't even get me started on the bear. That freaking bear. Who thought that was a good idea?
So yeah, I'm very close to being over the Sims. I start the game and I play for a while, but my heart isn't in it any more. No matter how pretty and cleverly constructed the houses are it isn't very interesting if the Sims themselves aren't terribly amusing. It's too bad, it really is. I guess it's just as well, though. I'm pretty busy at work these days, and I don't have a lot of free time at night for the next four months.
I miss the good old days of House Party. Now I'll never find out what the top level of the Paranormal track is.
The Index
Next Incarnation