Since picking up the PS3 a year and a half ago, I have been playing a lot less PC games than I used to. I think it’s several things: for starters, console games look amazingly good on a Plasma TV, and playing games in a living room with a large sofa turns it into a more social activity than possible in front of a PC monitor.
That said, there’re still a few PC games I follow, and usually of the strategy or simulation sort. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in the last couple of weeks on Elven Legacy (a turn-based fantasy war game), Restaurant Empire 2 which I blogged recently, and just a week ago – The Sims 3.
I played the first 10 years ago and was hooked quickly. It’s several games in one: it’s a glorified Tamagotchi, a role-playing game, and the aspect I enjoy the most – a house builder.
The series is quite a money spinner for publisher Electronic Arts: the first game in the series released in 2000, and went on to sell an ungodly number of 6.3 million copies in just barely 2 years.
The series is so successful that each iteration also sells a huge number of expansion packs released for it. Pundits call it EA’s way of mining the series for all the money it’s worth, but each pack sells a lot of copies and adds even more content to the game. There’s been expansion packs to bring your Sims out for vacations, night life and to school. There’re also expansions that let you own pets, run your own businesses, and even own Ikea furniture (!).
The newest iteration of the series is a mixed bag though. On the one hand, the new experience of being able to seamlessly transit from your home to community locations has eliminated the start-stop game play from the earlier iterations. Your Sims now also need to respond to biological needs less frequently. Ok, so we go to the loo every 2-3 hours in real life, but I don’t necessarily want that simulated in-game LOL. I like the changes to careers too: your can get salary increments now, depending on how far along you progress each day at work. You also get career opportunities, some of which will allow you to change career tracks altogether.
On the down side: the game doesn’t feel as all as it could had been. Specifically, the changes from The Sims 2 to 3 seem ultimately, well, marginal. Graphically it looks like the last game, except with shadows. And while the ability to color-change various furniture items in game is nice, the range of items pre-packaged in the box are less than before. Specifically, I miss my piano – a main-stay item from the first two games. Every home I constructed had one.
More seriously though is that with the new game, you’re gonna have to plonk down all your money to get the content again that’s coming in the inevitable expansion packs for The Sims 3. Heck – I wished it’d be possible to import content from the old expansions into the new one! Yeah – fat hope.
My main Sim right now is a World Renown Surgeon that earns §1.8K per hour, works 5 hours a day, just four days a week, makes about §9K per work-day, and has more money than he knows what to do with.
Now, if life was only that easy LOL.
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