I’m back! And Judgmental as ever for a new set of games! Today’s Victim – Sims 3

I want to get things rolling with this game that has been unfortunately holding my attention between college exams and the real world for a few days. I am talking about a game so pointless, yet addicting that it’s been hard to escape its grasps. *Drum roll* Sims 3! 

Yes I am ashamed to admit it, but this game has been catching my attention for the past week or so. Although its very far from calling it a serious relationship, there are many aspects of this game that are both annoying and strangely addicting at the same time. Its almost like having a spouse that annoys the crap out of you but you are too committed (ahem, in love) to just leave. 

Lets start with an overview of the game, its intended purposes and features. Then we will move on to my honest ruling based on the pros and cons. 

Overview:

The idea is that you create a sim family, you have a character creation screen and are encouraged to make a sim version of yourself. After the VERY long process of creating yourself you enter the game and into a home. From what I have been able to figure out the idea is just to live in a creepy, tiny simulation of real(ish) life and deal with how annoying you and those around you can be. Oh and also, not die. The game makes you interact with your character via something they call moodlets (pictured below).
This tells you that your ingame self is sleepy, hungry, cranky, smelly among many more possible  moodlets that are hard to keep up with. Don’t make the mistake I did and start out with a house full of sims (Created myself and my friends all in a loft to see what would happen) because you will be overwhelmed with the fact that you not only have to deal with all their needs, but you have to actually make them function in the sim-world in jobs and whatnot. It gets really stressful really quickly. 

Intended Purposes and Features:
The intended goal of the game as far as I can see, is to function in the sim society and not die along the way. There is also a lifetime wish that your sim has based on the personality you picked that is part of the achievement. Overall, the idea is to make it to your death with your wishes achieved. Spoiler: (everyone dies at the end). Leaves a pretty big gap in the gameplay, it allows you the flexibility to move around, but with all those moodlets, days go by before I can calm the moodlet-ragetrain happening to everyone. 

Like I mentioned before, they have a super time consuming sim customization screen where you can easily spend hours trying to get the sims chin to look just like yours. After you are done with that, you can create additional household members. This part is not too intuitive and once you create a household, you cannot go back and alter the sims. So be ready to sit at your character creation far beyond the 15 minutes (at most) that it takes you to create a character in WoW or GW2. After that you have to buy a home for them, usually some gunky home or a tiny trailer. Be wary of the space, if you got a full house things can go south quickly. Not much in the way of intuitiveness, the navigation and screen controls are pretty rough to get used to, and guidance is limited for the complexity of the UI. You have to Macgyver your way around this before you even get a grasp on what all that junk is for.  

It’s worth noting that the game itself is 30$ with a 10% off at amazon from time to time. But what they don’t tell you is if you plan on actually trying to enjoy yourself and not have a crap run of the mill house, you will need about a Gazillion expansion packs ranging from 20 bucks to 30 EACH. That tallys the game price to $Waytomuchmoneyformyliking. 

With all that dough, your better off not simming your life and just doing those things in real life. Real Sandwich vs Virtual Sim 3 Sandwich Expansion Pack Deluxe Edition. You pick. (I made that expansion up to prove my point, don’t go looking!). 

I’ve only played a few days, and after getting used to the UI I can see how some people lose hours of their life on it, but I have to say, there are other fish in the sea. I know you might not break up with this one, but she’s no good. If you stick around long enough in this game, you might even get virtually cheated on by a good for nothing computer generated sim slut. Just not my cup of tea. 

My rating and recommendations are as follows:

Rating: * * 1/2 Stars  — PAYOR = Play at your own risk.

If you are a simulator junkie and want to study hypothetical situations with you and all your RL friends then this game is a fun way to play around with that. If you are an adult with real life alternatives to to Sim-skating or Sim-Working, its best to stick to real life on this one. At least there you will get money and enjoyment instead of butt cramps (from sitting for so long) and some obscure Simolean currency. 

Extra Tidbits: 
Cheats are built into this game, virtually everyone cheats to get passed the annoying aspects of the game. You press Shift + Control + C and you will get a blue typing area, there you type in “Motherlode” and get yourself an instant 50k simoleans. There are a bunch more cheats to make this game a bit more bearable, they are built in so don’t really cause any harm. Link below to more cheats.

Sims 3 Cheats

Next Game up will be Guild Wars 2. I’m going to have a ton of fun with that one.

Special Report: The Stop Online Piracy Act

This is a big deal. This can affect the internet as we know it.Please download the small PDF and get to know what congress is trying to do. Pass along that PDF to everyone you know, on facebook, twitter, and through any social media. Everyone deserves to know what is going on. Also,  visit http://www.americancensorship.org to let your local congressperson know this is NOT OK.

Piece taken from the PDF:

“We, the people, need to rise up and remind this government who the 99% of this United States of America are. No amount of lobbying, bribery or thoughtlessness among the members of congress can muffle our freedoms. We are the United States, the government is appointed to keep our land fair, peaceful and prosperous. The lines are starting to blur and a turning point is among us. We are on the threshold of a change of the balance of power the government has over us.

Everyone, and I mean every single man, woman, and child need to join together and remind this government that We, the people, are the United States of America. Not them. Write letters, stories, books, paint pictures, complain, assemble, protest, and boycott, your feelings. Let the government be forced to turn their deaf ears our way and listen to the 99%.

Just as strongly as we love, would fight and care for our families and freedoms, we must rise together and make way for the dawn of change.”

>>>It’s_My_America_Too<<<

 

Download and read the PDF above and pass it on to all you know!

 

Minecraft Update (for pre-release 1.9 version 2)

This has happened to me before...

There are some new changes brewing for Minecraft and these changes have become noteworthy enough for me to change my rating on them. From the 7 I have to graduate Minecraft over to an 8. Maybe not so much on the pre-release content itself and more on the changes that the official 1.9 will bring.

There will finally be NPC’s in randomly generated NPC villages. Their appearance (at least on the pre-release) is questionable, but the idea brings joy to my pixelized world. The AI for the NPC’s is really my next major concern. Right now they behave like the typical passive cow or piggy might. But there’s lots of (long, long, LONG overdue) movement going on at Mojang with their official release and their first ever Minecon comes ever closer. They have released a version of the portable minecraft  (which I still need to check out) and they are scrambling to get everything to perform in a “non-beta” fashion. For those of you that want detailed information on everything thats going on with Minecraft and Mojang, the link is below.

Minecraft Updates

Stay on the lookout for more updates as new features are being implemented. Also, there will be dragons. Notch confirmed it via twitter a few days ago along with a very raw idea of what it will look like.See below for that.

Dragon!

 

Dragon flying over an NPC village.

Alice – Return to Madness (7 out of 10)

Creepy

This game had me following it around for quite a while. The idea seemed eerily interesting, the previous versions of the game were quite good and its pretty much up my alley. I watched all the trailers on youtube and honestly, I was hyped. In case you have not yet seen some of the trailers, I am going to link some below.

Trailer #1

Trailer #2

I loved the look and feel of the game. I love that industrial post apocalyptic feel. As I started playing, I was content. The killing tools were interesting and unique, everything looked creepy. After an hour into the game, I began to yawn. Once you get past the beginning, its all just rinse and repeat. You can argue that there are many great games out there that do the same, but honestly… A good beginning doesn’t constitute a good game. The weapons become repetitive the enemies no longer intimidate and the fights generally do not get harder. All they do is add more of the same mob over and over again, then it just gets the feel of a softer hack and slash. The jumping in the air tunnels is nice, but when they are everywhere it blends into the background of the entire game. Needless to say, I did not finish the game. It did not hold my interests long enough to do so.

What a beautiful view!

Overall, I think this game had the potential to really be something nice, somewhere along the lines of a more modern, morbid adventure game (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). Its just the past the beginning parts, the designers must have had some major creative blockage. So overall, I gave it a 7 out of 10 in my book. Its visually beautiful, the beginning is engaging and the idea behind it definitely has some appeal and potential. Maybe the 7 was just wishful thinking of what I hoped it would have been. Who knows?

Scene of the beautiful Alice from one of the trailers

Let me know what you all think below! Any games you’d like to see me cover? leave me a comment and I will be sure to check out and review!

 

Dead Island Review (5 out of 10)

Dead Island Logo

Sooo.. Dead Island had an…. interesting start here in the United States. This game was built up and marketed heavily for a few years before its release. The expectations were very high. If you lived in the US and managed to buy it on steam you might have noticed many things were just not quite right.

 

Why was I allowed to noclip through the entire map? Why were there a handful of quests that were bugged and made it unable to continue? Why is zombie AI so loony? Most notably, why were the zombies clipping through the floor and through things? The game was a wreak. The impression that they made was that of a disorganized, sloppy company. After hyping a game so much, there was a lot more to be expected then just a regular zombie slashing game with what can only be defined as slow, dragging, dumb AI. Some commonly seen videos on youtube the few weeks following the release was “Dead Island Glitch”.

Dead Island Glitches on G4

We all know zombies are not meant o be the brightest of the bunch. But some Zombies just stand there angrily starting at you or running into walls. Mind you, I am now talking about the second official release. The pathing on the people you need to follow for quests lines is horrible and very dumb (we all know about the German guy quest). Not to mention most if not all woman zombles are in bikinis? not one woman was clothed at the time they turned? Seems like laziness to me. After a few minutes into the game you get tired of killing the same exact zombles you just finished killing.

Typical Dead Island Ladyfriend...

I gave this game a meek 5 out of 10 just because of its ridiculous hype, its sloppy release and its anti-climatic official release. The game is alright. Its playable, but its nothing like it could have been. I do have to say the fact that we all didn’t start with guns was a nice twist and even later on after guns were available I found it preferable to to smash some heads with the modded items. I would have liked a bit more information on how some zombles are normal while others look like giant, pussing pimples and some look like the big guy below (maybe I wasn’t interested enough to listen). Overall, this game left something to be desired.

Random Ramming Zomble, makes sense in a resort setting...

What do you all think? Please leave some comments letting me know what you think, or what games you’d like to see me cover next.

An Ode to Star Wars Galaxies (SWG)

Star Wars Galaxies, An empire permanently divided as of Dec. 15,2011

Star Wars Galaxies was once a triple A MMO in my book. Before its combat upgrade patch or Pre-CU as many SWG players know it by, this game was in its prime. It had a great community, difficult but more or less fairly balanced content (after the final death change for the Jedi) and a very fun and active atmosphere with plenty of room for personalization, housing and growth. The visuals weren’t bad for its time either. This game was flourishing.

On April 27, 2005 the game marked its own early death.

It released The Combat Upgrade patch that changed the way the combat system worked completely. Needless to say cancellations rose. The downward spiral doesn’t end there. They later released a patch labeled “New Game Enhancements” which severely reduced the depth and complexity of the game.

Why would a game creator want to make LESS money? Why did they ignore the obvious cries for a backtrack? Why did their pride and ego get in the way of keeping and maintaining a profitable game that might have come to rival some of the big names today? No one really knows.

Sad days are coming, as LucasArts and SOE announced on June 24, 2011 that the game was going to officially come to an end on December 15,2011. Its hard to see such a big and once mighty game fall so hard. The cold, slap on the ground will resonate with all its old and loyal players.

They allowed for the existing SWG players to play their last few months for free and they are even holding a “Last Galactic Battle” to end the game with a bang. Talk about sad huh?

Link to the last battle information can be found HERE.

For those of you really saddened to see it go, it won’t save your character from its perma death but it might help ease the pain (not like SOE is doing).  There is a few teams out there working hard to reverse engineer SWG to its pre-CU stage and are even hosting fairly stable servers.

For more information see SWG emulator website.

With every end is a new beginning. Those at SOE and LucasArts are banking on that. There’s a new Star Wars game coming out, I have yet to bother to check it out to be honest, maybe if its worth it, I’ll do a review on it at a later date.

For now, SWG, I bid you adieu. Rest in peace, you will be missed.

Feel free to leave me a comment with your feelings about this game and let me know if there are any games you’d like to see me cover.

Minecraft: The Cubed Adventure (Rating 7 out of 10)

The Logo for the "Adventure Update" that is now chopped up into parts.

Cartoony version of the Minecraft team.

Game: Minecraft

Creators: Mojang and most notably Notch

Genre: MMORPG Sandbox Survival.

Currently: in Beta

Personal Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ (7 out of 10)

Ah, Minecraft, one of todays most popular indie games. Reaching just over the 3.5 million mark, this is a game that has skyrocketed in popularity and has a very strong following. Notch, the co-creator of Minecraft, is the face of this game. He makes himself somewhat accessible through twitter, his blog Word of Notch, Reddit, and through Mojang (the name of their company) website. This game is a very creative building game that allows the player to create their own quests or objectives based on their needs. There are no “get  20 pig butts and give them to the wizard on that hill” style quests. The game begins with you watching the sun rise over a cubed semi-randomly generated terrain. You are a survivor, stranded on a strange place. You must find food and shelter before the sun sets and green phallic creatures and the undead reign hell upon you. This is the jist of the game.

The square sun, rising on a new Minecraft day.

Now that we got some of the formalities out of the way, its time to get down to it. Minecraft is a game with great “Potential”. Its a very interesting concept that is tapping into quite possibly a new style for MMO’s (yes, Minecraft is a Sandbox MMO style RPG). Its nothing that has not been done before, Notch got his idea for Minecraft from a nearly identical but less popular game called Infiniminer. But its something new in itself and is a refreshing break from the death grind that is most of today’s leading MMO’s (*cough* Blizz) . Minecraft has a very and I mean VERY slow update and development style.  For the amount of money that they are getting ( at the moment, $21.00 USD per player) they should really make some sort of effort to produce what they promise to deliver.

It’s important to talk about the game as it is now, because this is what we as gamers have to work with. They have been hyping their 1.8 update for a long while now. Leaking information to gain the public interest, hyping it up in comments, posts and promised features and going so far as to have a small trailer playing on their youtube account. They delayed the update release at least two times, leaked an unfinished version to the public just to calm the waves of frustration. Now its finally out. After all the time and money they have gained, with the promise of a better, updated game…

What do we hyped up, gullible players get?

Mojang really went out of their way to add shiny new items...

We get to put pressure plates on fences to make something that resembles a table.Instead of creating a new item ID and putting one in (which I assure you all, is not difficult to do in terms of time and complexity) We get this. Its not all we get, but it is definitely a shining reflection of the kind of things they are doing instead of merely adding a new block into the game.

I love Minecraft as much as the next gamer, but I feel the company is slacking quite a bit, and as their release date comes ever closer, they need to deliver on the promises they made to the millions who have purchased the game based on this indie developers word.

Here’s a quick list of  some of the new features:

-You now have watermelon to eat and grow ( interesting).

Nuff said.

-You can no longer directly heal from food. Now the player just regenerates slowly at about a half heart every 5 seconds if their food meter is full.

-The brand spanking new overhauled terrain generator is obnoxious and buggy,  generating with many unnatural cuts and extreme terrain changes (from flat to mountainous without the slightest transition in many cases). The underground terrain generates with much more hollow ground making it somewhat difficult for those wanting underground forts to be able to build and expand without trouble. Did I mention that the new terrain generation features an excess amount of tree generation making it difficult and monotonous? Well now I did. Making a home is now something troublesome in survival mode because Notch has not put in any mechanisms for setting a home and returning to it. Now you build a home, wander deep into a cave and come out 500 blocks away disoriented with all the tall, practically unclimbable mountains blocking any and all landmarks leading to your home.

So yeah, my homes over this?

– The addition of randomly generated NPC villages (but wait!) with no NPC’s. The NPC’s were supposed to come with this update but were delayed and moved to the next patch. These Villages generate in extremely strange and sometimes uninhabitable ways.

-A new lighting system that emits warmer light from torches (they flicker).

-The addition of abandoned mineshaft. Pictures speak louder then words.

A Floating Mineshaft. Where did gravity go?

-Another change that made it into this patch is the addition of strongholds. Which currently only spawn 1 time per map and generate pretty much in the same way the Mineshafts do.

-The addition of new mobs as well. The Endermen, a tall dark figure that only comes out at night and steals blocks and attacks only when you look him in the eye.

Shown here, in the act of deconstructing your landscape.

The blue Spider, which is just a tiny poisonous version of the regular black spider commonly found in Minecraft. (just re-size, recolor and repost must me notches approach) and the silverfish, which is a small insect that can randomly attack you when mining stone blocks.

There’s a few more updated features you can check out HERE but I think I addressed the Major ones. With all that said, I think Minecraft is a good game, with plenty of potential, if and only if they get on the ball and organize themselves from within. With their Official release date coming, I have no idea how they are going to be able to pull off a complete looking game at their pace. But for better or for worse, that’s Minecraft. In the words of notch the next update will come ” eventually!”

Stay tuned for my next review (MIGHT be Dead Island) , and let me know if there are any games you’d like to see me to tear open in the comments below.

My First Post

Hello World!

This is a blog I made to indulge myself in active rants about new games, old game changes, bad updates, game breaking mechanics from all the different games we all know and (for better or for worse) love. The name of this blog itself talks about how I am going to slash, burn and vent out my comments and opinions on different games and their respective makers.

This will be my therapy. This can be yours too, as I love hearing others opinions and takes whether they agree or not. My first review is coming later today and will continue as the days go by since I have some pent up game-rage I need to disperse.

My controller's already shaking at the thought of this.