Sims 3

It's the world's worst kept secret that I'm no gamer. I don't "get" the appeal of the vast majority of games. I can count on my fingers the games I've enjoyed IN MY LIFE. Besides which, I really don't have time (actually that's why I never get skilled enough to enjoy anything. 30 minutes of Lego Indiana Jones on XBox and I was so frustrated I threw the controller across the room never to touch it again). So a gamer, I am not. But according to my boys, I am. Because there's ONE game I love, and that's Sims.

Sims 3 is the best of the bunch (won't be buying Sims 4, thank you) and gives me great entertainment in all the wrong ways, because it allows me to be completely warped and cause mayhem.

I hope you can click on that to see a larger version, as it's a bit dark. But essentially what happened there was that I had a neighbour who was dressed like Marilyn Manson (despite being a bedpan cleaner by profession, he's in his pink scrubs there) and thought he was all that and a bit more, so I set fire to his gazebo.

I know you shoot aliens and blow up far more, but you're SUPPOSED to be doing that, so it doesn't count.

The world is divided between those who love Sims and those who wouldn't play it if it were the last game on Earth, and that's fine, I'm not trying to recruit anyone *rolls eyes at FB game proselytizers* but I needed somewhere public to list my wishlist.

There are some things that bug me.

1. Sims should be capable of carrying more than one newspaper at a time. They can drive cars, paint portraits, repair computers, and some can even FLY. But if there are two old newspapers lying on the ground, they take two trips to the garbage.

2. It would much funnier if they fell off things, such as balconies, if there were no railings around them. Even crawling babies balk at the edge.

3. EA Games dropped the ball with its multi-cultural Sims. It IS possible to create Sims who are obviously of African or Asian origin, but none of the automatic/in-game Sims look authentic to their race. They are just dark-skinned Europeans. It's almost offensive.

4. Talking of faces, when amateur creators submit "celebrity" Sims to sites like The Sims Resource, they should not be allowed to name them. If you can't recognize them, they're no damn good and that's the end of it. Thankfully somebody made a convincing Johnny Depp. I have him chained up in my basement.

5. This list is unfinished and will be edited as I think of things.

Anyway, my main reason for posting this today is that I just found some really interesting creations on an urban decay theme, e.g. broken down old factories, railway arches etc., by an incredibly talented artist, all available for free at TSR. If you are a fan and this sounds appealing, you can find it all here:

http://www.thesimsresource.com/artists/Cyclonesue/

(You'll need to register but it's all free)

Oh, by the way. I'm getting my own back on my ISP. As they've throttled me to KB/sec, I am downloading the next Sims expansion pack. It's taken 36 hours so far and I'm only at 70%, but at least it's not coming off next month's bandwidth.........



EDIT: 1 Dec 2014. I caved. I bought Sims 4. It was half price on Cyber Monday.