Spore Expansion Packs Announced

Ars Technica tells us that EA has confirmed two new expansion packs for Spore will be sold, one of them as early as November. The Creepy & Cute Parts Pack will provide players of both Spore and the Creature Creator 100 new parts to their game, while the expansion coming out next spring (Spring 2009) will allow you to leave your spaceship and explore the surfaces of worlds. It will also allow players to build and share customized missions.

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The Sims 2 Apartment Life Preorder Available

Apartment Life for The Sims 2 is on its way! You can preorder Apartment Life at Amazon for a whopping $49.99. Ouch! The Sims 2 website sells the digital download for $39.95 $29.95 (But, if you don't have XP installed, you can't use the download).

Here are some details from Amazon & The Sims 2 sites:

• Move into the perfect apartment: a spacious loft, a cozy place for a young couple, or a multi-bedroom flat-share with friends


• Mingle with Sims from all-new social groups: stylish socialites, artsy bohemians, sports jocks, gadget-collecting techies, or edgy gearheads


• Take advantage of apartment life: form social networks to make new friends, advance their careers, or look for love


• Build your Sim’s new reputation meter: with a good reputation, your Sim can find the right friends to help them achieve their goals


• Control multiple households: will you make your Sims live in happy harmony or comical conflict

You can check out some screenshots for Apartment Life in my flickr photostream. I really like the expansion packs for The Sims 2, way more than The Sims expansions. But with Medicine Man's bills and this pack being released on August 26th, I don't see how I'll be able to get it. Spore will be out September 7th and that will cost $50. Fifty here and fifty there adds up. I'd like to be slick and say I'm going to get it and report on it for you, but the reality is that this is just a site about my hobbies and things I find interesting, not a pro review site. I'm just not a big consumer and my household has a very low budget. Writing takes a long time to create and sell, and the money just isn't there.

If there's a major change for me between now and then I might get it. Each of the expansions added a new level of play to my game which I enjoy. But I don't remember any of them being $50. I actually started my expansion collection with The Sims 2 Pets and then got the others mostly because they were kind of cheap. I filled out my The Sims collection of expansions by buying them only last year when they were ten bucks for a couple. And The Sims 3 will be coming out next year.

Plus there's a few things I find odd about this expansion. Do we really need to be dividing people up into more groups? Bohemian (Whatever that is. Artist? I don't know too many "bohemians" in this day and age.), jocks--are there any jocks outside of high school? Isn't it hard enough to get out of bed if you're not a pro football player or pro basketball player? I don't know of any people my age really doing sports. Watching sports, sure. But watching sports doesn't make you a jock. Adults have to get jobs and they don't have time to play sports. Exercise is important and we all do it, but organized sports take time most people don't have. Does anyone really call people gearheads any more? That means they work on cars, right? They have to be working on older cars I guess because new cars won't let just anyone mess with them, they have to talk to computers or something to regulate themselves or whatever. Don't all people do little bits of these things? Why do we have to label people anyway?

Social networking was introduced with Nightlife. I don't know why they're rehashing it again. Your sim makes new contacts through other sims, and sometimes they get phonecalls from them. Done. If you want a deeper system, they put that in when they put in the secondary aspirations in FreeTime, and also in Open For Business as your businesses advance and you gain abilities. The reputation meter sounds interesting, but it's just one more meter to keep track of in a game full of meters. There's already meters for needs, for aspirations, for businesses, and for hobbies. Pets and kids have meters. I think even the garden vegetables have meters. And as for the last bullet point, can't you merge two households in the game already and control them both on the same lot?

I was kind of critical of this expansion in the first place because it has things that players have already made or just don't need, like spiral staircases and ceilings. But none of those bullet points or screenshots have convinced me that it's worth dropping $50 on. The economy's pretty tight right now. I say save your money for bread instead!

Update: After I wrote this post, I delved into The Sims 2 BBS to see what others had to say about Apartment Life. MaxoidDrea has a stickied post explaining that EA Games invited 7 of the most popular fansite webmasters to visit them in California and review this expansion. Here's a very nice review posted by The Sims Resource. There's a number of surprises in this expansion, including heating and cooling (if you have Seasons installed) and witches as the player creature. Still not enough to convince me to get it instead of Spore. The holidays aren't that far past September, though, and it's not like tons of great sim games come out on a regular basis, so I'll probably get it then, especially if it's cheaper.

Update Deux: A video of the witches!

Update Three: MaxoidDrea's thread was deleted due to "the flame war going on" in it, aka complaints about SecuROM. Maxoid_Hydra created a new one.

Update Four: Looks like the price on the digital download dropped by $10 in less than 24 hours?! Maybe the Amazon hard copy price will drop, too. One can only hope!

Update Five: Amazon now lists Apartment Life for $29.99. Hooray!

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The Sims 2 Apartment Life Screenshot Released

Update June 05, 2008 - Apartment Life will be released August 26, 2008. Preorder today! Looks like the creature will be a witch. Check out my flickr photostream for more screenshots!

MaxoidShannon has released a screenshot from Apartment Life for us to ogle:

"I was playing The Sims 2 Apartment Life the other day and thought you might like to see a sneak peak at some of the cool new objects. Check out the ceiling!!!"

The ceiling looks just like the one I see daily, so I admit, I'm not that worked up about it. But the painting and the mirror stand out as new, and I like the layout of the apartment. Since there's no gameplay in the screenshot, I can't guess about new interactions. I've been working on my own list of interactions that would make Apartment Life feel real. Some of them include:

• Mrs. Crumplebottom taping hostile notices to sims' doors and car windows.
• Packages being delivered to the wrong apartments. And never being returned.
  
• Dog do regularly appearing on the tiny patch of green you call a lawn--even if none of your neighbors have dogs.
• Werewolves really need to make an appearance in a big way because I can never make a flanking werewolf and it would be pretty cool to have one in my neighborhood--er, apartment.
  

Okay, that last one was just a gripe. But seriously, werewolves. Who doesn't love 'em? They're like giant puppies. Everyone loves puppies. Even Mrs. Crumplebottom loves them--for dinner. (You know, I think if I ever saw her really eat a puppy in the game, I would wet myself laughing.)

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The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion

Update June 05, 2008 - Apartment Life will be released August 26, 2008. Preorder today! Looks like the creature will be a witch. Check out my flickr photostream for more screenshots!

Looks like the next expansion pack for The Sims 2 will be Apartment Life according to MaxoidDrea at TheSims2.com - Forum BBS.

Here's a little video someone made that shows the teaser MaxoidDrea is talking about.

What will be included in this pack? Apartments, maybe? Ha, HA!

Update: Found some more info at Snooty Sims which gives clues as to what the expansion will deliver (excerpts from an EA survey):

The following is a list of features that may be included in a new apartment life themed expansion pack.
- Ability to move four single family households into one apartment building
- Asking your neighbors to baby-sit
- Different living experiences based on the surrounding communities impacted by rent and noise
- Experiencing living with an unruly roommate
- Owning a helicopter
- Learn to Breakdance
- Learn a new life skill: fire prevention

If it's anything like my apartment, the neighbors above will stomp and stumble repeatedly, play music that makes the stored glasses clink together, and vaccuum at 1am. Stay tuned!

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Freebie Friday - The Sims 2 - Shamrock Undies - SimPE Updated

For the upcoming holiday, I bring you Shamrock Undies for Adult Sims, a freebie from me to you once again hosted by the fine people at Mod the Sims 2.
Download it here.
Also, SimPE - The Sims 2 Package Editor has been updated for FreeTime. A brand new version, it's still in the alpha stage, but if you need to make changes in your game right now, you might want to give it a try. I unzombied my zombie sim with it. You can, too!

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Paladin's Place

No, it's not a kid's show--it's a GREAT place to get spiffy free content for The Sims 2. The URL is http://www.simwardrobe.com/ because of a remarkable program he'd made for The Sims that lets you easily change skins and bodies. Now it's chock full of fantastically useful tchotchkes for the Sims 2, my personal favorites being the robots and shelves.

BUT, the best thing he has up right now is his Predestined Hobby Adjuster (look under Sims 2> Objects> Other Objects), which lets you change a sim's favorite hobby with a few clicks. As far as I know, sims can still get a lot out of ANY hobby, whether it's the one they're suited for or not. But this might make it easier to max out that hobby enthusiasm.

(You also might want to check out Paladin's "Bigfoot in a Box". Yes, you. No, I'm not judging. Just sayin'.)


It's not what you think. Those are rainbows.

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Not Enough Free Time (Part 2)

Custom clothes...if you are talented.

Oh, the hobbies! Hobbies to make things, hobbies to break things, hobbies to get more skills! Hobbies to share things, hobbies to wear things, hobbies to pay them bills!

Sewing drapes & clothes in the game seemed really cool to me, so I worked hard on getting Vampira here enough badges to make clothes. She got up to her silver talent badge and has enough enthusiasm for sewing that she gets "in the zone"--a white glow that keeps her focused on her task by slowing her needs decay. As you can see, she learned to make this sexy dress. When you unlock the "custom clothes" ability on the sewing machine (by getting a silver badge), it lets you choose to make something from your custom clothing sets. After you make the clothes, they're in your inventory, and you can set them out and sell them in your OFB (Open for Business) shop or click on them & add them to your wardrobe, like Contessa Kana did. Stupendous!

Many of the hobbies seem like they will be profitable enough to make businesses out of them, if you have OFB. Although I'm not sure how much time I want to spend making drapes. A car lot for a tinkerer might be cool, though. I'll have to give that a shot next. Overall, this xpac seems focused on one main thing: slower decay of needs & friendships, two things that seem to aggravate most players when they want their sims to actually do something other than use the toilet (Yeah, I know The Sims was originally "The Toilet Game." That doesn't mean that's all I want them to do). The Best Friends Forever (BFF) feature, like "The Zone," keeps good friendships from decaying so you don't have to spend as much time on them. I'm not sure if this makes the game more or less realistic--do you spend less time with your true friends, or more time? Hmm...

Anyway, something I didn't mention the last time was that the head of the tinkerer's club, Mr. Humble, appears on your lots to give you a special gift. There are screenshots of this gift in my flickr slideshow for FreeTime--view them, if you dare!

Aside from the new items that are included in FreeTime (which I really enjoy, as I love new items), there are also some new features, like being able to modify the terrain of your neighborhood. They also added Advanced Neighborhood Options (a little house symbol with dots under it that appears middle-screen-ish on your neighborhood screen) that lets you connect neighborhoods from other xpacs. I haven't yet tried either of these features, but they sound pretty good on the surface. Still longing for the day when I can have a text search option for game items. Ah, well. Maybe they'll have it in The Sims 3.

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Not Enough FreeTime (Part 1)

Hobbies That Make Even a Vampire Smile

Years ago, when The Sims was still new, I made a sweet house in the game and filled it with sims. Then I put it on fast forward and let it run overnight. Just to see how they would survive. If you guessed "not well," you were right. I'm still not even sure what happened to some of them as their bodies were never found.

Since then, I've learned to be a lot kinder to my sims. I've come to realize that The Sims (in all its many forms) is a game you play, not an antfarm. If you keep that in mind, you can get a lot of enjoyment from The Sims. If you don't, you are destined to be disappointed. FreeTime packs a lot of enjoyment into $29.95 with just a little disappointment. It gives your sims more variety in their wants and interests, which makes it seem like they are thinking more for themselves. You still have to guide them along to satisfy their wants, but they want more and different things.

(Incidentally, since that FreeTime link above talks about EA's direct download of the game, I'd like to say that there are two things about the direct download not mentioned up front: The first is that you have to have XP or better to download it, and the second is that once the xpac you downloaded is installed, you have to be connected to the internet every time you start up The Sims 2 in order to play.)

Now, because I'm sure I'll probably miss something, I'd like to point out that there's a really good Prima Guide for FreeTime available. And you can read 13 pages of it for free online! Not too shabby. They list the new careers, objects, cheats, all that good stuff in detail. (By the way, I don't make any money from any of the links in this post. Any links are to things I sincerely find helpful.) If you're into free stuff, you can sign up on The Sims 2 message board and ask questions there, at a vibrant and helpful community.

Some of the new things in this pack that I really enjoy are the "Lifetime Aspiration scoring system" and the Secondary Aspirations. Basically you get different points now (in addition to the points you got before for aspiration rewards, like the money tree and such) but these are called "aspiration benefit points." They can give your sims new abilities like sleeping less or eating more or not having to empty their bladders as much. Fun! They can also negotiate for more pay or plead with the social worker if they have the points for it. What I did was take my family with the man-eating plant and give the husband the ability to attract more people to their house. I think if you guessed what would happen to my sims at the beginning this post, you can guess where I am going with this one. If you can't, just imagine that the guests grabbed for the cake and got it! Mmm, cake!


The hobby system is a great way to liven up the old skill ups that sims had to do to grow in their jobs. Now when they read a book, watch tv, or play, they're growing enthusiasm for their hobbies, which is fun. As they grow in enthusiasm in a hobby, they can go to secret lots, unlock new abilities, and even make new things for themselves or others. My only complaint is that right now, every time a sim gains some enthusiasm, they get a phone call from the leader of the hobby club, telling them something useless, like, "I see you gained some enthusiasm!" This==Phone ringing, ringing, ringing! Phone BAD! Hopefully this will change in a patch. Though, right now, you can just throw out your phones. Easy fix.

Some other nice things that are included are songs like "Pocket Full Of Sunshine" by Natasha Bedingfield, which sounds in Simlish (which sounds like mumbling) like, "Ooo, get a pocket get a pocket full of sunshee." I once had a pocket full of sunshee. But it got really soggy and the smell never came out. From now on, I carry my sunshee in the box it comes in. Charlotte Martin's "Keep Me in Your Pocket" is on the playlist, too, which makes for a whole lot of pockets and not much sunshee to go around. Truthfully, I seem to prefer the simlish versions to most of the real versions--the singers seem to put more oomf into them or something because there's no real meaning to get in the way--you place whatever meaning you want on each made-up word. What if real words were like that? We'd all be talking like the poem Jabberwocky. It would be so cool. But probably not much would get done.

(To Be Continued...)

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