July 2014

The Legacy Continues

Screenshot-42

I had to reformat my computer when I moved – not once, not even twice, but THREE times. This meant that all my hard earned progress on my legacy family in the sims 3 was lost, multiple times. Since I adore this game of course I just picked myself right back up and started over, again (this time with backups).

Jessica Little is my founder sim, and she decided that the straight and narrow life was just not for her, so her profession is a thief. It works well with her kleptomaniac behaviour. Right now her rank is ‘decoy’ – and she has already been thrown in jail. Her job profession enabled her to meet MD – a police officer. It was love at first sight, and the two got married before their first date was over. Hey, when you’re in love, you’re in love.

Jessica gave birth to little Tristan, who is about to turn two years old. Their house is also compromised of Llia, their cat, Mr. Boots, their dog, and Daisy, their horse. Animals lovers? You don’t say.

They were getting pretty low on money, Jessica’s job doesn’t exactly pay that well and MD had just joined the family when low and behold an enormous amount of good luck befell them – they won the lotto for $50,000. This went a LONG way in upgrading their home, and it was a lot of fun. Normally my legacy families have so little cash that their home is a shack for much of their lives. It was a lot of fun to be able to purchase some opulent belongings.

Of course the day wouldn’t been complete without a Feast Party (the Sims world version of Halloween) and someone falling asleep on the floor..

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Crazy Cat Lady

Untitled

Even though there are never enough hours in the day to play all of the games that I’m interested in, I have kept up with WoW. I know, how on earth can I be a fan of more than one game at a time, right? Well, if you have followed my blog for the past 7 years or so, you’ll see just how possible it is. This weekend I decided to work on my pet collection a bit, and finally earned the title pictured in the screenshot above, “the crazy cat lady”. A fine representation of me in real life, even though at this exact moment I don’t own any cats. I found a crafter created one on the AH for a handful of gold and decided to pick it up – unaware of the fact that it was the last one I needed for the achievement (that means I already had 19 of the 20 required).

I also spent some time doing older raids that I had not earned the achievements for yet. I have no idea how I missed Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern, but apparently I had, so I went back and finished them off. It was a nice relaxing weekend, stress free, doing one of the things I really enjoy (gaming).

I still haven’t finished my legendary cloak yet, but I’m on the runestone collection portion of it, and I have 4/12 of the drops required. I need raids to re-set on Tuesday in order to earn any more, and while I was hoping that I would be able to obtain 6 this week and 6 next week it’s more likely that I’ll earn another 4 next week and my final 4 the week after. Still, it’s better late than never.

I’m still finding all sorts of things to do in game that I haven’t done  yet. I did finally complete the ‘Now I am the Master’ achievement which means I finished training Nomi to be a chef. I have also been working on the brawler achievements, so far I’m only rank 4 but that granted me access to yet another battle pet. That doesn’t even begin to touch on my alts, who have sat neglected while I try to divide my time. Need more hours in a day, as always!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Create a Sim Demo

The-Sims-4-02

EA was kind enough to send me an invite to try out the Create a Sim Demo for The Sims 4. I was incredibly excited. Not only have I been following the game since it was announced, but I have been a huge sims 3 fan for years (and years). I ended up streaming it on my twitch channel, but for some reason my microphone was on mute or not working, so even though I spent a glorious 30 minutes squealing and chattering about everything, you’ll have to be content with the game music.

Stream located here

Right now you’re only able to create young adults (male and female), and while I DID enjoy creating sims, I REALLY wanted to play the game.

Anyway. There’s no real tutorial in the demo, but that didn’t stop me from exploring. Everything is very intuitive and easy to figure out but I did have a few issues with a lack of options. Men get fewer options than females, at least in the demo. I didn’t particularly care for many of the items that were options for either sex (clothing, shoes, accessories), but I did really like the enormous possibilities in character creation as far as body / hair / eyes go. I also found attributes were severely lacking but because this is just a demo, I don’t expect to find everything there.

Having 7 different styles of walk is neat, but I’m sad that it came at an expense (losing toddlers and pools for now at least).

You can adjust everything. I mean, everything. Just click on a body part and you can zoom in and drag any body part any which way. There are also some traditional sliders if that is more your thing. Once you have created a family you’re able to upload it into their gigantic database, complete with hashtags. There are categories for different types of sims, like celebrities, and you can go through and import other sims from the gallery or add yours to the collection.

I found the demo fun, but again it just made me want to play the game, and I lamented over the fact that if you’re coming from a game like Sims 3 where there have been numerous expansions and ‘stuff’ packs, you may find the options available slightly lacking. You may want to wait a few months for the game to get a little more robust (and perhaps go on sale) before investing, and keep playing Sims 3 in the mean time.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Stylin’ Chua

Chobit.140702.193917

I made some time to game a bit this week, and finally inched my way to level 21 in WildStar. I was having some issues grasping the combat style of the esper, but then realized that it was because of where I had spent my AMP and skill points, so I looked up a guide and created a second spec. Things are going MUCH smoother now, though I am missing a lot of AMP that would make life easier – they’re just way too expensive. I think the cheapest T2 AMP I saw on the CX was 5 plat and the most expensive over 50. At 21 I’m just nearing my first plat, I may have a bit more but well, housing and crafting are not cheap businesses.

I haven’t purchased a mount yet because I’m waiting to get 25, but I haven’t found it that much of a hindrance at all. Sure, I run a bit slower, but quest hubs are pretty close together. The cost of reviving at the fight spawn has gone up drastically, so I tend to run back these days.

I looted a few neat fabkits, but I also craft them since I’m an architect. I haven’t tried to sell any of these on the market yet, but I may in time if there is any market for it, I suppose we’ll just have to see.

All in all, I’m having a LOT of fun. More than I thought I would. I even nosed my way into some PvP earlier in the week. Lost one match and won the second. I’m not very good at it (imo), but I had a lot of fun and I tried my best to help the team out. I’ll probably need another spec for that, too.

I know the game is not for everyone, but for me at least WildStar is filling that themepark void since I don’t currently play World of Warcraft (I’ll wait for the expansion more than likely). A good portion of my friends are also playing though not everyone is, and it is nice to see an active guild chat in the evenings (though I tend to play EU time, and things are much more subdued then).

The hardest part, of course, is finding the time! There are just not enough hours in the day.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Steam Sales and New Games

2014-06-29_00004I haven’t had a reason to purchase very many steam games lately, I just haven’t had the time to play. That changed slightly with this past sale though. One of the best gifts I got was “You need a Budget 4” – the flash sale marked this app down to $15, a huge deal considering regular price is $60. I had already used the 7 day trial and knew that this app is wonderful for keeping on track with budgeting. In school I never really learned how to budget, or what money should be going towards. While I’m lucky enough to have a fantastic job that may not always be the case and I want to be prepared for whatever life tosses my way. Because I’m such a fan of lists and charts and graphs, this app is perfect for me. Teaches me to assign every dollar a purpose, and then helps me keep on track, with some room for changes so I don’t feel restrictive. Highly recommended.

The next game I got was Edge of Space, which is a lot like terraria, but in space. I found the font a bit difficult on the eyes, and the tutorial was more confusing than it needed to be, but the game is still in development, so there’s room for them to improve. It’s also a lot more difficult than terraria, or so I found.

Of course a steam sale wouldn’t be complete without goat simulator, which was also gifted to me. This game looked hilarious but I’ll be honest, I had absolutely no intentions of purchasing it (or even adding it to my wishlist). I noticed that a lot of my friends had picked up the game (for reasons I couldn’t fathom) and bam, there it was in my inventory.

Finally, the talk of the town lately, Divinity: Original Sin. An RPG that has solo and multiplayer hosted on steam servers, I was incredibly surprised by how much FUN this game has been so far. The story is great, and while playing with a friend I had a blast doing rock / paper / scissor fights in order to see which way an argument would sway. The game also comes with an RPG toolkit, so if you would rather create adventures instead of play through them, have at it.

Did you pick up any games this steam sale? Let me know in comments below!

Nomadic Gamer