Sims 3

Sims 3: Horse Adoption Addiction #Sims3

stargrace November 8, 2012 No Comments

Thanks to some chatter yesterday in twitter I was feeling in a Sims 3 mood, not that it takes much for me to feel like playing, there’s just something incredibly appealing about that game. Thanks to an EA sale a bit ago I picked up two extra ‘stuff’ packs for free. I’m still missing a lot of expansions but they release them so frequently that I find it incredibly hard to keep up. I have no interest in showtime or whatever the magic one was called. I do want to pick up seasons when it releases in four days.

I started over with a fresh install recently, so my little sim moved into her $15,999 house (fully furnished) and began looking for a job. I placed her as a mundane newspaper girl, and then began browsing the newspaper for a pet to adopt.

I’ve adopted animals before. I have bad luck with them. My dog died almost as soon as I adopted it. My cat also mysteriously died while my sim was making out with some guy in her living room. The guy witnessed the death, got freaked out (because death was literally standing in my living room while we were trying to smooch) and then I never saw him again.

This time around I decided to adopt a horse. Why not! How much work could it possibly be!

Oy. First things first. If you have a small lot, like I do, you’ll want to make sure you have room to purchase a box stall for it. This takes up a huge amount of property. I re-sized (ie: removed) my deck in order to make it fit. The horse I bought was a foal, which means I needed to bottle feed it every time it was hungry. Too young to feed on its own. My bond with Ariel quickly grew, and in a few days she turned from foal to horse. She is currently untrained, so between working my job delivering newspapers, working on my meager art skill, and trying to cram cooking and writing into my daily chores, I took her out riding.

Who needs a car! You and your horse can fly through the town, the wind whipping through your hair. Problem is after riding for a bit you’ll gain the ‘sore bottom’ moodlet.

You gain skill while riding, and eventually you can even enter contests. You need rank 3 in riding before you can. I’m rank 2 so far. It really feels like there just isn’t enough hours in the day to do everything I want, and that’s both good and bad. Bad because my sim hasn’t even met another human being outside of work yet, she spends all of her time with her horse. Good because there’s SO MUCH to do. It keeps things nice and interesting.

I’m glad I adopted the horse, now I want to try to find a good partner for her and breed them. That’s right, horses even have family trees.

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

The Grim Reaper Stole My Dog #Sims3

stargrace July 25, 2012 2 Comments

I’m a fan of games like EVE Online, Guild Wars (and Guild Wars 2) and even World of Warcraft – but some times I just like to relax and play by myself without having to deal with anyone. For this, I have been a long time fan of the Sims franchise. Sims 3 is a LOT of fun, there’s so much to do, build, and see. I own quite a few of the expansions they put out but there are so many now that it’s hard to keep up, especially on top of any MMO I may be playing.

Still, since I reformatted my PC I had a clean slate, and reinstalled my Sims 3 game, dedicating a few hours to it last night. The last expansion I picked up was the Pets one, and I hadn’t gotten very far with it.

I spent my Sim day in a typical fashion. Became a self employed writer, rummaged through some garbage cans in the neighbourhood (even found an uncommon seed), and tried to get one of the (many) wild horses roaming around to befriend me. Most of them shied away. Eventually I decided I should adopt a dog, and I picked out a great one.

‘Stone’ was his name, and he was a genius. Except two minutes after our introduction the grim reaper paid me a visit and killed my dog! I didn’t even have time to purchase a dog bowl or bed for Stone before he was an urn on my living room floor. GAH.

I gave my sim the appropriate 2 days to mourn, placing Stone’s grave outside in the yard. It’s a cute little dog bone. That night I was visited by ghost Stone, who fell asleep at the end of my bed. A bit creepy, but that’s alright. Once the two days had passed I adopted a second dog, this one named ‘Taylor’. Hopefully she lasts a bit longer. At least I had time to take her for a walk (pictured above). I bet it would make a great country song.

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

Come Along Little Doggy #TS3Pets

stargrace October 19, 2011 No Comments

Yesterday was the release of The Sims 3 Pets expansion, highly anticipated by all lovers of Sims and pets. I bought the digital version from EA, and downloaded it without any hassle at all via their Origin program. I even received two codes, one for a free “stuff” pack and another for some skins. For registering the game on the Sims 3 web site I also received some IAMS pet kits and some space-like pet beds. It was a good deal all around.

Believe it or not my biggest excitement didn’t come from any of the pet related things initially, but from the fact that EA had FINALLY fixed the photography bug. This broke with their latest ‘stuff’ addition, and rendered the skill useless. Photography plays quite a large role in the Sims, so having it back was important to me. Once I had gotten over that little excitement I decided it was time to adopt a new pet for my home.

Players have multiple methods of obtaining pets, which I really appreciate. You can adopt one from a shelter or find out if anyone in your neighbourhood has one up for adoption. The three basics are cats, dogs, and horses. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and even ages. You can adopt an older dog with their traits already defined, or a young puppy. You can keep their given name, or choose to name them yourself. Each pet comes with a memory book of their life, and their first ‘memory’ is of being adopted by you, their wonderful owner. There’s a huge selection of interactions available for Sims to take advantage of and not only can you interact with the pet, but because technically they are a member of your family (much like a child would be) you (the player) can control the pet and decide what they are going to do. There are some really amusing options for both the pet and the owner. Your pet will also start to adapt to your actions, for example if you praise them for grooming themselves they may adopt the neatness trait. Right now my dog has the lazy trait, go figure. It means when I take him for a walk (such as in the screen shot above) he runs out of energy really quickly.

A bunch of new lots also came with this expansion, dog parks and places to ride your horse. Of course players also get all of the typical animal goodies, scratching posts, food dishes, and litter boxes as well as some fancier items. So far I’m having a lot of fun playing this expansion, I think it’s quite well done and really appeals to a large audience. I’m not sure if you can take your pet abroad yet, but if you can I think that will be a lot of fun. I don’t use any mods at all in the game and I haven’t come across any glitches since yesterday, but the forums had a few complaints such as spiral staircases not working. Hopefully EA is a bit quicker about updating their bug squash list now that the expansion is live, but I wouldn’t really hold my breath.

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