The Sims 4 recently spawned infants into its life sim sandbox via a free update, and the substantial Growing Together expansion. At launch, Sims would go from nascent babies to walking, talking kids, skipping the infant years that teach them, for example, how to talk in Simlish, although that does sound like baby talk too. The new expansion adds a lot to Sim’s life stages, but the real show stealer here is a pesky bug that elongates babies. Yes, you read that correctly.
]]>Jingle that pointless metal money over here, little human. You need a place to put all that ridiculous cash, and I know just the thing. Vending machines. They are like regular shops except imagine your Mars bar didn't leave the shop assistant's hand and you had to slap their arm to loosen it free and afterwards they just smiled at you as if nothing was amiss with vacant eyes like two pilot lights and a tin voice like someone speaking through an office intercom which suddenly erupts with high decibel hatred: "WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS OF VALUE".
Here are the 9 best vending machines in PC games. Have a good day.
]]>Happy Birthday the 'The Sims' series! You’re 20 years old today, which means you’re finally old enough to throw an old boot full of soup right at a cop’s head, and be totally immune to prosecution (seriously, it’s true! If you didn’t know about that lil trick, you should try it). You’re also old enough, apparently, to have released an unfeasible number of spinoffs, ports, add-ons and DLC packs over the years: I just checked out your wikipedia page to remind myself how many games had been released under the name, and had to have a little shout because I was so surprised.
I never really played you much, if I’m honest. I had some fun with your original instalment in 2000, but the only thing I remember doing is making a bloke called something like “Pete Strongman” or “Grief Wellington” or whatever, who lived in a grey cube just large enough for him to lift weights in 24 hours a day, while occasionally bursting into fits of racking sobs, or thinking about the army. Now I think about it, I basically delivered the definitive roast on incel culture, years ahead of time. Anyway, even though my only experience of the series was unwittingly creating Jordan Peterson’s soul 20 years ago, here I come with 10 ideas - one for every two years of your beautiful life - for what form the much-discussed Sims 5 should take.
]]>A year ago or so, I re-downloaded The Sims. My partner and I wanted a low-effort game to play together, and I introduced them to the life-changing videogame craze: “Make yourself in The Sims and live the life you’ve always wanted!!!” We made ourselves, built a beautiful little home, and adopted a cat. I became a professional writer or something, and they went into the “Music Industry.” We sputtered and blustered when our Sims declared to us, through the magic of in-game whims, that they wanted to get married. I quickly red-X ousted those desires from our Sims’ minds. Instead of acknowledging their desire for wedding bells, I had our Sims adopt a dog. That sinking feeling remained, however, and much like the incisive qualities of predictive text and pre-cog algorithms, I began to question how serious our relationship was. Let me repeat: The Sims made me reevaluate the seriousness of my very happy and committed long term relationship with its terrifying-yet-compelling simulacra. Y’all. This game is haunted.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
In some respects, if you've played one The Sims game you've played them all. They're all about building a house, populating it with people, making those people look like your friends, and making your friends kiss one another. It's just that The Sims 3 got the formula closest to perfection.
]]>Note - this was originally published a month ago as part of the RPS Supporter program, hence the reference to our now-finished Survival Week.
It's Survival Week here at RPS, so I decided that I'd write about my earliest experiences with The Sims, a survival game like no other. Left to their own devices, Sims are just about smart enough to struggle through life but they're not quite intelligent enough to live. They need to be coaxed into improving their lot, and influenced by the click and the cursor. Without either clicks or cursors, I first encountered The Sims when I was struggling to build my own place in the world. Let's take a trip down the memory cul-de-sac.
]]>Far in the distance, a tiny speck appears on the grassy horizon. You can't quite make it out - it could be anything, but it is moving. It is moving towards you, faster and faster now - you can make out a person's features. It is a brunette with a bubblegum pink streak in her hair, and dark black square-rimmed glasses. She is wonderfully beautiful; just a dream. Like how you imagine Kristen Bell would be if she had brown hair and the build of an Amazon that had let herself go a bit and was about five years younger. So not that much like Kristen Bell but JUST ENOUGH. She is running, running, getting closer and closer - she is almost here, with an exhausted look on her face.
"RPS!" she says. "RPS! I bring NEWS! THERE ARE GOING TO BE SIMS 3 EXPANSION PACKS!" She coughs and splutters with the effort. "That's right! The Sims 3 Into the Future and The Sims 3 Movie Stuff!" she says, stopping when she sees your frankly quite disappointed face. "I am not good at this news thing," she sighs.
]]>EA's recently-announced The Sims 4 may in fact be a new Sims game, sources have revealed to RPS.
The source, who did not wished to be named but who purports to have strong ties to the press release-reading community, claimed exclusively to this website that The Sims 4 is in fact the fourth in the Sims series.
]]>Like the games themselves, the expansions for The Sims are a surreal blend of the mundane and the extraordinary. There was an expansion that allowed Sims to go out to bars and clubs, which is something that most people can do anyway, but in the world of commercialism and gobbledegook it also became possible to turn into a vampire. The Sims Seasons adds weather and new activities and interactions for each season, so Sims can now become sunburnt or struck by lightning, which seems to burn off all of their clothes but doesn't quite kill them. There are also festivals along with other season-specific happenings. And then there's the alien abductions because, hey, the weather isn't weird enough.
]]>I thought it was deja vu, but it was actually just another expansion pack. The Sims 3: Late Night already gave us the capacity to become a vampire, in a sexy out clubbin' sort of way, but this time it's all gone a bit Young Adult Fiction with vampires, fairies, wizards, and even zombies becoming simulated people. With a bunch of silly magic, and transformations into werewolves, The Sims 3: Supernatural actually looks like it might be amusing.
Trailer below, needless to say. The Sims 3: Supernatural is out int he first week of September.
]]>After all that back and forth about the DRM, let's see what this new SimCity really is. There's no number because it's not a sequel as such, or so the word goes. I can't help but see it as a statement of intent - the series first turned fallow and then was perverted, but now it's back, back, back on track. Pure and faithful. In the same way Dexys Midnight Runners are, in their new incarnation, simply 'Dexys' there's a consciousness that a long history can be as much an albatross as a boon.
And so what might have been Sim City 6 is simply 'SimCity', and it is indeed a city management game. A proper one, with zoning and utilities and emergencies and traffic jams and crime and all that metropolitan jazz. My sense was that it's more accessible than Sim City 4 was, but not in the way that Sim City Societies or - heaven forfend - a Cityville-type is. Yes, the 'a' word. Wait, calm down. While I can only speak from a quick, eyes-on impression of a very early build, the trick seemed be in the presentation of information, not sacrifice of the information itself. A surprisingly lavish and high-detail 3D world was backed up by a slick-looking interface, heavily customisable to show what you do and don't personally want to see at any one time.
]]>I'm not sure whether Channel 4's The SuperMes is an extremely extensive advert for The Sims 3, or an arch criticism of the nature of reality television. Either way, it's a man commentating over edited footage of the game, in an attempt to create a Big Brother-style narrative. You can see the first episode, spotted by Gamasutra, below.
]]>Oh no! It’s for girls! And not even the good type of girls. The bad ones. The ones who like Hollyoaks and reality TV, and feast on swirling and scurrilous rumours about Brangelina.
Except that’s a load of old rubbish, like claiming that games with guns only appeal to violent sociopaths or wargames only appeal to retired colonels. I have it on good authority that many current ranking members of the Armed Forces also like to play wargames. The Sims has long been a fascinating piece of software, in many ways experimental and exploratory, and supporting a type of creative play that is rare to find. Let’s mod it. Let’s really open it up.
]]>The Sims 3 Pets is now out and a little birdie informs me that horses are exclusive to the PC version, so that's good. That same little birdie is in every version though, being the sort of creature that doesn't care too much about the company he keeps. I actually had quite a bit of fun with the Create a Pet doohickey, treating it as a cruel and unethical genetics laboratory, but the advertising campaign for the expansion takes that one step further with a hybrid of man and dog, called Trevor Mountleg no less, encouraging ownership of pets. And sex in haystacks. Peculiar.
]]>Today we are faced with a series of questions. How is it possible to convince even more people to buy The Sims 3? Who would be targeted in such a drive? People who are still clinging to the arguably more complete and less buggy Sims 2, where they can already own pets? What about the cynics and naysayers, can they be convinced? What is the hook that will snare a new audience? EA have decided to offer a teaser, which is kind of like a demo but not. The teaser can be downloaded or played online through the Gaikai cloud service. That's a new one on me so I decided to see how it worked and what it offered. The first and most difficult step was making my way inside.
]]>Since I know just how much you lot love playing with cute fluffy animals, I thought I'd better point out this pet creator demo. From The Sims 3 website: "Create a wide variety of unique dogs, cats, and—for the first time ever—horses!" HORSES!? Best of all the animals?
]]>Information about this expansion leaked, like a rude analogy, onto a German Sims 3 site a couple of weeks ago, and now The Sims 3 Generations has been officially confirmed by Electronic Arts. Sims will be able play in treehouses as kids, play pranks as teens, and have a mid-life crisis as an adult, but in general the expansion seems focused on fleshing out the different eras of a Sim's existence. A shiny new trailer has been birthed, and awaits you after the jump.
]]>I wasn't going to post about this, but here I am posting about it. I wish I understood my mind. Sometimes it's like I have a hedgehog inside my skull with whom I am not friends. So this weekend The Sims 3 and every single expansion to date appeared on Steam, and not only that, Steam are currently hosting a 50% off sale on the Ultimate edition (containing The Sims 3 plus the World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, High-End Loft Stuff and Fast Lane Stuff expansions). Yes! So instead of paying £115 you merely pay £57.50. Hm. I think I'll be keeping my money, but I've deposited some thoughts on this plus the launch trailer for Late Night after the jump.
]]>That's got to be one of the more opaque headlines I've written in my life. Look at it! It's just a collection of words, strung together like clothes on a washing line. Man, this job*.
So the Stuff packs are little chunks of DLC for The Sims 3 that retail at some £7.50 each. The first, High-End Loft, added a catalogue of sleek, expensive designer belongings to the game. The second, Fast Lane, comes out tomorrow (or, two days ago if you live in North America) and adds both cars and belongings for "four different fast-lane lifestyles: racing, intrigue, rockabilly, and classic luxury". At last! A game that lets me accurately recreate my intriguing rockabilly lifestyle. Launch video after the jump.
*Is awesome!
]]>It seems every Sims game means a sexy expansion pack. The original game had Hot Date, the second had Nightlife, and this Autumn The Sims 3 will have Late Night, adding nightspots, celebrity-filled parties and a new hot tub to everybody's favourite domination simulator, as well as the chance for your sims to go on tour with their bands. Meticulously choreographed teaser trailer can be found after the jump.
I've just noticed the guy in that video has a Sims cursor tattooed on his back. That's a bit meta, isn't it? A bit disturbing. It implies the sims are aware of the cursor over their heads, and yet are still slaves to it, perhaps even worshipping it. Eee.
]]>During EA's E3 press conference last night there was one moment that was by far the most extraordinary of the evening. Rod Humble, the man in charge of the Sims, came out and began to lecture on free will. The corporate reason for this was the announcement that The Sims 3 is to come out on consoles this Autumn - not something we need to concern ourselves with, unless the changes and improvements of the console version are not also updated into the PC version. But that's a concern for another time. Because as far as we're concerned, this was a glorious moment of sunshine amongst the usual pomp and explosions of a gaming press junket. You can watch it below.
]]>The Sims 3 Create-A-World Tool, which is a tool for creating worlds in The Sims 3, is now available in beta. EA says: "Design Entire Worlds – Players can choose terrain patterns, vegetation and neighborhood accents like water towers and lighthouses, then place lots and roads to create something totally unique." It actually looks fairly impressive, and appears to be a free download update for the game. There's also a large PDF walkthrough which shows off some of the features and teaches you how to use the tool. The tool appears at the same as the Hi-Tech pack, which can be used to furnish the houses in your landscapes with contemporary furniture and consumer gadgets.
]]>'Tis a quiet day indeed in RPS's musty central brain-chamber. More Friday words by one of the hivemind nodes can at least be found over on Eurogamer, where they tasked me with reviewing the first Sims 3 expansion, World Adventures. It's far more conceptually interesting than you might expect from this much-milked series - but is that entirely appropriate for the Sims? Find out here. Includes words such as these:
]]>The World Adventures expansion pack for The Sims 3 is released on November 17th, and it's looking like a fairly ambitious idea: holidays for your Sims, complete with multiple locations, places to explore (Egypt, China, and France), and things to bring home such as an... ancient Egyptian mummy? It's going to be interesting to see where EA go with these expansion packs from here, frankly, because the new game is ripe for expansion both inwards and outwards. I'd quite like to see the career side of things developed, as some of the stuff your characters do at work (which is largely hidden from view) sounds a good deal more interesting than what they get up to in the rest of the game. Trailer 'neathward.
]]>We've mentioned Roburky's Alice And Kev before, in the Sunday Papers. In fact, since it went fully meme-active, you probably saw it... ooh, almost anywhere. However, it's actually drawn to a close with a final entry, which is a moment I think worth bringing to your attention. If you haven't been following, it's the often touching story of Roburky trying to play a homeless parent and child in the Sims. Kev is the worst dad in the world. Alice is the sweet hearted innocent who is defecated upon at every turn. And if there's a finer piece of extended games writing this year... well, we'll have been very lucky. Go.
]]>We can hardly believe it ourselves. Electronic Arts are going to be releasing expansion packs for the Sims 3. No, really. The first is a pack where the expansions include expansion content. LIKE! visiting destinations like France, Egypt and China (CHINA! - RPS In-Gag No-One Else Gets Ed). In other words, it's about traveling to famous real world locations. Which, at a stretch, makes this the Sims answer to Deus Ex. While a free 1000 points for the store sounds nice, the fact that there's exclusive online content available at launch does sound like this is an expansion pack for which you need to buy other online content. Which, if true, is - er - impressive, even for EA. You'll find the full press release beneath the cut, plus two more screenshots. Click through on 'em for the full-size versions. Sims 3: World Adventures will be available in November.
And... actually, while we're talking, what expansion content would you like to see for the Sims 3?
]]>I actually turned the RPS-chaps into Sims 3 characters when I had the preview code, but I've been a little behind in getting the full code so I could upload them up to the main servers. You can download all four of us from here. You can totally force us to make out. It's awesome. Some more details on exactly what you're downloading beneath the cut. Also repetitive use of the "And In The Game" gag.
]]>This is something I'd normally save until The Sunday Papers, but I think there's a debate here you comments-threaders would enjoy. After reading Tom Chick's interview with the Sims Producer MJ Chun where she elegantly ducks a question on why they don't include religion, Troy Goodfellow starts wondering about - er - the problems of - er - being a Good fellow. He thinks a strict idea that religion or faith should be popping off to Church on a sunday is misplaced anyway. And there's little in the way which the sims are twisted which allow to pursue humanity's non-materialistic side.
But look at the Sims trait list. No altruistic only ambitious. No kind hearted, but there is mean spirited. No generous, but there is mooch. Hopeless romantic, but no celibate. All the best virtues are lumped into one large “Friendly” category that is used to force you to make your Sim accumulate friends. The “Good” trait is the catch all for the Christian virtues we’ve been raised one. Not that the traits are everything, but they do – in general – point toward characteristics that are about gathering, collecting and self-improvement. They are a representation of how the game sees story telling.
]]>Electronic Arts have announced that the new Sims title has "sold thru more than 1.4 million PC/Mac units within the first week", and that makes it their most successful PC launch ever. Given that last month's top selling PC game in the US was The Sims 2 Double Deluxe, it's a fair bet that The Sims 3 will continue selling in the months and years ahead. And there should be no surprise about that, The Sims 3 is an incredibly well designed and silly soap opera of a game. Seized by my normal Sims-response malevolence, I set up a family of nightmarish redneck freaks, complete with horrifying clown-faced patriach (above), and I was intending to do a couple of posts about their trials, tribulations and inevitable psychiatric collapse over the coming weeks. But the problem is that I can't get near The Sims 3 when it's running, probably because I still haven't built my girlfriend that gaming PC I've been promising for the past two years... Hmm.
]]>This is fun. As part of the hype up to Sims 3's release, Electronic Arts have done a facebook app inspired by the Sims. Simsocial is basically a turn-based single-character life-simulator, which seems terribly derived from Positech's lovely Kudos 2. And for good reason, as the about file reveals: EA commissioned Cliffski to make something based on Kudos 2 for it. It's similar but different - there's Sims 3 elements plugged in plus some Facebook social networking, minus Jamie McKelvie's lovely art and a load of Kudos' complexities. Either way, it's accessible, free and only a click away. Assuming you've a facebook account, anyway. And, no, I won't be your friend. I'm barely my friends' friend.
]]>I've been playing around with Sims 3 code for Eurogamer for a few weeks now. Impressions start like this...
]]>I spotted this over on Offworld, and it's both fairly funny, and a pretty strong advocate of what the new "mash up" tools in The Sims 3 will be able to deliver in terms of machinima. I've been playing around with some of the preview code EA sent out, but I had no idea their toolset was quite this capable. I'll have to go back and take a look at that stuff for myself. In this trailer parody Trekkie sims fight, die, make-out, while simlish voice-over man makes with the gravitas in gibberish. It's a fun time. (Speaking of made-up languages, has anyone seen the new Trek film yet?)
]]>Well, this is a pleasant surprise. With EA's embracing of online-activation culture, you'd have expected to see it turn up in Sims 3. But it's not to be, as made clear by an announcement by Ruling-Sims-Monarch Rod Humble. "The game will have disc-based copy protection – there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed," says Rod Humble, "We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future." While fans of freedom will be pleased, I was personally hoping for some DRM so prescriptive that it requires one of the developers to be standing behind you, silently watching, for the game to boot up. Man!
]]>Tom "Tom Bramwell" Bramwell sends me to play the Sims 3 and chat to assistant producer MJ Chun. Where I start like this...
]]>Stretching, yawning, RPS emerges from its brief hibernation, scrabbling through inboxes and RSS feeds in search of nutritious PC gaming info-nuggets. But is there much, if anything, for this small beast to feed upon in these desolate Winter weeks? It sniffs the ground disconsolately. There, a futile-looking Wii-style controller for PC. Here, a flight sim sequel. Satisfying to some, perhaps, but nothing of substance.
Aha! The shivering creature's tired eyes finally catch a glimpse of something more fatted, juicier. It's definitely a decent info-nugget - not the tastiest kind, but it will do. RPS takes a bite and finds...
Mmm. Official specs for the Sims 3.Yeah yeah, system spec stories are usually as invigorating as visiting Cumberland Pencil Musuem, but it's different in The Sims' case.
]]>After the jump is what seems to be some kind of French-language Sims 3 advert: I'm assuming this is some kind of life-lesson trailer, because, er...
]]>The physiognomy-warping face sliders of the character creation screen are one of my favourite things about modern videogames. Needless to say, The Sims 3 does not disappoint in its capacity to inflate the cheeks or rotate the ears of our simulated caricatures. EA meanwhile are even more keen on getting across just how much you can do the same kind of fiddling with the personalities of your Sims. How you generate the persona will define the goals they have in "life" and give you various power ups as they achieve their ambitions. One of these, the trailer explains, is "Steel Bladder". This means that your Sim will never have to use the toilet again. A lifetime of excreta pressurized into a small bladder? Your Sim had better not getting into any violent accidents...
]]>This huge new trailer looks into the development of the new Sims title. It illustrates the open world neighbourhood angle, and the development team talk about how that effects the story you're creating. It also looks at the ways in which you can build in the game world - from fabricating houses and neighborhoods right through to designing personalities for the Sims themselves. (I look forward to the RPS competition to build the most disturbing neighborhood when the game is released...)
Yep, it's looking genuinely impressive, just from the point of view of the massive, versatile systems they're building for this title. If you want a bit more depth on The Sims 3 then have a read of John's interview with the lead designer, Rod Humble.
]]>"Just imagine if you had lived your whole life inside your house." Yeah, thanks EA. I do get out occasionally, FYI.
]]>Dear RPS Readers,
Thanks for the interested comments in response to my first post! They have warmed my heart and girded my loins for the rest of the week. Straight after filing my first report I had to dash (well, walk leisurely) across downtown Los Angeles to get to the EA press conference, held at the Orpheum Theatre – a truly gorgeous restored vaudeville theatre where they shot the theatre scenes for Last Action Hero. Which wasn’t as thrilling as accidentally ending up at Union Station (where they filmed the police station scenes for Blade Runner) yesterday, but interesting none the less. In a round about way that sort of sums up EA’s press conference, too. Not hugely thrilling, but unquestionably interesting.
]]>Last week we brought you part one of our interview with EA’s Rod Humble. This week we bring you the second part, where we get down to talking about Rod’s day job: The Sims. When you’re sat down for dinner with the man in charge of one the biggest selling gaming franchise ever, and have a chance to find out more about the forthcoming The Sims 3, what do you ask about? Peeing. And then some slightly more practical questions. Along the way we discussed The Sims’ sociology on a wider scale, how Rod finds freezing to death endlessly funny, and why The Sims’ expansion packs deserve a better time than the gaming press gives them.
RPS: You said that you want Sims 3 to welcome back the hardcore.
RH: Yeah. We’re adding systems which add depth and longevity to the gameplay. In addition to being able to go up many different advancement tracks, such as gardening or hobbies. The game also gives you little tasks to do. The game has an added depth that I think we’ve learned from other games that have come out in the last four or five years. It adds that extra meat of challenge. I think a lot of current players love all the Sims games as creative tools, but quite often I think core gamers like challenge and depth, and we’re always trying to strike a balance. I hope Sims 3 adds a little bit more to that balance.
]]>Today is Sims-3-is-revealed-day. Which probably also means today is RPS-readers-complain-that-they-hate- the-Sims-day, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. Don't try to stop me.
Open world is the big thing, and with that comes less emphasis on the more monotous aspects of daily life, in favour of ever-changing social possibility. It's the Sims as a freeform RPG. Or at least that's the theory - and it's certainly theory enough to reignite my long-dormant Sims enthusiasm.
]]>By a rather strange means, EA have confirmed the existence of Sims 3, with promises of more details to come soon.
In a thread on a high-flying gaming industry forum, someone got hold of a list of Sims-related games due for 2008. Creative director of EA's Sims studio in Redmond, Rod Humble, stepped in to clarify. After pointing out that the information wasn't supposed to be in people's hands yet, he states,
"We are actually launching less skus this year than last.
For the Sims 2 game there is no news apart from the wonderful Freetime (you can be a gamer in it for crying out loud, why do you hate gamers?). Thats it for the Sims 2 in terms of new stuff. For Sims 3 there will be new information soon."
]]>
