The Sims 2 (http://thesims2.ea.com/index_flash.php - not directly linked cause they have lots of Flash nastiness :curse: ) comes out this week - according to the CompUSA flyer, they'll have it today, while Best Buy says Friday, and Circuit City has Thursday (/boggle). Yes, damnit, I admit to being a Sims addict. I stopped playing around the 8 millionth expansion pack though, it just got to be a bit too much, but I am not ashamed to say I'll be buying Sims 2 :).

…but juggling my playtime with Fable will be interesting.

Best Buy has always sucked for getting software when it's released. I have no clue why. You'd figure they'd want it the day it came out so people didn't go across the street to CompUSA or EBGames.

I doubt I'll get Sims 2, but it definitely looks like they've made some very cool changes to it. Just from a psychological perspective, it'd be interesting just to see what you can do with them.

"Super Tuesday" has become sort of an industry standard for release dates. Tuesday is when the majority of DVDs come out, and for the most part, software as well. However, a lot of manufacturers stick to the old tried and true Friday release. I like the Tuesday release better, myself - means you can start playing or watching a game/dvd before having to rush out and buy it on Friday at the start of your weekend.

I liked the original Sims until it got to where there were so many expansions that it became too much to keep up with.

I'll be interested in what you have to say about Sims2 Stormy. I used to like to use the cheats, set all my people up to 100% autonomy then watch them the same way people watch fish tanks. Yes, I am weird.

I'd play the game for a month, then quit for three months. When I started back up again, I'd try the "legit" route, building up from scratch, but then I'd get bored and use the cheats. I'd use the money cheat and build up all their stats, then send them on their merry way to get jobs. I just hated that social requirement, so I'd lock all the "friends" in a room and force them to play nice until they reached that "You've gained a new friend" blip.

I had a couple...the man was madly in love with the woman. The woman, well, she took some work to get her to talk to the man. But if I left them on their own (autonomy set to 100%) and came back a couple of hours later, she would be hating him again. I don't know what his problem was, but it would take me quite some time of making him 'play nice' with her, only to leave them alone and have her beating him up by the time I got back to my monitor. It was kinda funny in a really sad way.

I also had a gay couple who were very happy together. But one of them was apparently quite threatening to het guys. Everytime there'd be a party, the one gay guy would be chatting (nicely, nothing untowards) with a woman, and the woman's male partner would beat him up.

It really was like watching a little fish tank.

My first het married couple, the day they got married, she moved into his home. That night things were fine, the following morning she got up, attempted to cook breakfast, set the house on fire, and killed them both. Thankfully I hadn't saved the game in a while, so I started over again. Finally got them married and happy (she was a 'gnome-maker' and made really good money at it), when she was abducted by aliens. When she came back, her personality was all sorts of messed up, and he didn't like her at all anymore.

Yeah, I'd play for a bit, then stop for a bit, then play for a bit, then stop for a bit. I actually used it as a screen saver for a while.

Oh, and I hate that damned clown. And the mime. The mime must die.

I worked at EA when the Sims was being tested. Some of the bizarre things the testers made those sims do is much more fun than the boring stuff I think Maxis intended.

but then I'd get bored and use the cheats.

Heh, did you not complain about your son using cheats? :lol:

Nah, my roommate's kids. But the difference being that I actually played through the game and spent time on it - I didn't "die" once, and go right for the hacks.

The only game I've used hacks immediately recently is Doom3, but that's because I already know I suck at FPS's, and I can't play in long spurts cause it gives me a headache.

I got the Sims 2 yesterday, btw, and I spent something like 90min on character creation alone (no, it's not that difficult, there's just a bazillion options). Then I got my plot of land where I spent 30min building a house (crappy one, but what do you expect for $20k!?). So far the gameplay is very similar to the old Sims, but I had to go to sleep before I could really get in to it. Woody's joke on /GuComics told me that I haven't even scratched the surface of the game.