Well, obviously they had it coming.

And on the anniversary of Stonewall too.

Um... right now, actually. ^^;;

And I'm trying to reset my durn sleep schedule, which keeps getting seriously messed up due to stupid insomnia.

So, related to my latest post in stormfeather_vg, anyone know of a decent free screenshot program?

I'm not totally happy with the in-game screenshot function for Sims 3, but at the same time I'm not unhappy enough with it (and it's not a big enough part of my life) that I want to run out and get snazzy screenshot software with, y'know, an actual cost.

So does anyone know/use any programs that are fairly decent, and sharp, and free?

At least this is a slightly new angle. When it gets old and stale, go for a slight hint of sex maybe!

****

From: bassa_angela@XXX.XXX
Subject: Hello Dear,


Hello Dear,
Please permit me to introduce my self to you, my name is miss Angela Bassa, a 24 years old Guinean citizen,5.6ft tall and fair in complexion. My father died of a fatal car accident while my mother died when I was young, And from there things becomes worst in my side facing problem from most especially my wicked uncle who wanted to kill me so he can have my late father wealth and properties, Mean while when my father was alive he was a well known successful business man in my country, who deals in Gold and Diamond. I am now currently residing as a refugee in Senegal in West Africa since my uncle was looking after my life. I have been in this country for sometime now after the death of my father, i am the only child in my family, please i need your assistance to help me transfer my fathers money which was deposited in a bank to your account, my late father made this deposit some years back, which i am the next of kin. I am now asking you to stand on my behalf as my partner an!
d in time of claiming the money as well. Please while replying, Remember to furnish me very well about your self. while waiting for your reply.


Yours faithfully,
Angela Bassa.

Once I got to playing around with the various options for my new journal, I realized I hadn't done *anything* with my actual, real, main journal. So that has now been rectified. I've finally updated to a newer, more robust journal style, and customized it a bit.

Let me know if anything doesn't work, or is annoying.

I've now started a secondary LJ at stormfeather_vg, to keep from spamming this one. I plan to do something called the "Legacy Challenge" for Sims 3 for giggles, and figure it won't hurt to have a spare journal for video game-related stuff anyhow. Maybe cross-post any video game reviews to it, or whatever.

Anyhow, if that looks like the kind of thing you're interested feel free to friend the journal, otherwise don't worry about it, since I'm not going to post other stuff there, just some VG stuff. Unless I later decide otherwise, in which case I'll mention it. ;)

Hrm, quick question: does anyone know what the LJ policy is on holding more than one LJ account? I haven't found it specifically mentioned - I'd assume probably along the lines of "no you're not supposed to," but I really don't know. :/

Okay, so since I didn't finish running off at the mouth last night and had to get *some* sleep, I can continue now! And I'll try to keep it, um, a bit briefer. Here goes.

( Long Post Is Again Long! )

Aaaand.... I think that does it. I'm sure there's more I could say about the game, but that covers a lot/most of the big differences and gameplay options and so on. I could continue to blather on and on about other small details, like the fact that service Sims now alternate, are paid one lump sum, and differ in how well they do their jobs... or the fact that reading the newspaper every day tells you what happened the previous day in the Sim world... or the fact that there are weekly events that you can attend... or... or...

Well, you get the idea. So I'll just shut up now, thanks. ;)

A piece of my 150th birthday cake. ;)

*plays Mortal Kombat theme*

Okay, maybe not.

Alright, as promised, here's where I blather on for a while about the similarities/differences between the two games. This will get long. So long, in fact, that I just ended up covering pretty much the Sims and their stats/meters/gameplay quirks/etc. rather than the whole overall game in this post. You have been warned.

( Cut because Long Post Is Long! )

Ugh, I'm obviously going rambling on about this, and it's almost turning into a FAQ rather than a review or quick comparison. But I'm having fun talking about it, and hope to strike up some discussion, and plus it's a pretty damn beefy game and I figure it deserves to be delved into, if people are going to read and decide on trying it or not. So... sorry if it's too long, at least you can hopefully just read the sections that interest you and skim the rest!

And this time it's... drumroll please... Sims 3. Which should surprise approximately no one who saw my post that I basically started playing it last week when it came out, and knows how absorbed I get by these type of games. ^^;;

Game type: Simulation (like, duh)

Time demand: You can save whenever... if you, y'know, don't lose track of time and get completely absorbed. Or something. Not that I have any reason to mention that, nope, nossir....

Platform: Nintendo PC/Mac

Released: June 2, 2009

What it is: Alright, for those of you who've never played a Sims game... first... *picks up rock, heaves it out of way*

Sorry, sorry. *ahem* anyhow. In the short version, you can create your own Sim(s), single or family, or roommates, or whatever. (Up to 8 can live in a household.) Or you can just choose to play one of the pre-made Sims that came with the game. Then... you play out their lives. Voila!

Okay, to go into a little more detail. There are various meters (hunger, bladder, social, fun, etc.) that a Sim needs or wants to keep as full as possible. Some like hunger will kill a Sim if you let them run out, others will just mean that the Sim won't want to do anything really until the need is met, or performs badly at work, etc. There are also "moodlets" that you pick up from doing various things (lots of garbage lying around adds negative moodlets, doing something fun for long enough at a stretch adds a positive one, etc... and trust me, there are TONS of these). The fullness of the various meters and the modifiers from the moodlets combine to make your Sim's overall mood, which helps affect how they perform at work or school, what they're willing to do, etc.

You can build your Sim's house, buy them things, buy groceries and new books, etc etc., but of course this takes money. And to get money... you (mostly) need a job. There are a handful of different careers around town that you can apply for, and you work certain hours on certain days, pulling down an hourly salary. Sorta... just like real life. :p If you meet certain requirements, you can be promoted, get raises, etc. Perform badly enough (go to work in a bad mood too often, be late for work/skip work too much, etc), you can be demoted, or even get fired. You can also make money though buy growing fruits and vegetables in the garden and selling them, catching and selling fish, writing books and pulling in the royalties, etc etc. Basically, there's a ton of different things to try and do.

Your Sims can build relationships, fall in love, get married, and adopt/have children, raise families, etc. Sim children go to school, have curfews, can't live on their own, build up their skills for later in life, and so on. Once they grow old enough, they can continue to live at home, or you can move them out (and lose direct control over them... or switch direct control from your current family to that Sim's new household, or whatever). The neighborhood continues to grow and evolve via the AI, as you control your own little Sim family, although you can switch between active families if you like. (It's just a bit of a pain).

There are other things as well... lifestyle points that you get from fulfilling wishes that your Sims have, Lifetime Wishes that you strive to meet, and so on. But this should at least give you a general idea of what the game is - keeping in mind there's a *ton* of stuff to do, that I haven't gone into because there's just not room. You can go fishing, go to the park and play your guitar for tips, wander around town and meet/hang out with your neighbors, search the galaxy for new stars (and possibly spot a meteorite as it falls), collect rocks and insects, have a picnic, play custom radio stations on the in-game radio to have songs from your actual music collection during the game... and on and on and on.

I'll probably do another post soonish, comparing the Sims 3 with Sims 2, for those who *have* played Sims 2 and want to know how they compare. But this is already long enough, and I want to get back to the game. ;)

So if you have something you want to know - either because you haven't played and I didn't give enough detail, or if there's something specific you want to know about changes/developments/etc., note it in comments, naturally.

Recommendation: Fun and addicting. Seriously. And quite a nice evolution from Sims 2 for those who have played that game... with unfortunately a few wrinkles to iron out still. But still worth picking up.

Except that it's Peter Molyneux, which means that even though it's being presented as a fait accompli, I'm still taking it with a giant shaker full of salt:

So is it... an AI? Almost? Maybe? Just a digital... person?

Swiped from khedron

-Considering how old my system is getting, I'm surprised the game runs this damn quickly and smoothly on it. Huh. (I shouldn't jinx it, I guess?)

-While I mention "quickly," this isn't as far as the clock speeds go, but I don't *think* that's because of my machine, I think they've just got the fast-forward on not-very-fast setting. :/ Which kinds sucks when my sim is sleeping and I'd like to just, y'know, get to the next morning.

-The whole seamless neighborhood thing is pretty niff, although I'm not sure yet if I'll like this compared to Sims 2's system better or worse. I mean, in the previous game I liked playing different families at different times, but then again I was starting to drive myself nuts with my huge population and trying to keep track of everyone. :p This'll be different, at least...

-As a part of the above though, NOT having to load every damn time you go somewhere is wonderful! Definite A++ for that.

-Some of the new in-depth stuff is pretty neat. Like being able to choose what you focus on at work, that sorta thing. Haven't really got that much into the game though to see what all's available.

-But damn, the Sims this time around are ugly! What's with the small number of choices still? I can't even give my Sim some curls? (I'm just hoping they finally added some decent long-hair options for guys, since I haven't checked out the male create-a-sim stuff yet.)

-Speaking of which, it looks like they went from having all the Sims too thing last game, with no really truly heavy Sims, to not having any skinny ones this time. Which I guess if you *have* to have one or the other, this way is perhaps preferred, but neither is optimal.

-Please tell me there's something like in the last game that you can use to reverse your Sim's aging. I like to have aging on in general, but I don't really want my "main" sim to grow old and die. :/

-Wonder when the first expansion will be out... and what it will include, since they included some of the normal expansion-type stuff right off the bat...

Whee, I remembered again this week. Belatedly.

Epic Pet Wars

Game type: browser-based, pet collecting/fighting

Time demand: semi-short chunks, whenever you feel like playing

Cost: Free (Donations accepted to purchase in-game points, not necessary)

What it is:

Short and sweet: You adopt one of a couple limited pets to start with. Once your email is verified you can have more than one pet, can add people to your "posse," and so on. Anyhow you train your pet, buy equipment for it, and battle it against other pets. It goes up in level as it gains experience from fighting and training, and you also gain cash from fighting and training.

Your pet has limited energy, and health, and a mood meter, and various actions change these meters accordingly. HP and energy both refresh slowly over time (or you can spend "Respect points" which can be bought for a donation, and possibly earned in other ways, to recharge things instantly, but why?). So that in itself helps the game from being too great a time-sink. Respect points can also be used to unlock different things, such as new pet types to adopt and start training.

I'm still just getting started on it myself, so I haven't seen all it has to offer, but so far it seems like a cute, fun little time-waster if you have a few minutes to kill now and then throughout the day, and like (or don't mind) pet games. And if anyone wants to join my posse, my friend code is ssglku ;)

Have a good Glorious 25th of May, everyone.

And a good Memorial Day to (fittingly) go with it.

Yes, that's a different topic than usual. I keep forgetting to do a regular Monday Fun, and both had an idea for a game-related poll and realized it was Monday together, so... here you go.

Note: I do not pretend to be completely unbiased in my questions. Nor do I pretend that this isn't.. um... inspired by anyone. *cough*

(Well, I screwed up the two questions before the final one, they should have been checkboxes... And you apparently can't edit a poll once it's up, and can't have more than one poll in an entry. Or if you can do either I can't figure out how. So skip those questions, I guess.)

( Poll beneath, to save the data trees from which bandwidth is crafted! )

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30709961

Seriously, what the fuck is up with the gaping chasm between the quality of their advertising/promotion/etc., and their actual computers? My old computer's a Dell that's still limping along because it's great stuff, and I'm pleased with them in general AS FAR AS actual, y'know, product goes. But I nearly didn't get this computer in the first place because (silly as it sounds) their "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" ads annoyed me SO THE FUCK MUCH back in the day, and now this? Are they insane?

Someone drag them kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat, please.

Soooo...

At one point in the Amazon.com deals of the day thingy, they had one of those BioPet Kits that let you swab some of your pet's DNA from their cheek, and send it in to a lab to be analyzed, then they send back what breed(s) the pet is. I know I know, it's silly to spend money on in a way because it doesn't "matter," but we've had her for years and I've always been curious what the little white furball is. (She was given to us, or rather to my parents, by some random people that we don't really know, and all they said was that she was a Scottish Terrier. Which is so patently silly that.. well, I won't even start.)



I mean, she looks sorta like a Lhasa Apso, and that's what my mother always called her, and she's in the vet files as a general "terrier mix," which is what I was putting my money on, what with her utter vicious bloodthirstiness when confronted with anything a) small, b) fuzzy (or feathered, or finned for that matter), and c) as it usually turns out, extremely short-lived.

So today I get the results back, and while they warn that they don't have a *complete* database of breeds, they give results ranged on general levels, depending on how much of the pet's DNA is comprised of that breed. Level 2 for instance is 37-74%, and Level 4 is 10-19%.

So whipping out the fancy-dancy certificate they give, I look and see that the little less-than-a-foot-high fuzzball is made up of:

Level 4: Siberian Husky (o_O)
Level 4: Newfoundland (!!!!?!)
and... Level 2: Poodle. (NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)

Okay, I can sorta see the poodle, but... where the hell do the others *fit*? And dude, aren't poodles supposed to be retrievers, not bloodythirsty hunters?

Hoverpuppy goes whirrryip?

I couldn't help but giggle when I saw the pup's name. I mean, what do you EXPECT?

I'm not posting much in the way of the swine flu stuff, because ye gods, but...

Health official wants name change because "swine flu" might be offensive to Jews, Muslims, yadda.

Next we're apparently supposed to obliterate the words "swine," "pig," etc. from our lexicon, and start referring to them as "short human."

Swiped from publius1