I have an addiction.
It’s not an addiction to booze or drugs or party poppers or something, it’s an addiction to a video game.
No, it’s not World of Warcraft. Give me some credit.
It’s The Sims.
I have spoken of my love of The Sims before, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of how obsessed I can truly get with it. I can easily spend days in front of my monitor, poking little virtual people around while I forget about my real life. This is why I can’t have pets, they would starve.
Either way, I had to wean myself off it slowly. I didn’t stop playing altogether, because, prfft. I can stop whenever I want. Nowadays though, I spend hours rather than days at a time on it. It’s progress.
Or it was, until The Sims Social came out.
EA are evil, it’s the only explanation. By putting The Sims on Facebook, I will never be free of them. NEVER. I will never be productive again.
I’ve been dragged back in, people, and I’m not sure I want to get out this time.
Yes, that’s my house. Bask in its glory.
The game works on the normal Facebook set up. You play alongside your friends, earning money while performing various tasks, and collecting items that allow you to unlock further tasks, sometimes by bugging your friends for them. Put like that, it sounds as dull as dishwater, but it’s actually pretty cool. The artwork is pretty funky and the basic Sims set up is there in a simplified way. You must still tend to your home and needs before you can set about making money to pimp said home out even further.
You make money by performing these tasks that I mentioned earlier. You might have to perfect baking cookies in the oven, writing opinion columns on your computer, or painting masterpieces. There are certainly plenty of options for money making right now, but it does puzzle me why there isn’t the option to get a job, like in the main Sims games. Surely that could have been implemented somehow?
The shopping catalogue is present and correct, full of pretty things to buy to fill your lovely home. There’s a decent amount there at the moment, but it could do with filling a bit more. The publishers are obviously planning on adding more and more items as time goes on, as they’ve already included extra bathroom and kitchen sets recently.
The game would be awesome if not for the fact it clings to the Facebook formula like a needy child. To do almost anything, you need to collect these items to unlock the actions. These can include things like rubber ducks, guitar picks or newspapers. Sometimes you can gain them by performing actions, say, taking a bath and getting a rubber duck. Annoyingly often, though, you can only gain them by asking your friends.
It’s all well and good for people like me, who have lots of friends playing who I can ask. What if you don’t, though? Then you can’t progress until you’ve shelled out real money to unlock them. It strikes me as very unfair, and incredibly grabbing. Then again, this IS EA we’re talking about.
I just don’t to harass my friends all the time. ‘SEND ME STUFF!’ It’s annoying! I feel as if I’m going to be missing a few Facebook friends in the future, all down to The Sims Social.
But I won’t stop playing. Its claws are in too deep. Send help.
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