Thursday, September 3, 2009

Newer Does NOT Equal Better, Part 2

I LOVE The Sims 2. Frankly, when I heard they were coming out with a 3rd version of the game, I was a little skeptical. The improvements between 1 and 2 were vast and obvious, they took a great game that became unplayable after a time (simply due to the lack of aging as it got boring to play the same exact family for too long) and turned it into something I had hardly dared to dream of at the time. Sure, there were still things that could be improved upon, there always are, but it was a solid game that could be played endlessly.

I like long-term value in a game. Even if I had a lot of money I'd prefer having a few games that entertain me for months or even years than every hot new title to come down the path. A great game is much like a great book except even better as each "read-through" yields a different story.

I've created giant families in TS2 with detailed and involved storylines, towns filled with houses that I would kill to live in, and built business and real estate empires that would be the envy of real titans of industry. I love each of my little digital people truly like a god should, for their quirks as well as achievements, even when they wreck my carefully-laid plans. I almost never play with houses or Sims created by others, I invest the time and build from scratch, a very rewarding effort.

The problem is, I have a laptop that's old and doesn't have a very large hard drive and you can't put Sims files on an external. My TS2 files are over 7 gigs, even without all the downloads and junk! So, I just can't have two different Sims games on it at the same time. The day my copy of TS3 came home I dutifully uninstalled all of TS2 (carefully backing it up, of course) and loaded the new game, even though I wanted to cry at the loss of everything I had created.

As mentioned in Part 1, I then discovered that I don't like TS3 nearly as much and decided to go back to TS2. So, much of my weekend ended up being a lot of re-installing. The weird thing was, I also decided to not re-install all of my downloads because I just don't have the drive space anymore, which meant going back to my old towns would be a pain as they are full of downloaded objects. I'm glad I went that route, the game is far faster and works better in every way without them.

The upshot is that I am starting from scratch again. I deleted all of the pre-installed towns and have a nice clean version of the game with exactly one neighborhood, where I plan to build every single building and create every playable Sim (unless the ones I create fall in love with townies, of course). All of the information about this town will be logged in my brand-spanking-new database that I've always wanted to create for this game. I guess you could say I renewed my commitment to TS2 in a very big way.

2 comments:

  1. Hi there :) Love the blog :) Would you like to exchange links with mine? Its at http://wonderbanana.blogspot.com/
    All the best, Marcus

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  2. Thanks! I read through some of Marcus' blog and it's very cool, fun tales from a whole family of gamers (which is very cool in and of itself).

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