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dkirschner's The Sims 3 (PC)
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| [May 23, 2014 07:33:15 PM]
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Started and retired this over just a couple days. I remember playing the Sims 1 back in college sometime. I toyed with that one for a couple weeks and mostly delighted in finding new and creative ways to kill my sims. My favorites included having them go for a swim, then removing the pool ladder so they could not get out. They’d swim around, get tired and eventually drown. I’d put my sim in a closet, then remove the door. I found that if you put a mop in the closet, the sim would urinate all over the floor when he couldn’t hold it any longer, then he would get very upset at the mess and mop it up. He would repeat that, become lonely, hungry, and eventually starve to death. I just very much enjoyed the sim’s anxiety over peeing on the floor. I like to imagine that being unable to urinate in a toilet and being confined to a small dirty room with nothing but a mop for company made my sim reflect on the human condition.
I therefore had high hopes that by the Sims 3, there would be a lot of new ways to kill my sim. Alas, I don’t find much new in that respect. What’s new is oh my god it’s a massive Zynga game about consumption. All you do is click things and level up a billion skills and buy endless amounts of stuff and are inundated with messages to post about your sim on Facebook.
I found the sims funny and cute and whatnot, and I for the most part enjoyed watching my sim learn guitar and progress in his job and try to date his boss. But every time I stopped to think about what I was doing, I wanted to remove the game from my hard drive. Why do I want to hold a sim’s hand through his little sim life? Why do I want to watch him play guitar? I picked up my own guitar instead. Why do I want to have my sim reach a goal of reading 5 books? I picked up a book instead. Why do I want to buy my sim a grill to have people over and cook out? I want a grill! I went to my friends’ house that night to make nachos and watch Game of Thrones and Cosmos together. Why do I want to watch my sim try and hook up with his boss? Okay, the last one is legitimately funny and I can’t do that.
Point is, whatever I have my sim doing, if it’s to emulate my life, I might as well go do. It’s the same reason why I don’t like Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Why don’t I just go jam with my friends on real instruments? It’s infinitely more fun to do the real thing. But even if my sim is, say, striving to become president (something I am not doing), it’s still not that exciting. He still levels up his charisma and his reading and his gardening and whatever. I do all that stuff. Why do I want to watch my sim do it?
So if the point of playing a sim is to do things that I don’t do in my life, then it seems The Sims 3 is a poor choice of a game. Aside from murdering the poor little guys, it turns out I have no motivation to play this game. I understand there are building elements in the game, but I’ve got other games that I’d rather build in. Also, my god, the social aspect, they just smack you repeatedly over the head with that. Your sim is level 3 in reading! Post to Facebook! Your sim fixed the toilet! Share on Twitter! And they’re always popping up things for you to go buy stuff in the sim store. OMG, don’t care, go away! No more sims!
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dkirschner's The Sims 3 (PC)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored
GameLog started on: Saturday 3 May, 2014
GameLog closed on: Sunday 4 May, 2014 |
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