Deg-Deg, Sims... Deg-Deg Forever
by Scott Hardie on August 9, 2006
I really want to enjoy playing The Sims 2. I've logged thousands of hours on the first Sims and hundreds on the sequel. The problem is that I can't even play it in the first place in order to enjoy playing it.
When the first Sims encountered a bug, which wasn't often, it would crash the whole game. Mildly annoying, but I'd reboot and start again and everything was fine. Maxis built a very stable game engine for the sequel, but now when a bug occurs, you don't notice at first and you wind up saving it into your save file, and it becomes permanent. Sometimes I can lose it by switching to a new neighborhood, but it re-occurs before long.
What kinds of bugs do I suffer? Some of them are mildly annoying, like how a fourth of the clothes I buy in town have disappeared by the time I arrive back home, or how the "auto-lights" won't turn off in the bathrooms even though there's no one in there. Other times are a more serious nuisance, like how my house got stuck in some kind of party mode and neighbors would just walk in and eat my food and watch my TV. Then there was the time two of my Sims got into the taxi to visit town and the others wouldn't get in, and days passed while the two in the taxi continued to sit there starving to death while the others went on with their lives, and I only narrowly saved them with the moveObjects code and deleting the taxi. One house I played as a "dynasty" concept in which the children inherited everything from the parents and repeated the cycle, but by the second generation, their lone daughter got permanently stuck in her second trimester of pregnancy and refused to go to work or have the baby and kept throwing up every few hours – followed quickly by a glitch in the same house in which Sims refused to fall in love no matter how high their relationship or how intimate their behaviors to each other, thus preventing the other children in the house from marrying and having kids. I moved on to another neighborhood, but what's the newest glitch I encountered just yesterday? The Sims refuse to have queued items; as soon as I add multiple tasks, they drop everything and jump to the final task in order, forcing me to juggle all eight at the same time.
It's unplayable, and the official patches from Maxis have not solved this or any of the other problems I've had. This breaks my heart, because The Sims in its many forms is a dear game to me. I'm done wasting money on future expansion packs. Here's hoping the faraway release of The Sims 3 will at last come out without bugs.
Two Replies to Deg-Deg, Sims... Deg-Deg Forever
Jackie Mason | August 17, 2006
[hidden by author request]
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Risky Games
Here's plugging two games that I've been enjoying lately: Dice Wars is a good little miniature online game for one person, playable in about 20 minutes and very satisfying for its size. The text below the game explains the rules, but suffice to say, it's basically Risk but built to be played rapidly thanks to some rule simplification and a very swift AI. (Thanks for suggesting it, Joandy!) Go »Without Teeth
Turns out I'm not the only one in this household in need of medical attention. I took my cat to the vet for an eye infection, wound up getting her a $500 physical since she's overdue, and the doctor wants to pull her teeth in a few weeks for another $400. He says her teeth and gums are impossibly infected and there's nothing else that can be done now. Go »Not in My Back Yard
I love Unsolved Mysteries. The show told such interesting stories in perfect bite-size pieces, and knew how to make the hair on your neck stand up. I wish they were more objective in their reporting and didn't rely on pseudoscience as evidence (using psychics to prove ghosts and polygraph results to condemn criminals), but damn they put on an entertaining show. Go »Amazon Appreciation
I just wanted to take a minute to thank Amazon.com. They've been my primary retailer for over a decade now, not to mention the seller of most prizes in the goo game and Oscars contests on this site. Once they started offering their Prime service ($80/yr gets you free 2-day shipping and discounted overnight shipping), they leveled the playing field against local retailers: No longer did I feel the need to save up a list of several items and buy them all at once to save on shipping. Go »Jeffrey Katzenberg is a Crazy Person
I'm no fan of 3-D. I have lazy eye, which makes my right eye blurry and my left eye sharp. During a normal movie, I usually sit up front to be absorbed in the picture so that it doesn't matter, or if I sit in the back, I can concentrate to correct my vision. Go »
Anna Gregoline | August 9, 2006
Scott, I totally agree. There are a TON of bugs in Sims2.
Some of my playing problems involve the fact that my system simply can't handle Sims 2 - I believe that I desperately need new memory but that is a problem in and of itself (my current computer case has old school slots for memory - modern day memory will not fit, meaning I have to get an entirely new case before I can get new memory, a headache and an expense I'm not willing to do right now, since I am POOR!). So I often don't play Sims2 simply because it takes so long to even load.
Buggy games are depressing, aren't they? All you want to do is play, and you can't play the way you want, which is supposed to be the entire point for games like that.
I only have University though, none of the new add-ons. I decided to stop getting them for now because they are expensive and would slow me down further, most likely. Of course, that limits my 3rd party downloads now as well. Bummer.