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 »
Unmitigated Gall
Life gets unpleasant quickly when your gallbladder stops working. TMI alert. I spent all day Friday with sharp pain in my abdomen, diagnosed as spasms from my gallbladder trying to expel a stone. Go »Illinois 2014
Kelly and I are home after a week on the road visiting family and friends in Illinois. I wish that we had more time to see more people, but I'm also glad that we got out of town before the sub-freezing temperatures returned. It was important to us to spend time with Kelly's father and brother since this was the first Christmas after her mother passed away, and most of the trip was spent just being a family. Go »Bad Housekeeping
If you're lazy like me, there's not a right time to put away the clean dishes. Who cares if you use them one-by-one out of the dishwasher? But there *is* a right time to discover that they're still dirty, and that's long before you're putting away the last couple of items after eating out of the dishwasher for days. Go »Parting Thought
I read in the news today that a British businessman will get to visit space in 2009 on his frequent-flyer miles alone. (link) I bet this gives David Phillips a damn good idea. (link) Go »Scott's Car is Dead; Long Live Scott's Van
The blue Dodge Caliber that I bought years ago has lasted through a lot. It may have suffered a flat tire at one GooCon and a window that wouldn't close at another, but the only major and long-lasting problem with it was a leaky roof. Unfortunately, I live in Florida, where half of the year sees brief but frequent thunderstorms. 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.