I wasn’t so sure about the first Guild Wars 2 trailer… but this one has me impressed. Charr with guns was unexpected! XD
It looks/feels enough like the original Guild Wars to get my nod of approval. Hopefully they’ll stick with the winning formula.
Yesterday I wrote about how to age your Sim in Sims 3 using the “Blow out Candles” option on the birthday cake. But what happens when your Sim mysteriously can’t bow out the candles? Sadly, then it’s time to fall back on a cheat.
My sucessful Sim couple finally decided to have their first child. All was going well — I used the birthday cake to age him from a baby to a toddler. I trained the toddler well and was ready to make the transition into child. But when I bought the birthday cake and clicked “Blow out Candles,” there was no option to choose my toddler to age!
I don’t know why this happened… maybe it’s a bug with the birthday cake (The Cake Is a Lie?). In the end, I had to rely on a cheat to force the toddler to age. Here it is:
I guess that’s how I’ll be doing it from now on. Saves on the cash of buying the cake and then dragging it out of inventory… when I’m not even sure it will really work on the Sim to begin with.
After discussing the temporary work around to turn the Story Progression option off, I’ve run across another issue in developing my Sims family – universal neighborhood aging.
What I mean by this is, there is a check box that allows you to turn aging on or off in the options menu (and it does work!). However, the moment you turn aging on, EVERYONE in your neighborhood starts to age. Even those families that you have created that you are not playing. Even with Story Progression turned off. I have tested and confirmed this last night.
So in essence, the moment I turn aging on for one family, the game plays all of the Sims in the neighborhood whether I like it or not. That would be fine for an on-the-fly game… if I were playing that way. But I’m not. I want to be able to raise a family with one set of Sims while my other families remain the same… I don’t want to come back to the previous families to find out the children are all grown up and no one has accomplished anything in their lives because I’ve opted to turn Story Progression off. It really does seem like the two options go hand in hand.
However, there is an easier work around for this issue already programed into the game.
You can choose to age only the Sims that you want by forcing them to have birthdays using the birthday cake:
That Sim will then celebrate a birthday and age to the next life stage. Though this works most of the time (Read this for when the Cake is a Lie), it is not a very natural feeling progression. It doesn’t offer the same challenge of trying to get all the progression and skill building you can within the allotted time frame of that life stage. It is fairly much like playing easy mode — you spend as much time building the skills as you like with aging off and then without needing to wait for the days to pass, you can simply age a Sim up.
On the other hand, this can be seen as a good thing. It gives you complete control over the aging and skills of your Sim’s development. You don’t have to wait for a certain amount of days before you can age that Sim (something that was hacked for the Sims2 anyhow). And most of the time, I only want to see my Sim children grow up… and don’t want my adults to age to elder for story purposes (I do like how they have Young Adult and Adult as options now — it gives more variety).
However, though you have options to toggle aging and (with the work around) story progression on and off, it’s still a universal neighborhood setting. Which means, unless the devs choose to fix it, you can never age just one family naturally without all families aging. It seems like we either get to choose all or nothing in this game. Not much in between.
That isn’t stopping me from enjoying Sims 3. I honestly don’t mind using a cake to age Sims. Other players might, however.
What do you think of this, Simmers?
Because S/E just has to make SURE you know this.
Yep, it has come. Kotaku announced that the sequel to Final Fantasy IV has been released for Wii Ware as of today. Here’s some specs:
FINAL FANTASY® IV: THE AFTER YEARS™
Publisher: SQUARE ENIX
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) – Alcohol Reference, Mild Fantasy Violence
Price: 800 Wii Points™
Description: FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS is the sequel to the hit RPG FINAL FANTASY IV. The story takes place many years after the original and centers on a young man named Ceodore, son of the paladin Cecil and the white mage Rosa, who, along with their loyal and steadfast friends, once saved the world from evil born of the second moon. Now, monsters are reappearing in a world that had finally attained peace. The second moon has returned anew. What tidings does this ominous harbinger bring? Familiar faces and new allies join the battle to save the Blue Planet once more.
Notice in that description, they don’t mention that they’re releasing this game in installments like they did for the cell phone version in Japan. Note the price of download is 800 Wii points — that means the first installment is roughly $8. Considering there are something like 11 chapters in total, it’s unknown at this point how much you’ll have to pay in order to get the full game. You can bet they’ll price it on how “popular” they think the chapter will be. Way to go S/E in finding another way to micro-transaction-milk your oldest fans!
Also, why do they keep throwing such a big fuss about Ceodore? After the intro chapter, 99% of the game doesn’t have a thing to do with him at all, from what I’ve read.
Needless to say, I’m not buying it. Or FF13-trillion. Or much of anything else S/E puts out anymore. Sorry. Things like this have turned one of their most die-hard fans of fifteen-some years into a fairly negative non-supporter of their constant remake-sequel-spinoff mentality.
Get a new game, Square. Leave our classics alone.
I know it’s an older meme, but this video has some pretty cool animations. Thanks to Syn for discovering it!
