Freeday 30 May 2003

Pic of the day: A small step for man ... Pastor Solitario enters the show business. Why should the Devil have all the good music? And the sushi, too?

The Sims Superstar (day 0)

I almost have to call it day 0, since I only got the evening to check out this sixth expansion pack for The Sims. Spent much of afternoon cleaning up the hard disk. The user's guide wanted me to defragment the hard disk too, but that really makes little sense when installing an add-on, since at best it would mean the expansion pack was installed in a different disk area from the original game. Better defrag after, if you want to do it. (And you probably want to, if you have anything but the newest computers ... this game is a system hog.)

Installation was almost painless, although it took some time too. This pack (like Unleashed) comes on 2 CDs. When prompted to put in the second CD, I got a nasty surprise when the install program did not recognize it. But I took the CD out and put it back in, and this time it worked. The install program also told me that I had to download a hotfix from Microsoft. I obediently aborted install and got the file from Microsoft's support page. It refused to install on my machine, saying it was the wrong language. I then installed the expansion pack anyway, and it works fine so far. I think they are being overly cautious. Perhaps they have been plagued by frivolous lawsuits or something ... the game is American, I believe. Certainly the Sims act like it.

Superstar can be combined with any, all or none of the other five expansions, as you please. I skipped Unleashed, which I actively disliked. Not that I am dead set against pets, but it introduced a lot of hassle factors that made gameplay more difficult. With five expansion packs, things are complicated enough without having to get up early in the morning to clean up dog pee every single day when you don't even have a dog. So I combined Superstar with Livin' it Up (also called Livin' Large), House Party, Hot Date, and On Holiday (a.k.a. Vacation)

***

One of the hassle factors from Unleashed is back. People are not only much more eager to take the plates off the table (which I guess may be a good thing except they are all doing it at once and getting confused). But they also pivot around their own axis at least once before doing it. I have heard rumors that this happens in real life – a friend claims his wife does this – but in real life you don't do it for five minutes unless you have a severe neurosis. Since this game runs on a scale of 1 minute = 1 hour, normal randomness in movement should be implied, not shown separately.

Starting with Hot Date, each new expansion pack has added a separate Activity Area apart from the neighborhood. You take a taxi or some such there, and while you are there, time stops at home. So you can spend 12 hours at Movie City and come home when you started. In fact, with Vacation, you can stay away for weeks if you have the money.

With this new activity area, you can take care of your needs better than ever before. Sushi? Smoothie? It's all in a day's work! There is even massage to be had. Only sleep is not available (though I have no doubt that inventive fans of the game will find a way around this too). You may want to put 10 points into Active when you create a superstar character, in order to have the stamina to take you through the day.

***

Hot Date introduced the new dual measure of friendship: Short term and long term. This is further expanded on here, as the game subtly keeps track of your friends' fame! As you try to make a career in show business, you will need to have a certain sum of friend fame. Whether you have one five-star friend or five one-star friends, you still need to keep moving in the right circles. Go back to your childhood sweetheart and your career is lost ...

Luckily, stars love to talk about themselves. If you hang out in the fashionable places, low level stars will come over and talk about themselves. They also appreciate compliments right from the start, so get on with it. Take the free ride when you have it ... when you start to appear in the Who's Hot section of the magazines, you will be crowded by fans instead. You have to be nice to fans, but they won't bring you any star points.

You can play the game just as usual without going for a star career. You will have new items, an improved telephone dialog box, and a funny second city area to hang out in (but not to date in, that is reserved for the Hot Date activity area). You can chat with the stars and ask for autographs, and get friends among the numerous fans who hang out there. These friends count toward your normal career (but not a movie career). But when you decide to go for a star career, you have to find yourself a manger. Pick one from the movie magazine that comes along with your newspaper (yes, twice the trash) and you are off for fame, glory and more sushi than any sane person would ever want to see.

More about that in Day 1.