There is a double meaning to this post's title.  One we're settled in the new home :) happiness!  Our computer gaming central is set up in our nice cool basement.  Which is where I sit and type right now :)  Its soo muggy outside in Des Moines right now.  It took us about two three weeks to get completely settled.  Though we have some things still left on our to do list such as my sewing corner and some work on the outside of the house we can at least relax for the most  part and enjoy things now.  I currently do not have employment, Nathan as well which has its ups and downs.  Downs no monies flowing in though we are doing just fine with that regardless by limiting certain things and avoiding eating out as much as possible.  The up side now that most of our work is done time for gamings!

As a house warming gift my future brother in law gave Nathan and me a copy of Sims 3!!!! Thanks Jason!  So we have been playing quite alot.  For those who are not familuar with the game (but considering its on its third cycle I would hope by now you know what I'm talking about) here is a little bit about it.  You create a family or a single sim or person.  In creation you control the hair, face, clothing and depending upon which Sims version it is different aspects about the sim.  Then your sim or sim family is given a set amout of simoleons which is thier money and you pick out where you are going to live.  Two options usually for this an already created house or a blank plot of land in which you  build your own home.  Then you play through everyday life as your sim.  You control them eating, sleeping, going to work, building thier skills, showering, potty breaks and fun activities.  So in a nutshell you start to play and three hours later you realise maybe I should go do something else. 

So Sims 3!  I'll go through the differences from the previous versions as I walk you through our new sim family. 

First Nathan and I sat down to create our sims.  The way we normally play the sims together is that we make each other start a house and play as us in real life.  Later we usually make "other" versions of us that are well different and experimental and play them.  But I'll let you know about the ones that are us in real life since thats all we've done in Sims 3 thus far.  So creation.  We made Nathan first.  His character is pretty damn close to him in real life.  Big chin and all.  The changes that I like is that you can use the preset noses and eyes and then tweek them in the advanced mode when in the past if you had any advance mode before selecting a preset it would kinda well....fuck up the face.  Normally causing odd clipping in the cheeks or a facial structure that just didn't look authentic.  The hair we were able to get really close now because you can pick more than one color for different parts within the hair, such as roots highlights and tips creating a more textured outcome for your sims hair.  Rather nice.  The most obvious thing with sim creation in Sims 3 is that now your sim has personality traits.  These traits act like they would in real life influencing the way your sim interacts with the world around you.  For Nathan we chose: bookworm, absent-minded, artistic,ambisious and good sense of humor.  For those of you who know of or know my other half this is dead on.  You can imput favorite color, for nathan a dark green, favorite food, he chose cookies and music we put electronica which sounded close enough to goth for us.  Then you can alter the pitch of the voice for your sim.  This feature was kinda a nice addidtive though personally I think its really a waste anyways since most of the time speaking when you play for a long time you fast forward through anyways, causing the pitch to sound like chipmunks regardless.  Oh and with Nathan's traits it gave us a list of lifetime goals to have to try and achieve we picked professional author for him.  In order to achieve this we had to have him reach a certain level in royalties from novels he would write using the computer.


My turn.  As usual we couldn't quite get the shape of my face down right.  Its too bad that we just can't imput a facing forward jpeg of ourselves into this thing and have the game generate a sim version of you then allowing you to tweek it.....hmmm perhaps Sims 4? lol
Anywho we chose the longest hair we could find.  At least now long hair flows nicely and doesn't clip through your body like the original sims did.  I'll probably never have a sim with hair like mine though :(  Too much animation for it to deal with i bet.  Any who with my character we had more fun with the styling option.  You can now tweek colors on clothing including fabric patterns and such.  This made it really easy for us to recreate my flame bikini i have for swimming.  For my traits: bookworm, clumsy, neat, childish and family-oriented.  This is totally me and you'll find out why as our story ensues.  Favorite color purple, Food lobster, and music electronica.  My lifetime goal ended up to be an illustrious author.  I had to get my painting and writing skills up to level 10 to reach mine. 


Both our sims close to looking like us we were ready to begin the game.  Though as a side note we both agree that we think we got closer on our looks in Sims 2 not to sure why.  Still like the interface of facial creation better in Sims 3 regardless.   We chose to buy a blank lot to build our house on.  We normally do this, to custom the house to our playing style more, better for game flow and two so that we can make it like a house we would like to own.  We picked a plot far away from the town near a pretty waterfall, of which we later found to be a public plot made for easy acess to fishing.

Ok I'll spare you the details of the house creation.  Key points though that made it better than Sims 2.  Tiangles/diagnols are easier and more workable into a sims home.  Before you couldn't put and furniture up against a diagnol wall (and if you could have they needed to make that more apparent in the manual so that i could have done it :P).   Painting furniture or customizing your own "style" way easier now than waiting for someone to mod the furniture so then you could download the color change.  Now we don't have to have the couch be and ugly color because we like the couch itself (or the bonuses are better) we can change it.  Also a slightly neat thing is a  more customizable roof.  Flaws in the building mode i would say is that the quick keys are not as obvious to use as before.  Granted their is the quick key reference it doesn't have the ones ofr triangles and such on it.  We once new it from reading a loading screen and now can't remember it, saddness. 

Our gaming began with adjusting the aging cycle.  We made it into epic.  This way our sims aged just not as quickly as before.  I like this feature alot.  We decided that both our sims wouldn't have an actual job so we made it so we'd use our skills of painting and writing and such to make the money we needed to play.  My character painted getting one  half of her lifetime goal figured out while Nathan's wrote novel after novel earning challenges and such for completing such things as wells as earning level 10 in writing.  Now this took a while i'm just fast forawrding it for reading sake.

So right now things I like about the game.  The collecting aspect is fun.  Making sure my character can have all the books read and all the fish caught and all the rocks found yep thats totally up my alley.  I love how its fluid so i don't have a loading screen while i go to town or now walk to a neighbor's house.  I think its neat I can garden now though I wish my hygeine wouldn't deplete so fast from it.  I like that we have cells phones from the begining now.  Makes it alot easier to answer the phone.  The oppurtunities like bakesales and such are kinda fun too though slightly unrealistic.  I don't have the local school calling me for more cookies just because i can make good ones... slightly odd.  but meh its a game right?  I like how thegame has improved in look of some of the animations like cooking, how i can see all the ingredents and the motions are more beleivable.  Though I don't pour milk onto the cutting board while i make pancakes in real life lol.  I also like how the traits play into the game play.  Such as Nathan's character being absent minded we'll tell him to go shower.  He'll walk into the bathroom then forget what he was doing there and go do something else.  Nathan does this all the time he'll be like wha? why am i here?  My character *le sigh* is clumsy.  And what is the first thing she does?  We told her to go read a book and she picks one up off the shelf and walks to the couch.  But on the way there she trips over the coffee table.  Doh.  I've totally done that...i totally do that..... And my character now will play with the child toys since she's childish and we just had a baby girl we named Katrina.  Check out my dorky toy playing sim:

Looks like a rabbit or something in my hand.  Anywho here's nathan's sim with Katrina in his arms:

Awww such a good daddy!  LOL One other neat thing that we had Nathan's character do was to search the catacombs of the graveyard.  They come out all scared and dirty and sometimes with stuff for your house like a death flower or one time a rubber ducky ha! But yeah I'll update you with more on that as it goes.

Things I don't quite care for in the game so far are well more of "why have't they just done this yet" things.  One though the fluidness of the map of the city is cool I wish I could have it fill my screen rather than scroll around to find what the hell i'm looking for like the bookstore or grocery store, or make a quick key button for thing.  Or even better be able to have a most traveled list so i can almost short cut it.  Two along those lines I wish i could have a way point maker on the map.  This way I can mark where i've found rocks or seeds or something able return to later to see if more have appeared.   Three, a thing that seems off to me is the camera seems different.  Like angle wise.  Perhaps its because of the two actual quick buttons i have (home and city veiw) change the angle i was looking at the screen originally that i just don't like having to find the one i was back to last time i was in that screen.  And lastly while playing a seperate sim that has a job I like and dislike the choice options on what you can do at your job.  I like that now we can interact more with our sim while they're at work but what i don't like is why not just have us go through the work day?  I mean the game overall is about living every day life llike a virtual reality right? Doing things like making your sim shower or sleep are not really "fun" game play but we have the option to control that so why not work?  Give me a list of things the sim has to do to complete the work day.  I'd watch them be a roadie in the music track or do experiments in the science one.  I'm sure other players would do considering we're already watching them do everything else. 

So so far I love sims 3 I mean i've been a fan from the first one so yeah I can't pull myself away from it.  I'm a loyal gamer to the trilogy and thier many expansions.  Couple things i'd personally change but meh its EA they do that.  They'll fix it or add to it in a later expantion as always.  I'll keep you guys updated on our sims and other game aspects as we go with it.  But for now I'm gonna go play.