Tuesday, June 30, 2009

This Week In Entertainment (6/30/09)




My Pick of the Week is the Chun Li movie if only because it's got to be hilariously bad. I doubt it's a classic like the Van Damme movie, though.


Also out this week in theaters is Ice Age 3. The first two movies weren't great, but they were both good surprises. I hope this movie is the same even though movie franchises tend to stink by the third film.

Public Enemies is a movie about John Dilinger, but I would have guessed Bonnie and Clyde from the trailer. By the way, I'd see this movie if Christian Bale would do the Batman voice all through the flick.


Parker Lewis Can't Lose (Season 1) strikes me as a show that kids will watch and enjoy, but will soon lose interest in and forget about. Because that's my memories of the show.


Isn't Do the Right Thing a movie about bad race relations leading to a riot? Because the box cover here suggests a In Living Color sketch is about to break out.

You see, They Call this guy Bruce because he's Asian, just like Bruce Lee! Get it?


Finally on the Wii we have Harry Potter and the Sixth Book, the latest HP game that should work well with the Wii Remote but probably won't.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Bumblefudge Legacy: Generation 0: Chapter 5

Welcome back!

In the last chapter, Sally got married, then she got a house, then she got laid!

Now that Sally has a front door, the papergirl sees fit to put the paper nearby. No more thirty mile treks across the lot to throw the paper away! We should have gotten Sal a front door a long time ago.


Sally isn't as excited about the newspaper development as I am. She's feeling a rumbly in her tumbly.


Kind of an emergency, it looks like.


Eww. Thanks , The Sims 3, for portraying morning sickness with a degree of detail never before seen in a Sims game.

Fortunately, pregnancy only lasts, what, three days? So this will be over before we know it.

Later that evening...


No!!! You can't steal our stuff!! It's new!!


"GAH!! Shit! That wasn't supposed to be there!"

Ha ha! And so is the burglar alarm. Take that!

"What is all the racket out here? Preggos need their sleep, you know. Who the hell are you? Are you wearing eyeglasses over your burglar mask?"

Wow. She is. I thought those were freaky burglar night goggles or something, but they really are just her glasses.

"Ohshitohshitohshit!!!"



"Hey Foureyes. Just received a call about a disturbance on this lot."

"Ah. Well, actually, Officer, I am the owner of this fine home and this was just a false alarm. You can go home now. Thanks for coming out."

"Uh huh."


And they both collapse into a filthy pile of random Sim parts!

Or maybe it's the fight animation sorting itself out. Hard to tell.


That's a little more like it.


And that's definitely more like it! Good job, Officer.

Foureyes marches herself out to the police car while the cop throws his wrench into the air.

I have no idea what the wrench is for.


Now that he's awake, Jebidiah decides to pull out his laptop and surf the net. Wow! I had no idea he had one of those! I never bothered to look in his personal inventory when he moved in! I look now.

...Nothing really interesting except...


A NEW CAR!!!!!! (cheering crowd noise)


It's Jebidiah's day off so I decide to send him out to run some errands. While looking for one building I see this. Stonehenge! I didn't even know that was there.

For the one or two of you who played the last game, do you remember how there would be all this cool random crap on the town map like stonehenges and crashed UFOs and stuff, but you couldn't actually visit them? Well, now you can. I tell Jeb to go check it out.


Though if I'd noticed it was so far away from any roads you can drive on I might not have.


Eventually Jeb gets out there, though. There doesn't appear to be anything terribly special out here, except that it makes a good collection point.

In this game there are a few things you can collect: rocks, bugs, and fish. You can see a couple of rocks that Jeb can pick up if I tell him to, and I do. There's also some bugs crawling around that you can't see in this pic. Jeb picks those up as well.

There's not much point to the collection other than that you can sell what you collect (and bugs can be sold to the science lab for a little more than you can get by just dragging to the sell box). I guess your Sim also gets some kind of bonus if he manages to collect everything, or whatever. Like I bother with that.

Here Jeb picks up an unknown seed. Those are cool. If your Sim is into gardening, he can plant them and see what sprouts. There are other ways to get seeds to plant, too. Gardens are cool because they're mostly free and if you do a decent job with one you won't need to buy hardly any groceries anymore. Jeb doesn't know the first thing about gardening, so we'll just save the seed in the family inventory until we get a family member who would get a kick out of that kind of thing.



So Jeb kind of failed at the errands I was actually planning to make him do. Sally doesn't have anything to do now that she's on maternity leave, though, so I tell her do her pregnant lady waddle into town to do them instead. First she goes to the cafe to take a cooking class since she wants to learn more cooking stuff and because she can.


After that I send her to the bookstore to buy some books. Unlike previous games, your bookshelf doesn't come stocked with every book you ever want. You'll probably get a freebie book or two when you create a Sim or marry one, but to do much skilling through reading at all, you'll have to go to the bookstore eventually.

Once Sally is out, I send her across the street to the park to see if maybe she can meet a new friend or two. Once she's there, everybody in town flocks to the bookstore she was just in. Fine. Back she goes.


At first I have Sally start a conversation with the pink and yellow girl behind her, but then some cop butts in and starts flexing. Sally talks to him for a while and they discover they both like cooking. Then I get a popup telling me that Sally isn't allowed to earn any more charisma points until she puts the ones she has to use and makes more friends.

Fine, game, I'll get to it. Yeesh.

When Sally finally drags herself home, it's only to discover that Jeb has been paged by the hospital and has to go to work.

That's one of the annoying things about the medical career. Your Sim will be On Call and may be asked to go to work at any time even if he's got a day off.


Later, Jeb.


Sally puts her new books in the bookshelf. I like that the bookshelves' appearances will change to reflect how full they are.


While Sally's reading, I think it's a good time to buy her some lifetime rewards, and show you how they work while I do.

During a Sim's lifetime he or she will have wants (shown with little icons to the left of your Sims's pic in the control panel). Achieve these wants for your Sim and you get points toward buying them some nifty stuff in the panel below:


As you can see, I'm about to buy Sally the "Legendary Host" reward. It's great for charismatic Sims because you can throw a party and everybody will show up and you can pretty much ignore them entirely and they'll still all think it was the best party ever and give you a little relationship boost.


I also got Sally the Office Hero reward, which makes it easier for her to make friends at work... if she ever gets to go back to work. Stupid maternity leave.

Your rewards don't wear off or anything, so that's pretty cool.


When Jeb finally gets home, he wants to talk to Sally's belly. That's cute.

Jebidiah kind of wants the baby to be a girl. Sally kind of wants a boy. I just want it to be healthy. :o)


It's time! Oh, wow! The first Bumblefudge Baby is coming!!

Come back next time to find out who it is!

Take care.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Bumblefudge Legacy: Generation 0: Chapter 4

Welcome back!

When last we saw Sally, she had just convinced Jebidiah not only to spend the night, but also to be her BOYFRIEND. They're both kind of sleepy now, though, so I tell Sally to relax so she and Jeb can knock out some woohoo and get to sleep.


Er...


Ok. Maybe not in that order. Looks like Jebidiah would like to keep a chaste relationship for now. Oh well, let's not wake the guy. Better just get under those covers and go to sleep, Sally.

At least they still get to snuggle. It's so cute!


The next morning rolls around and Jeb is up bright and early!


He's a neat Sim, so he gets very OCD about things like making the bed.

Nice undies, Buddy.


Jeb reads the paper for a little while, but then it's time for him to leave and go to work. Bye Jeb!


Sally wakes up hours after Jeb has already left.

She has another day off today, so she doesn't have much to do. She just chows on some leftovers from last night...

...studies some skill or other...

...and then when the evening comes she calls Jebidiah up again and asks him to drop by.

Of course he does! And Sally is very happy to see him.


I need to strike while the iron is hot. Sally's and Jeb's work schedules seriously do not mesh, so if I don't get this done tonight I will have to wait another Sim week to try again. I do NOT want to do this. Sally must propose right now!


Sally sighs with relief when Jeb accepts. It looks like he's patting her on the head. I hope this isn't going to be the dynamic of their entire relationship.


In keeping with my goal to get this over with as quickly as possible, I forgo any fancy ceremonies and just have them give their vows on the spot.

Awwww, they're so sweet. Ok. Let's see what we got!



Lifetime happiness points are great and I'll talk more about them when I get around to using any, but better than that is that Jeb brought money to the house! That popup is misrepresenting the loot. Marrying Jeb actually got us in the neighborhood of $20,000. Not bad at all!


Let's look at Jeb's stats, now that we can. His lifetime want is to top the medical career, which is convenient since he's already in that field.

His favorite food is spaghetti and his favorite color is green and his favorite music involves microphones of some sort. Whatever.

The fifth trait that we hadn't revealed yet turns out to be Genius. That's nice; it means he will learn quickly.

The bad news is the age bar, which is halfway between Adult and Elder already. Sally is still early in her Young Adult period, so that's a big gap. I'm sure these two crazy kids can make it work, though. Jeb seems like a great Sim in all other ways.


While the happy couple is still kissing I put Jeb's money to good use and put some walls on the house. About time, too!


Now that I have direct control over both of them, woohoo can proceed without anybody trying to get out of it by going to sleep instead.


A cute touch that's new to this sequel is the hearts that float over the bed during woohoo come to rest on the bedspread for a little while after like flower petals. Is it silly that I like that?


Another new feature: In the old game after woohoo (if they were sleepy) your Sims would just curl up and go to sleep. In this game they lie bed in their "relax" positions until you give them orders to sleep instead. I wondered what the point of this was at first, until just now. This attempt to get Sally pregnant was unsuccessful and I don't want to wait a week to get another chance at it. Now instead of waking them up to try again, I can just give them the orders right away.

It took three tries in all, but Sally is now pregnant. Who will the new heir be? We shall see. Eventually.

Take care.