Sunday, June 21, 2009

The Bumblefudge Legacy: Generation 0: Chapter 2

Welcome back! I've got a longish update for you this time around, so let's get to it!

When we last left Sally, I was making her study cooking out of a book. It took practically forever for her to get her very first cooking skill point and by the time that happened the papergirl had dropped the newspaper. I sent Sally out after it.

For some reason the papergirl thought it would be awesome to drop the paper as far away from Sally's actual house as she possibly could. Thanks a lot, you little shit. Maybe it's because Sally doesn't have a front door? I might have to rectify that soon.


As soon as Sally FINALLY got back to her home with her paper I set her to looking for a job in the culinary career path. I expected it to not be there, giving me the opportunity to show off the brand new alternate job-finding method introduced in this sequel, but it was the first career path to come up. Oh well, there's still a lot of Legacy to go. Sally is now a Kitchen Scullion and works from 3:00pm to 9:00pm.

It's too late for her to go to work today, so I send Sally out on the town with the hope that she might meet a nice man.


New to the Sims 3 is the ability to go to the neighborhood map view at any time, click on any building you want, and send your Sim there.... all without any load screens. I love it! The seemingly unending load times from the previous game meant most of my Sims were homebodies.

I send Sally to some place called "the Warehouse." I don't know what it is. Some hip new nightclub, maybe?

Oh. It's an actual warehouse. Gee. And look! Sally's talking to the Invisible Man!


Ah-ha! There he is! Giving up load times between lots means that the game has to load as you play. A lot of times you get weird stuff like that.

Sally's new acquaintance wanders off somewhere. I command her to catch up with him and get to know him while I get a better look at him. It's important to determine right away if this guy will be good husband material. All I can tell from here is that he's got muscles.

"Here. Your camera is crooked. Let me adjust that for you."

Will you hold still!

"Oh. Sorry. Just trying to help."


There he is! His name is Hal. He looks a little stoned and I don't like the looks of that soulpatch, but Sally talks him into revealing that he's a cop, and that's pretty good.


Sally's Daredevil tendencies get the best of her. Daredevils are capable of the "Watch This!" conversation option. What daredevil stunt is she performing here? Well, she's scooping some random dirt and rat poop and whatever else gathers on the floor of warehouses, and then she...

...well, I didn't manage to get a good picture of the event, but she ate it. Full on chugged the filthy warehouse floor dirt. Hal almost ralphed, but he was nice enough not to let that scare him away. I told Sally to quit grossing everybody out and just see what else she could find out about this guy.

Uh-oh. This isn't good. Sally just found out that not only is Hal a coward (a fantastic trait in a cop, don't you think?), but he's also afraid of commitment. Sally is a super-brave daredevil, so Hal's cowardice is the bigger turn-off to her, but I'm more worried about the commitment thing. Later on in the game it would be no big deal to get a Sim knocked up by a guy with no plans to hang around because by then we'll be rolling in Simoleons, but this early in the game it's a deal breaker. Sally needs a man who will hang around and earn some money while she's on her completely unfair game enforced maternity leave. (More on that when the time comes.)



Sally couldn't care less what I think about Hal's commitment issues. As far as she's concerned, this wus is the last person she wants committed to her.


For his part, Hal can't believe anybody would think he'd want to spend his life with such a reckless idiot.

Oh well. So much for Sally and Hal.

So remember when I told you about the map view and the lack of load times and all that? Well, another nice thing about that is I can leave Sally where she is and go search the town for guys on other lots without her.

And look! I found this guy! He's got nothing to do. Just hanging out. I click on him to tell Sally to get over here from wherever she is and come say hi.

If she were very far away, Sally would automatically take a cab. She's just down the street a little, though, so she runs over on foot.

Really runs. Look at that. She must be really desperate to get the taste of Hal's crybaby tears out of her mouth.

New Guy is kind of hungry.

"Seriously. I kind of want to eat. Is this going to take long?"

Relax! She's right behind you!



Sally checks the guy out, unsure if she wants to repeat the experience she had with Hal. I tell her to meet this guy anyway, and not scare him by eating dirt so fast.

Kind of a tepid handshake, but they just met and his tummy is grumbling. Nothing to worry about yet.


Expressive little guy, isn't he! After some conversation, this is what Sally is able to find out:

J...Jebidiah? Ugh. Ok... It's Ok... I can live with that.... Let's see, what else?

Jebidiah is Good, which is nice. He won't be a jerk to Sally for no reason. I like that he's neat because he'll automatically clean up after any slobs in the house, though he'll also take an extra mood hit if he's around filth. It's good to see that he's ambitious; Sally is too, so they'll have something in common. The workaholic thing is nothing I can't work with. Ambition and workaholic traits together set him up to be a very wealthy Sim one day. He's also in the medical career and that's ok. He's got one last mystery trait, but the rest of his character sheet looks pretty good, so I feel ok sending Sally after this one.

Good find, Sally!

Jeb isn't the only one feeling a bit peckish, so I send Sally home to put her new cooking skill point to use.


What, you don't use a knife to make boxed macaroni & cheese? Pff. Amateur.

One interesting feature of this game is that your Sims will often gain skill points faster by actually performing an action (like cooking) than they will by reading (say a cookbook). I like this. It's more realistic this way.


You've seen the "I'm in good shape!" face that your Sim gives you in the control panel in earlier pics. Sally's really hungry right now, so I wanted to take this chance to show you the "I'm sad!" pout. I think it's adorable.


And that's it for now! Once the macaroni is in her belly, I send Sally to bed. Quite a busy first day of life! See you next time when... I don't know!

Take care.

4 comments:

Rimmi said...

Lita, you can get your Sims more cooking skills by actually cooking in Sims 2. That's how my Francis J. Worthington from Strangetown got his cooking skills. He made cheesecakes all day.

Lita said...

You are right. You absolutely can get cooking points by cooking in Sims 2. The difference is that in this game you get the points significantly FASTER by performing the action than you do by reading about it. There are differences in learning speed in Sims 2 as well, but the difference is nowhere near as obvious.

Anonymous said...

It's just as well Sally didn't end up with Hal. Hal looks like sort of a sad cross between Sly Stallone and Tony Danza. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like a promising father to the unborn Bumblefudge generations to me.

Lita said...

That's it! I was trying to figure out who he was reminding me of, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. He also has a Robert Pattinson quality that I'm not fond of.

Really dodged a bullet with Hal.