Didn't see that one coming! The Mid-Century theme gets yet another expansion and this time it's for both the dining room and Create A Sim. Luckily there was a house in Storybrook County that was perfect for fitting in pretty much all the Mid-Century furniture without any rebuilding. Mid-Century is nearly a complete package, now all we need are furniture for children and toddlers. No premium content this time, but we got 4 (arguably 6) of those in the past month. We're pretty spoiled!
The set is 30 items and is currently on sale for 975 SimPoints. After October 4, the price will be raised to 1,100 SimPoints. $9.00 for 30 items is a pretty darn good deal, can't complain.
Keep in mind for the furniture that I attempt to display it all in a practical way, in an actual game setting rather than going for the showroom style other websites use. I've also used items from the other Mid-Century furniture sets to show off how well they go together, but I note above each screenshot what items are actually new. Without further delay, onto the pictures!
-Proves a Store set doesn't need a truckload of items or premium to be good
-The price is great (not even in the quadruple digits!)
-Must-have for owners of the other Mid-Century sets
-The hairstyles (personal picks: Beehive Ponytail and Mini-'Fro, Daddy-O)
-Teens and kids aren't completely neglected!
The Bad:
-Male kids and teens get no clothes. Elders completely miss out.
-What do you mean I can't eat that cake?!
The Kind of Ugly:
-A Little Bit Fishy (Teen) only has one of the stencils whereas the adult version has 3 plus a non-stencil. Why is that?
However...using the Remove stencils mod, you can at least remove the stencil:
Final Score: 8.5/10. Recommended.
What's kind of funny is how in the Store description they remind us of when dinner time used to be family time. Yet in The Sims 3, sims never eat together. They all eat as soon as they sit down and leave as soon as they're finished. There's no guarantee they will even sit at the same table. If someone from The Sims Studio happens to be reading this, please make actual family dinner times happen!
On another note, recently I reinstalled my game on a Windows 7 64-bit Boot Camp partition and the game runs so much better. Not one crash! I'm playing the game much more, meaning I can share a lot more stuff with you guys! Woo!
With all the excitement surrounding the release of the Supernatural expansion pack, it seemed like almost everyone forgot that there was a little something else being released the same week.
That little something else is the Level Up Collection, a set in The Sims 3 Store featuring the return of the basketball hoop as well as a basketball arcade game along with 8 other items. Currently the set is on sale for 1,250 SimPoints until September 20th. After that the price will be bumped up to 1,650 SimPoints. Also released was the Man Cave Compilation which includes the Level Up Collection as well as It's Game Time! and Championship Dreams for 3,000 SimPoints but 2,600 from the early bird sale lasting until the 20th.
An interesting thing to point out is that the number of premium content included is misleading...ish. There's an object called The Galactic Simball Arcade that's a redesign of the Atomic Jack Planet Attack Pinball Machine we got with the Fun for Kids of All Ages set we got about a year ago. So really there's three premium content items. Man, we've been really spoiled lately between the three in this set and the three that came with Sunlit Tides (if you bought the Gold Edition).
An old favourite returns! Man, did I miss the basketball hoop. I wasn't sure it would return but I'm so glad it did. It works very similar to the one in The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 Free Time so don't expect full on b-ball games or anything like that. When sims use this object, whether they practice dunking or hoops they switch into their athletic wear and eventually get fatigued just like a regular workout. The paint lines on the ground are attached to the object. However, you can put flooring underneath and recolour the paint to match the ground better. Or you can give the paint a cow print pattern if you really want to. Going to pass on posting those pictures to save you guys throwing up. :P
There's three new moodlets:
-Burnin’ Up the Hoops
-King of the Court
-Rim Wrecker
Here's the description for the Rim Wrecker (lasts 4 hrs with +25 mood):
"What happens when an unstoppable force meets a movable object? Apparently you shatter the backboard. Well done!"
As you can see in the beginning of the video Ethan threw his ball with a trail of fire. That's the only time I've seen that so far and I'm not sure if there's anything special about it since he still missed the shot anyway.
Thanks to matrix54 I got the idea of trying to fit the basketball hoop into the wall of a garage using the moveobjects on cheat for the typical suburban driveway look.
Since it's obviously made to stand on its own this doesn't work too well. Practicing hoops seems to work okay, but when Cade practiced dunking he scored but landed halfway through the garage door and got stuck, throwing route failure tantrums. Taking away the garage door didn't change things since when Cade shattered the backboard (which almost instantly repairs itself) he went straight through the wall. Not to mention the back of the hoop sticks through the wall.
If you have a long driveway you could still try having the hoop stand on its own as long as there's still room for cars. One thing I'm not so sure about is that the net briefly glows when sims make a slam dunk. Kind of treads on the realism line personally. Also, only two sims can use it at once. So even though I was doing a family outing with four sims, only two could go at a time.
Huh..where was I? Oh right. The Buzzer Beater Free Throw Machine costs 400 SimPoints individually if bought through shop mode in-game. This object is another athletic skill-building activity. Put two of them next to each other and two sims can play against each other to see who gets the better score! With all the arcade objects EA has been adding over the past few expansion packs, this is a great addition. I added them to a sports bar where they fit in pretty well.
Of course I can't forget the rest of the objects that came with this set! There aren't many but what's there is pretty nice.
The Galactic Simball Arcade:
The new big screen TV (almost as big as the Showtime one), sectional seating, coffee table, painting with 3 stencils (first one looks like Tiny Tower characters?), and video game console.
Big screen TV in action:
The new foosball table. Goes well with the Futureshock sets!
Overall I'm in love with this set. If you know me from Mod The Sims I'm always in favour of adding more sports to the game. The athletic department was sorely lacking but with this set, the rock wall, the chin up bar from Showtime, and the return of the Free Time soccer net with Seasons it's filling up nicely. If sports or hobbies in general are a big part of your gameplay I highly recommend it, at the early bird sale price of 1,250 SimPoints it's a steal. However, I agree with Aznsensei's review on the point that there should have been some new clothes to go with the set too. Seems to be the way the store's going recently, either all objects or all clothes. If you already own Town Life Stuff or Diesel Stuff, the clothes from those packs do go nicely.
Final score: 9/10.Highly recommended!
If there's any other store sets, or even expansion or stuff packs (own all except Katy Perry Sweet Treats and Supernatural) you'd like me to review, let me know in the comments section below and I'll see what I can do.
Now that's one for the family album. The memorable family pictures are almost always the fails, right? :P
Yep, I bought the new Level Up Collection from the Store. Having tons of fun with it and I haven't even touched anything other than the basketball hoop! A full review will be coming soonish!
The Kahuna leads a pretty simple life by the beach in a small hut. Right now I'm trying to get the platinum athletic achievement of jogging over 2000 km. It's pretty crazy I tell you. Kahuna lives on Cloverdale Lite by My Sim Realty and he's probably going to have to lap around the island several dozen times in order to achieve victory.
One day while jogging around the island, Kahuna got a call from one of my other sims, a singer by the name of Bethany Grissoms. She was hosting a swimwear party at her place (her place doesn't have a pool or even a hot tub. Weird.). Since he was in the neighborhood I decided "Eh, why not. He deserves a break from all that jogging."
It's choices like these that often lead to some very random, unexpected things.
One of Beth's roommates Megan decided to start a conversation about food while in her underwear. My guess is she was asleep, but woke up for the sake of the party.
I clicked on her to do something back and that's when I glanced over the pillow fight interaction. Despite it being my favourite interaction in The Sims 2 I hadn't used it much lately. So I decided to have Kahuna randomly hit her with a pillow in her bedroom.
And that's where the fun began.
I never intended for Kahuna and Megan to become partners. Kahuna was made a year ago and Megan is one of my most recent sims. But seeing them together makes me think a surf bum and a stylist could be an interesting couple.
