Raiders of the Lost Sim

[windy_moon]

Trouble is I think the complexity and openendedness of the sims has spoilt me for most games. I don't like playing rigidly defined roles with predictable outcomes.

*nods*

That's the beauty of The Sims.  It is infinitely different, depending on the player...hence the mass appeal.  It's only one idea, though, in a relatively confined setting with relatively confined world rules.  Certainly there are more worlds to conceive!

ZZ wrote:

Trouble about small girls is, those I meet, which admittedly isn't that many these days, all seem to be attracted to Sims2, which is unfortunately totally unsuitable for 7 year olds, although the original label in the UK for the base game was 7+  I know sims 1 is mostly suitable for kids, but it's not easy to explain to a 7yearold why her big brother or sister can have Sims2, but he/she can only have Sims1.  Perhaps the time has come for EA to make a child-orientated sims game, based on home, school, shopping, holidays etc., but with all the sophistication of sims2 minus the adult features.  I mean, if they don't really like the idea of kids being seen in bathrooms, why not send them to the bathroom then when they lock the door it blanks out like a dorm room?  And I don't mean the game should just be a censored version of Sims2, but a totally child-orientated game, with parents, older teens, etc. as peripherals, and including teachers.  Kids could get good grades, move up a class, that sort of thing.  There could be a sports day every few sim days, and sim kids could get fit in order to win races etc!

*nods furiously*

I would rather my kids weren't playing The Sims 2 as is...and the younger was particularly p'od when I wouldn't let him play Sims 1 when he was 9.  P'od, I tell you. 

I tried to placate with RollerCoaster Tycoon and some particularly simplistic Sim type games that were more age appropriate, but, they didn't have anywhere near the depth.  I gave into an unrelenting Sims 2 campaign....  My husband looks at the more bimbo-ish Sims characters and says "You're letting them play that, are you sure you know what you are doing?"  (Sorry, I'm too busy having my own Sims sneak over to Don Lothario's house to  think about this right now.)

The thing is, the kids have to pick their way around Romance Sim aspirations and whatnot.  They aren't any worse for the wear, but, I'd dearly love to have a Sim game like the Sims that's a bit more age appropriate.

(I'm happier when they play Rise of Nations.  Yeah, wars and stuff, I know, but the Sims is so up close and personal, I'd rather they were a little bit older for the content as is.)

[laeshanin]

It is depressing in gaming shops. As everyone has pointed out there is a real lack of games that could appeal to the female mind, and I really don't like violence, guns and so on that are generally populated by unfeasibly over-endowed girls. Perhaps it's just that we are not soo attracted to living in that virtual landscape that lads seem to find so fascinating or could it be, perhaps, that the "top-dog" competitiveness of these things is offputting?

And it is a very valid point Witch made about openendedness... a game is far more likely to intrigue me if the outcome is uncertain. So why aren't there more like this?

[Kukes]

Actually, doesn't Lucas have a whole like division devoted to video games? LucasArts?

He does indeed! They've been putting out games for quite a long time now (1987!). My favourites are the old adventure games - Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, Loom, The Dig... they're good 'everyone' games because they require thinking and very little in the way of twitchy muscle reactions and usually are low on violence. Some of these games have been re-released as freeware and to work on modern systems; others you still have to pay for but there is a way to make them work on modern systems with SCUMM VM (SCUMM being the acronym for the game engine). Others have been re-made under other engines.

As far as adventure games go, Sierra used to make some good ones.

 

Don't mention Sierra. It makes me cry to see the state these companies are in today (LucasArts included). The rise of shooters, racing games, etc. - basically everything that stocks the game store shelves these days - is pretty recent really. Many of the games pre-2000 were targetted both at male and female gamers, of differing ages - this teenage boy syndrome is affecting everything from movies to games to music, I've noticed. One of the genres with the greatest amount of female gamers was the adventure game industry - and, even though they're rarely produced these days, you can get them from abandonware sites like Home of the Underdogshttp://www.the-underdogs.org/. As Renatus said, for LucasArts games you need Scumm VM but for others like Sierra DOSBox is pretty fantastic.

[baratron]

Anyone ever play 'Neverhood'? Best puzzle game I ever played, entirely suitable for children and wonderful music.

Yep - and the Neverhood Chronicles was published by... Dreamworks *fanfare*.

Did you collect all the tablets and read the whole back story? It was amazingly detailed. I loved the clay animations.

Unfortunately, the followup, Skullmonkeys, took the puzzle aspect and threw it out the window. It was all jokes about farting .

[ZephyrZodiac]

Everybody seems obsessed with farting!  It seems to me that our level of civilisation has just about reached a near rock bottom as it can get!

[Oddysey]

I play the Sims 2 almost exclusively, although I do play the occasional PS2 game and I downloaded Nero (awesome game, by the way) yesterday. For the most part, though, there aren't any games that I don't find excessively restricting. Even The Sims annoys me sometimes, because I'm stuck in suburbia and can't mess with different social structures. I don't know if this is typical of most women, or is a peculiarity of mine, but I can't stand games that aren't open ended, and games that pretend to be open ended are even worse.

This is why CRPGs annoy me. I have two really good friends who are always talking about all these great CRPGs they play. Every so often, I pick one up and mess with it for a few weeks. Then I get bored, because I keep thinking of things that it would be nifty to do, or ways to solve problems, that I'm not allowed to implement. Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, even Myst, and the only reason I got through Return to Monkey Island is that it was hilarious. Plus, the plots are usually lame, in CRPGs and computer games in general.

Example: The Jak and Daxter series of games. (Jak and Daxter, Jak II, Jak III) Fun little PS2 platformer/shooters, good animation on the first two, decent and well executed, if cliched, story for the second one. (First didn't really have a story, but was funny enough that it made up for it.) Now, the second one had some twitchyness issues for difficulty level. It tended to spike on random levels, so one gets stuck for hours doing the same thing over and over again. Third game had much, much better gameplay. Very smooth, very fun. But I didn't like it nearly as much as the other two. Why? The story sucked. And in a very specific way. There was this character who had been in the game since the beginning, and a sort of love interest for the main character just as long. (They game starts when they're both like 12 or 13.) First two games end with the annoying sidekick keeping them from kissing. Third game ends with the main character kissing . . . some other chick. Introduced in the second game, dating someone entirely different (a plot point). However, until that particular scene, there was no buildup whatsoever to the relationship, no reason why the two of them aren't still with the other people they were with in the other games.

This ticked me off. Majorly. Sure, character #2 probably appealed more to the guys playing the game (Wooh! Hot chick with a gun!) since she was some sort of special ops commando rather than a mechanic, but the first character had been developed since the beginning of the game, was smart, capable, had gotten the main characters out of major trouble several times, and had a relationship that had been built on since basically the first scene in the series. But no. The developers (Naughty Dog) had to turn it into "how alienate off your female players," especially when you think about the fact that the kind of women who play video games tend to be on the techie side themselves, and thus identifie with that character. (Not that all female gamers are techies, but most of the women who play games that I know are into science or tech, whereas there's not as strong of a correlation with men.)

Grr.

On the upside, both Spore and Oblivion look like they may be flexible enough to be worth playing. So I'm happy. But still annoyed.

[rohina]

We have a lot of Nintendo stuff at home, and there are Nintendo products that are more, well, gender neutral than there seem to be for other platforms. My 5 year old daughter loves anything to do with Mario; lots of the Mario games have the girly option of playing as Princess Peach or Princess Daisy, but she also loves Yoshi. She also likes Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing. We have bought a couple of PC games that were meant to have girl appeal (including My Little Pony), but the games were totally lame.

[Diala]

We have bought a couple of PC games that were meant to have girl appeal (including My Little Pony), but the games were totally lame.

Unfortunately, this is one of the gaming rules that has always stayed consistent: Never buy games made especially for young girls unless you are looking for crap that is too pink and too female-stereotypical. I've downloaded some NES, SNES, and Genesis ROMs of Barbie games, just to check out the horror, and they weren't even worth the effort to download. Idiotic, no challenge, fashion-orientated, and PINK. I've NEVER seen so many different values of pink sprites gather in one place, and hell if I want to see it again.

(Though, I have to admit, Barbie Super Model for the SNES was hilarious, for all the wrong reasons. For instance, in one level, Barbie drives down a Hollywood street. Cars there have no regard for the rules of the road. They appear out of nowhere, drive backwards, and purposely try to crash into you. A lot of the other levels feature Barbie walking and skating down a road. Random birds, balls, and kids would try to make her trip and fall on her butt. If she falls too many times, it's GAEM OVAR. Hahaha.)

And finally, if you are interested in old NES, SNES, and Genesis games, there's always ROMs and emulators, but that's skirting the edges of legality unless you actually own the cartridges of the games you have ROMs for. That isn't completely unlikely; a lot of the old RPGs relied on a battery to keep the saved games, and those only had a life of about 6 years and are a pain in the ass to replace. Playing console games on the computer is pretty awkward with a keyboard, though.

Ah, yes. ROMs. They are considered illegal, yes, but no one has ever been arrested or charged for having them, so they are similar to recording shows on a VCR in the legal sense. Websites that have them are rather easy to find; while they DO go down every once in a while, a ton of new ones will pop in their place. It takes some getting used to, especially controlling with the keyboard, but you can also buy computer controllers that look strikingly similar to console controllers.

Batteries on games tend to last a bit longer than 6 years... if they were well taken care of. Most of my SNES games with batteries (those that I bought at launch) still can keep memory. However, in a used game shop, you don't know the treatment of the cartridge in question, or if it even still keeps memory. I *think* some stores have refunds and exchange policies for cartridges with no working batteries, but I am not sure. I've only bought a few old cartridge games in those stores.

[Ness]

No consoles here...  and I think my super-techy husband would be horrified to see that sort of thing going through the surround system and the new widescreen TV...  hubby was in broadcast TV for a while and he's very particular about that sort of thing.

so basically, it's PC games or nothing...  I'm probably a big fan of the sit back and conquer the world from your arm chair type games - so I played civilisation to death and had heaps of fun with all the different settlers games.  These days that style of game seems to make a huge deal over the battles and fighting, and it just turns me off.

Years ago I got a lucas arts game - afterlife, was ok for a bit, but like sim city, once you figure out the tactics of borrowing money and then paying it back it becomes - like all the other sim city games - very, very boring!

[Renatus]

She also likes Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing.

Harvest Moon! That is possibly one of the cutest, most fun games in the world. I recommend it to everyone (but stay away from the regular game boy incarnation, it was a hobbled version of the original. PSX and GBA versions were my favourites). It's one little guy with a little decrepit farm he's slowly bringing back to life... it's gentle and absolutely brilliant. Keep in mind I'm usually the sort of person who enjoys bashing hordes of monsters over the head, and I adore that game and wish there were more like it.

[Oddysey]

Seconded (thirded?) on the Harvest Moon thoughts. The most bizarrely addictive game ever. Only problem with it is that you have to buy a whole other game if you want to play another gender, and only for the newer versions, and you have to play it straight. Obviously, no one at Nintendo has ever heard of TwoJeff's "pregnancy for all" mod. ;-D

[rohina]

There's no pregnancy at all. I thought the kid came from the vegetable patch, myself.

[noname]

Odessey, if you want an open-ended game, I just bought Sid Meier's Pirates! and it seems pretty open and surprisingly good. It just may break my Sims 2 addiction

[jrd]

Pirates is good. Glad they finally patched it.

[witch]

I was just looking at Pirates in the shop this morning, I usually like Sid Meier's stuff. It's still $59.95 where I was looking which I thought was overpriced. Might try one of the chainstores.

[noname]

I was just looking at Pirates in the shop this morning, I usually like Sid Meier's stuff. It's still $59.95 where I was looking which I thought was overpriced. Might try one of the chainstores.

That is overpriced. I got it at Best Buy here in NYC for $30. The price dropped recently, but I've never seen it at $60 like where you went.

[gali]

EB games sells it for 29.99$ (Pirates).

[laeshanin]

I'm sure I saw Pirates offered for £15.00 in one of the supermarkets here... Will have to check that out.

And Spore looks as if it could be very fine indeed.

[witch]

Sorry, New Zealand $59.95. Roughly the exchange rate used to be about half for US $$. Maybe equates to about $US35?

Buying off sites in the states is no cheaper for me, what with postage and packaging plus the exchange rate means I would most likely pay slightly more than if I buy here.

[simmiecal]

I love Sid's games. Played Pirates until I got Sims earlier this year. But, I'm really looking forward to Civilization IV that is coming out very soon. It will be my Christmas present to myself. 

http://www.firaxis.com/games/game_detail.php?gameid=6
http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/noflash.htm

[Regina]

About five years ago, there was a new phrase developed in our house called "People Games."  This is what my then 2-year-old son decided I played.  I would get a new game and he'd say, 'Oh, Mom, you got a new People Game!'

I agree there aren't a lot of games out there that appeal to women.  As I look at my CD rack I see a bunch, though, with most of their expansions.  I loved CivII so ended up getting Alpha Centauri when it was in a bargain bin.  I also lucked out and picked up the expansion, Alien Crossfire, which is super hard to find for less than around $50 because they quit making it all too soon, for about $10 with a Buy It Now from eBay.  I've tried and tried and tried CivIII and to my mind it just stinks!  I enjoy the culture aspect but there're too many other things in there they changed.

I also love Sierra's City-building series and have all of those.  I started out with Ceasar II which had a demo for Caesar III and I couldn't wait until I could get that one.  I remember visiting the Heaven's Game forums and amazed at how many women were into playing the City Building series.

I've also given Tropico a shot but I found the scenarios were ridiculously hard and the open-play got too bogged down too quickly.  You could start on a nice little town but by the time it got up to any size at all (like 1/3 of a larger island) everything became so inefficient the city would basically melt down.

I think one of the all-gime classics out there is Zoo Tycoon.  I got the original game for Christmas shortly after it came out then later got the expansion packs.  I was even one of those who helped to make the User Expansion Pack (thanks to the wonderful brains of the fellow in England who figured out how to make scenarios for the game).  With all of my involvement in that community, though, I ended up getting so burnt out on that game I just about couldn't play it.  I since bought Zoo Tycoon 2 last summer but honestly in my opinion it just can't beat the original.  Sure, it has some nice features but the user-made animals for ZT1 gave the game tons of replayability, whereas while I haven't checked recently, when I got ZT2 there was no user-made content.

My 7-year-old loves to play games and I haven't bought him a new one in ages.  He mostly plays original NES games and finds freeware games online to download and is reasonably happy.  Sure, he wants to get a gaming system and I'm thinking about getting him one in the next year or so.

My daughters are into games, too.  My 16-year-old loves playing RPGs and my 19-year-old loves RPGs and creating things for TS2.  They both play TS2, too, although they don't seem to be as rabid about it as I am (thank goodness!).

I like to read game reviews in the newspaper and our local writer does a bang-up job.  He said one game that he was absolutely surprised with was the Lego Star Wars.  He said he had bought it something like three months hence, and was still playing it several times a week with his son, which is a rarity for them.  He said the game was fun and had good replayability.

Another game I think is awesome but they've never made it for PC is the Harvest Moon series.  My sisters and nieces are huge fans and I've tried it and it's great!

When it all comes down to it, though, I don't play much now besides TS2.  I had base TS2 for an entire year before NL and wasn't getting tired of it and now with NL it's just that much more fun.  For the most part I think my family thinks it's safest if I stick with one game at a time. LOL

[rohina]

Alpha Centauri with Alien Crossfire is one of my absolute favourite games ever. I loved Civ and CivII, but I thought III was kind of a stupid step backwards. I'm definitely excited about new Civ, and will most likely get it for my birthday or Christmas.
One game that was similar, and that a number of my female friends liked was Master of Magic. It was very like Civ in some ways, but it had exciting heroes and battles where you had to make decisions. Plus, you know, the magical spell casting.

[Hook]

I heard Myst was popular with female gamers.  Never played that one myself tho.

Some of the old Sim games are great.  My favorites were Sim Farm, Sim Life and Sim Ant.  Sim Ant did have you fighting the red ants, but it wasn't as bad as most of the RPG games.  I always loved it when I got the message in Sim Life, "Pigs have mutated to fly."

Hook

[Regina]

I tried Myst and just couldn't get into that kind of game.  My cousin loved it, though.

You reminded me that some of those older Sim games are one my son loves, too.  He plays SimAnt, SimEarth, SimTown and more.  They're great kid-friendly games.  Oh, and SimTunes is wonderful, too, because they're composing little musical diddies.  He also plays the original (if you can imagine) SimCity on his dad's computer.  I don't think he ever gets much past putting in the power plant and first zoning, but it seems that each time he learns a little bit more.  Another one of his favorites is his dad's Real Planes Flight Simulator for RC airplanes.  He can now successfully land the plane on the easier levels.

[Hook]

I think I enjoyed the original Sim City more than the sequels.

Another game I had a great time with was Rollercoaster Tycoon.  The first thing I'd put into every park was the carousel, just for the music.  I love fairground organ music.

Hook