Friday, October 21, 2011

The Sims 3: Pets Chapter 1: AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

That's right: The Sims 3. I've had this game since, oh, probably six months after it came out; I can't remember exactly when I bought it. But anyway. I played it off and on when each expansion pack came out, and now the Pets expansion has finally been released, so I've been playing more lately, mostly because you can now have horses in the game - which is pretty awesome so far.

My plan is to play this game until Skyward Sword comes out next month - I'm sure I'll be tired of it again by then. There just don't seem to be enough differences between it and the previous two Sims games. I suppose it would have helped if I hadn't played the Sims 2, but what can you do? I had to get my Sim fix on somehow. So anyway.

First off: meet my Sim self.















In this picture, she was living in a tiny house because I hadn't yet had my brilliant get-rich-quick idea. Which was this: Move in a copy of my previous Sim self's family, steal all their money, and then kick them out into the street. So I did it, and became rich! Here's a picture of my new digs.















This was before I fenced in the rest of the backyard and put in a box stall in the back for the horse I was yet to buy, but anyway. As a citizen of a brand-new neighborhood, I decided to go to the local dog park to see if anybody had brought their dogs there to play. Unfortunately, there weren't any dogs, but there was a kid who wanted to play catch.















Yay, fun, cool, etc. After I was done at the park, I decided to explore the town a bit - and saw a wild horse!















Apparently Sunset Valley's zoning laws all disappeared when this expansion pack came out. I can't remember the last time I heard about wild horses roaming about in urban areas. I mean, I'm sure it happens, but still.

Of course, me being me, I had to find the horse and pet it.















I wanted to tame the horse, but it wasn't having any of that, so I had to settle for grooming a horse that lived across the street from my house.















Improbably, the above horse apparently gave birth to triplet foals, which...is very, very rare if not impossible. But whatever.

Here's the backyard once I was done modifying it for horse occupation.














The next day, I decided it was time to purchase a horse. So I headed to the equestrian competition center to check out my options, and ended up buying (I think) a Gelderlander who was originally named Beau, but I changed his name to Adejaan. His traits were Agile, Friendly, and Neat. Yay!

Here I am getting on him for the first time.















With any luck, I wouldn't be that awkward about it in real life. It's been a while since I've been on a horse, though, so who knows.

And here we are heading for home. Heels down, Sim! Heels down! Sigh.















We had to stop on the way home, though, when we saw a whole group of wild horses along the way and I, uh, unceremoniously dismounted from the horse.















When I tried to get back on the horse, this happened somehow.















Embarrassing, but at least it was nighttime, right?

Eventually the horse and I made our way home. Since you can control the horse independently of its Sim owner, however, I decided to have some fun. Apparently Adejaan likes to be a horse-about-town, and decided to visit the home of my Sim's soon-to-be romantic interest.














Despite his ability to stick his head through the door, he was unable to ring the doorbell, so I had him head home. The two of us were in for a big day tomorrow!

So, bright and early the next day, we headed over to the local equine training grounds to do some practice jumping. This didn't end the way I wanted it to.















That's right - he refused the water jump. Well, whatever. Despite the fact that he's Agile, thus, should be a good jumper, he doesn't seem to be into jumping. Maybe I'll make him a racehorse instead.

So over the next few days, I trained Adejaan as a racehorse. Eventually we were rewarded with a cool new "racing saddle."
'













Uh, I hate to break it to you, guys, but that's a western saddle, not a racing saddle. And there are actual racing saddles in the game, so this must just be some kind of misunderstanding. I do like the color scheme, though. I'm not big on the stars, but I'll live.

Of course, since we had a brand new saddle, we had to do some racing training to break it in.














RIDE LIKE THE WIND, ADEJAAN!!!















Look at that! We even have an audience cheering us on, including a certain Orion slave girl I may or may not have bothered to kick out of the neighborhood yet. Sweet!

Here's Adejaan relaxing in his sweet new digs. I can tell he's going to be happy here, even if there isn't quite enough room for him to Gallop Around the way he'd like to.















And here's my Sim caught in a horribly saccharine moment.















You can see the horse toy in the above picture (the blue ball). I actually bought two of those things, but I must not have enough room in the backyard or something, because the horse won't play with either of them, even though he attempts to. Weird.

Here's another picture of us doing some more race training. You see that guy sitting on the ground? Yeah, we galloped right past him like five times. I guess doing homework the old-fashioned way at the dinner table isn't for him. He likes to live dangerously while he does his math problems.














"What's that, Adejaan? You're starvingly hungry because we've been training all day and you want a treat You want to win a race? I can help with that!"















A few days later, Adejaan decided to be a horse-about-town again and do some race training by himself. I wish the horse I had in real life had been like this.















Even at that hour of the night, he had an audience. I wonder if pets can be celebrities? I'll have to investigate that.

Meanwhile, here's my Sim chatting online with her mysterious romantic interest.















What? Messing around online when she should be riding? How dare she! That doesn't sound like something I'd do at all.

But what's this? There's a strangely familiar-looking dog outside clamoring to join the family! ZOMG!















What's that? Your name is Pup? Why, of course you can join the family! There's plenty of room in this huge house with a third story I don't even use!

And look at that! She even sleeps on the bed.















How cute.

Strangely enough, a strange girl showed up at my house the next day and picked out Adejaan's hooves. Weird...














This may or may not have been because I had to create a new household to create the dog, and the household had to have a person in it, so I had to merge the new household with my Sim's and then kick out the random person. No, that didn't happen at all. Either way, I have no idea why the person showed up at the house the next day. I hope she didn't end up as a street person.

It was around this time that I decided it was time for Adejaan and me to enter a competition, so we saddled up and headed through the equestion center. Here we are galloping through one of the urban parts of town, cars zooming by on both sides of the road. I haven't even mentioned the fact that it's usually not very safe to gallop a horse on pavement. Ahh, city life.















I attempted to take screenshots of the race results, but they didn't show up in the screenshots for some reason. Well, anyway, Adejaan won his first race, presumably by a huge margin. I'm guessing this was because the standings showed him in first place for the entire race. Well, cool. When we got done, we were rewarded with a Heroic Pose (and some money!)















After that, I decided to play with Pup for a while. Having the traits of Loyal, Playful, and Shy, she was up for playing, but not too much playing, because she was afraid of me enough to bite me. This was hilariously similar to reality.















I literally could not pet this dog at first, because she kept biting me. Like I said, completely parallel to real life. Let's hope this dog doesn't rupture a vertebrae and have to be put to sleep like the real one did.

After we were done playing, I decided to give Pup a good brushing.














And then my Sim went to bed. But Pup had work to do! There was a nasty Raccoon eyeing the garbage can outside. Naturally, Pup went outside and growled at it to go away.















But the Raccoon wouldn't go away, so Pup had to resort to a good-old-fashioned brawl.















Apparently one of the fight's two participants was having a good time. I'm hoping it was Pup, because seconds later she won the fight and the Raccoon ran off to cause havoc elsewhere.

In celebration, Pup went inside to guard her food bowl.














The next day, I decided to take Pup to the dog park for play. Yay!















At first, Pup was shy and reluctant to leave the lot. Again, oddly similar to real life. But I kept trying, and eventually we made our way to the dog park, where we decided to play some Fetch.















Then, of course, it was hug time.















Later that night, we were robbed by a Burglar who stole my foosball table and a laptop. Damn those burglars! Pup was no help at all. I thought she'd be able to do something to help catch the Burglar, but the thief got away too quickly despite being weighed down by an entire foosball table. Funny how these things work.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any decent screenshots of the terrible event, so you'll just have to take my word for it. And that brings me to today's stopping point. Until next time, Simmers!

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Twilight Princess Chapter 23: IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!!!!

Hello and welcome to my final Twilight Princess post. I finally got a chance to finish the game, so here we are. As for the thread title, you'll have to forgive me if I hum a little Europe while I write this.

The first thing I had to do when I turned the game on was warp to Kakariko Village and get rid of my money so I could loot the treasure room right before starting the Ganondorf encounter. This way I could go to the treasure room and take the rest of the rupees out of it. This was negated by the fact that I completely forgot to save before I actually started the Ganondorf fight, but whatever, I don't see myself turning the game on again anytime soon.

Uh, did I just say that? I mean...I'll go get those Rupees again, uh, right away and finish doing everything else in the game.

Aww, who am I kidding? I didn't 100% Wind Waker either. Let's just move on.

So, anyway. I unlocked the final Boss Door and was treated to an ominous view of the outside of Hyrule Castle's throne room.














Scary. Look at those freaky clouds.

So. I made my way through the Boss Door and headed up the stairs, trying not to let the scary clouds intimidate me as I did so.















And after I got up the stairs, I found...the final doorway! This is the place where I should have saved my game for the last time, but...whatever. I'll live.















So. Deep breath, and...let's do this!

The first thing we saw when we walked into the throne room was a statue's broken-off head (how dare he!) and then we heard an evil laugh. A familiar evil laugh.















And then we saw...ZELDA! Gasp! She's alive!














Her headpiece/crown thing wasn't so psychedelic in the game. It's my fault for taking pictures of the screen with a cell phone camera. But I digress. Anyway, Link was totally invigorated by this.
















Yeah! Let's do this! For Zelda, his love!

It was right about that time that Ganondorf rudely interrupted Link's reverie.















In case you can't read that, it says, "Welcome to my castle." What an arrogant, evil jerk! And there are more broken bits of statue scattered around the throne. I think someone had a tantrum while waiting for Link to come confront him. Well, we're here now, jerk!















Look at him. He's been waiting a long time for this. Sorry Ganny, I was too busy collecting rupees, killing Poes and trying to kill the mailman. I'll try to do better next time.















Late to the party, Midna, but whatever. Yes, that's Ganondorf.















Sad Ganondorf needs a hug. But we're not going to give it to him!














HA HA. Because she's been through hell to get here, right? Nice one, Midna. Or maybe I'm reading too much into this. Either way, she needs to stop with the creepy smile.
















ZING! Okay, that's the last straw. Ganondorf is totally going down.















There he goes, showing off his Triforce again. We get it. YOU HAVE THE TRIFORCE OF POWER. Let's move on!















Angry Midna is angry! And she'll risk everything to deny Ganondorf! This is serious stuff, here.















Oh, we will. We'll deny you 'til the cows come home! Or, uh...goats, I guess.

So Ganondorf started to cast a nefarious-looking spell aimed at Zelda, and Midna threw herself in front of Zelda to protect her. Predictably, this failed to protect Zelda at all, but Midna gets points for trying, I guess.















This isn't going to end badly at all. I can feel it.

After the spell was over, Midna tried to do...something...but it failed, of course.















It...didn't work. At all. Zelda opened her eyes and they were all creepy! And then she started flying around and acting crazy. Looks like Ganondorf possessed her despite Midna's best efforts.















She called us fools! How dare she! Oh, wait, she's possessed by Ganondorf. So he's the one actually delivering the insults. Well, we'll just add this to our list of grievances against him.















Yeah, okay, whatever. You just try to hurt me with those spindly arms of yours. Go ahead. I dare you.















There was a lot of, "Don't look up her skirt, Link! Don't look up her skirt!" during this fight.

So basically, she floated around in the air shooting balls of electricity at me, which I had to reflect back at her with the Master Sword, kind of like another Ganondorf fight I remember so well, complete with the same music. Occasionally she made a Triforce triangle show up on the floor under my feet, which I had to run off of before it hurt me. Other times she dived at me with the sword held straight out in front of her, which was...pretty ridiculous, actually. But whatever. Eventually I reflected enough electricity at her to make Ganondorf let her go.















Freaky.















Yay! She's back to normal! Midna and I are a great team, even though Midna didn't really do anything during this fight. But whatever.















But what's this? Ganondorf isn't defeated yet? Well, what a surprise.















Time for the fight that utilizes Wolf Link. I guess it makes sense that there would be one. When he charged at me, I had to use Midna's hand/hair thing to grab him and throw him on his side, then attack the big white scar on his belly. This was easier said than done, because it's really easy to press A too early, leap for Beast Ganon's throat, and get deflected (and injured) by the massive tusks. I cheated a little bit on this fight, because I'm pretty sure you're supposed to stay in wolf form for the whole fight, but I switched back to human form and used the Master Sword to hit him. That ended things pretty quick, and soon enough Beast Ganon was vanquished. Are we done yet?















And then he started, like, melting or something. But I didn't even throw any water on him!

In the meantime, suddenly Midna started glowing, and then a glowy something emerged from her and went into Zelda. Must have been Zelda's spirit or something. And then...Zelda woke up!















Link practically had to be restrained from ravishing her immediately.















Easy, boy. There'll be plenty of time after the game is over.

But again, we were interrupted. This time, Ganondorf's flaming face was hovering above the throne room floor. But Midna wasn't going to let him do anything to us! She got out the Fused Shadows again and turned back into Spider-Midna. Link tried to stop her from doing something stupid, but it was no use - she teleported me and Zelda to the middle of Hyrule Field.















Well, at least we're alone, right? Before Link could take advantage of this opportunity, though, we saw a loud explosion from the vicinity of Hyrule Castle! Oh noes!















It's Ganondorf! Clearly whatever Midna tried didn't work. I always thought it was a little weird that they never showed what happened between Midna and Ganondorf, but maybe they just couldn't think of anything. Of course, maybe they thought it would be better not to show the fight, since Midna's supposed to be super-strong with the Fused Shadows, but both of the characters are pretty much wearing Plot Armor, so...yeah. They're just leaving it a mystery, I guess.

Well, anyway, Ganondorf was somehow still alive. And he had Midna's helmet, which he then shattered into a million pieces and dropped on the ground. It was just about that time that a bunch of ghostly riders showed up and they all started galloping toward us, swords out. Time to call on the goddesses, I guess!















Just as it seemed Ganondorf was about to trample us on his horse (where did he find the horse all of a sudden, anyway?) Zelda and I found ourselves transported to some other plane of existence, where the goddesses were waiting to bestow their glowy orbs powers upon me.















I can't wait to get whatever it is they're going to give me. I'm sure it'll be awesome! Just like all the other awesome things I've found so far...














Buh? They're giving them to Zelda? But...but...my item collection...well, I guess it makes sense. Just don't steal my bow again, woman.

Then she asked me to lend her the last of my power. If this means I'm letting her use my bow, she can forget it. And with that, we were transported back to Hyrule, having magically found Epona somewhere along the way.















Time for yet another showdown! This time Zelda and I had to chase Ganondorf around Hyrule Field. It was my job to avoid the ghostly riders and various things Ganondorf was shooting at us, all while keeping the bad guy targeted so Zelda could shoot him with Light Arrows. This made Ganondorf spaz out briefly so I could gallop up next to him and hit him with the Master Sword. What fun!














The sky is oddly blue in the above photo for some reason. Well, whatever. This fight actually didn't take very long at all. I can remember it taking forever the last couple of times I did it, mostly due to my failure at steering. But whatever. I hit Ganondorf with the Master Sword for the last time, and he and his horse both bit the dust pretty good and slid a few feet across the ground for good measure. I almost felt sorry for the horse, but it has red eyes, so it must be evil, right?















Link and Zelda watched the whole thing go down. I could almost hear them going, "Is this over yet?"















Also, yes, I fail at keeping the TV screen centered in the camera's viewfinder.

As per usual, Ganondorf was down for the count, but not out. When he finally struggled to his feet, he monologued about his desire, which was to destroy the world or something (what else is new) and then pulled out a wimpy little rapier-looking sword. Zelda tried to help me, but golden walls appeared around Ganondorf and me. It was time...for the final duel!















This fight is basically a glorified Darknut fight. I had to avoid his attacks and then hit him with the Master Sword whenever I could roll around behind him or whatever and get past his guard. Occasionally a "Chance" ability would pop up, Ganondorf and I would cross swords, and I'd have to press A a zillion times to force Ganondorf's sword back. Epic and all, but kinda cheesy all the same. Well, whatever. As has happened thousands of times before, Ganondorf eventually fell before the might of the Master Sword. Well, technically he got it stuck through his middle, but whatever. Either way, he didn't like it very much.















Of course it doesn't. They haven't retired this series yet.

He babbled a little bit about bathing the worlds of light and shadow in blood, or something (creepy) and then tried to do something with his Triforce...and was stunned when it faded from his hand. At the same time, the scene changed to Zant back in the world of twilight...who snapped his own neck, presumably because he was crazy. But anyway. Ganondorf...was finished.















With that, Ganondorf collapsed to the ground, and our attention was directed to some point in the distance, where the goddesses were grouped around a shadowy figure on the ground...














Link immediately started running toward her. When he got to her, though, she was huddled on the ground, looking totally different. ZOMG! They turned her back into her usual self!















Gulp. Link just forgot all about Zelda.















Yep. Zelda's completely forgotten. As for Ilia, she's just a footnote now. Too bad.

And then it was credits time! We were treated to various scenic views of Hyrule, and eventually shots of the kids (finally) returning to their village. There was also a clip of the head Moblin guy running around on his boar with a couple of his friends. Truly, he never dies.

After most of the credits were over, though, the action shifted to the Mirror of Twilight, where everybody was just chilling, apparently.














Not for long, if Link has anything to say about it.














I do, too. It's because you're Link's true love! Just admit it already!















Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, Zelda, could you leave? Midna and I need a private moment now.















Wait. Why does she look so sad? Zelda? What's she going to do?














She cracked the mirror! Uh oh...this is bad...somebody stop her! My one twoo love, no!!!














She's getting away! Midna, NOOOOOOOO!















At some point during this sequence, she said, "See you later!" Why would she say that if she was just going to destroy the mirror?? She's just a dirty tease, that's what she is! Gah!















Sigh. One last look at the only hot Twili ever to exist...















...and then she was gone, and the mirror and Link's heart were both shattered into little itty-bitty pieces, never to be mended again. Sad. But at least the world was saved!

Then there were some more credits. Weird. And one of the shots was of this...















So apparently somebody (presumably Link) wrenched the Master Sword out of Ganondorf's chest after the battle was over and returned it to the Sacred Meadow. I hope that doesn't come back to bite them in the ass later. Because you and I both know it will. At least in Wind Waker they left the sword stuck in Ganondorf's head.

There were also a few shots of Link riding Epona back through Faron Woods, presumably on his way back home to Ilia (and goat herding, unless I miss my guess). Even if he does end up with her, his heart will always belong to Midna. Or maybe Zelda. Or Telma. Or...someone.

And here's the last shot of the game. Yay! They fixed the statue Ganondorf broke!















And...done! Final tally: 35 hours played (I think) and innumerable deaths. I, uh, died at least 15 times, probably more. I don't know if this was because I was more adventurous than in Wind Waker, or what, but still. Yay! Done with another game.

As for my next game, I plan on keeping that a surprise until my next post (although I will tell you it won't be a Zelda game; I just don't think I could finish one in time for Skyward Sword to come out and I don't want to stop one game partway through to play another one). So...yeah. Not sure when my next post will be, but, uh, it'll show up eventually.

Until next time, heroes!