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1 week ago
Feature: Our grim task comes to an end
Motherlode: a pocket full of gravestones in Simento Mori part 3
When half the town was gone, an interloper appeared in an empty house. His name was Whitely and I still don't know where he came from -- he just arrived. Perhaps he saw an advert in the local paper for a house sitting vacant: "Previous tenant spontaneously combusted. Ready for immediate move-in. No questions asked." He needed to be dealt with. This is the final…
2 months ago
Feature: The sequel to death, it's Simento Mori 2
While playing through this second instalment of Simento Mori, an exploration into the limits and meaning of death in The Sims, I nearly swallowed a fly. I had casually taken a sip of my drink, only to feel the sensation of some foreign object (decidedly solid) making contact with the inside of my teeth. I had to extract its carcass from my mouth with my…
3 months ago
Feature: Listen to our family traditions
"Family is all", a wise man once said. And then he half-drowned his nephew in a bucket of ice water, but let's forget about that bit. The sentiment is what's important. Families can be good and bad, dysfunctional or helpful. This is as true in videogames as in life. So that's what we're podcasting about this week. The brothers, mothers, aunts and cousins we…
Feature: Simento Mori: Remember, You Will Sim
Six months ago, The Sims inspired an existential crisis. I say this with no particular gravitas, but to say it: The Sims is an undeniably powerful force. You can read about that existential crisis here, but suffice it to say that I have both a deep admiration for, and significant vendetta against, Maxis property The Sims. Perhaps sensing this rage/respect combo for The Sims, I’ve…
6 months ago
Feature: The games that excited us
We've been drowned by E3 2019 this past week, but maybe you only waded into the river of game reveals and new trailers up to your ankles. If you didn't get your hair wet, there might be some gems among the flotsam and jetsam that you missed. That's what this post is for: we've rounded up our picks for the best games of E3, based…
Feature: A liveblog with a twist
The Cheerer and the Jeerer – EA’s livestream at E3 as it happened
Brendan: We are in Los Angeles, Matt! And we are doing a fun new thing. We're going to liveblog the heck out of these press conferences, but with a twist. One of us can only be enthusiastic, positive and cheery, no matter what comes up. And the other can only be snarky, grumpy and critical. Who would you like to be today? The cheerer or…
10 months ago
Feature: A wee existential spiral about The Sims
A year ago or so, I re-downloaded The Sims. My partner and I wanted a low-effort game to play together, and I introduced them to the life-changing videogame craze: “Make yourself in The Sims and live the life you’ve always wanted!!!” We made ourselves, built a beautiful little home, and adopted a cat. I became a professional writer or something, and they went into the…
12 months ago
Feature: What do we want? Spiral staircases! When do we want them? Now!
Uh oh, here she goes again. “Does anyone want to tell Alice that The Sims 4 is the worst iteration in the Sims series?” No, you don’t need to tell me, I know it’s not the best. The Sims 3 will forever be dear to my heart, what with its cars and lack of loading screens, but The Sims 4 does its best by having…
3 years ago
Feature: In pursuit of greenery
Checking in on The Sims 4 [official site] I realised it's having a PlantSim challenge at the moment! PlantSim purists who remember the photosynthesising supernaturalness from previous games seem to be having mixed reactions (too casual/just right/hate it/it's fine/love it/what did you expect from a free update/etc etc) but for me who missed all that I decided to hop in and see about collecting these…
Feature: You are what you wear
Virginia never imagined she'd be telling a Black woman it was okay to wear Black clothes. As an African with lighter skin, Virginia had feared accusations of cultural appropriation when she first started making traditional African outfits for The Sims 4. Though she had spent the first 12 years of her life in West Africa, her mixed-race origins marked her as an outsider, and she…
The big city! Bright lights! Pop-up shops! Festivals! Karaoke! Worthless landlords! Angry neighbours! Ah yes, the big city. Land of one thousand dreams! Land of six hundred crushed dreams! Yes indeed, the big city. The siren call of high-rise living! Culture so bleeding edge you're almost thankful when the carmine puddle you stepped in this morning turns out to only be vomit. Where else but…
Feature: Pretty pictures
You might have noticed all your friends' avatars and profile pictures turning into comic book drawings or impressionistic paintings over the last few weeks. That's because of Prisma, a photo editing app for iOS and Android that let's you apply a couple of dozen filters to images you feed it. The app goes further than simply messing with the hue like Instagram does, using a…
4 years ago
Feature: Living next door to Alice
Ages ago (last year) I built a Sims 4 house for Alice and me to live in. Which is healthy and normal. Then I forgot about it. I have just remembered so I booted up to see what Alice and I would get up to.
Feature: Whatserface
The Sims 4 character creation is something I've been butting heads with the last few days and I wanted to talk about why. The topic of body dysmorphia comes up - I don't think it's trigger warningy but then I'm not at risk so I figured I'd flag it up just in case. One of my current gaming projects is building a Sims 4 house…
5 years ago
Feature: Another mouth to feed
Note - this was originally published a month ago as part of the RPS Supporter program, hence the reference to our now-finished Survival Week. It's Survival Week here at RPS, so I decided that I'd write about my earliest experiences with The Sims, a survival game like no other. Left to their own devices, Sims are just about smart enough to struggle through life but…
Feature: Cyberpunk Bartending Sim
Some of my favourite people in the world have been bartenders. I mean, I didn't speak to many of them for more than ten minutes, and I know how it works - I used to tend bar too - you flirt for tips and for kicks. But a bartender has an uncanny way of being able to flip a switch in you. Not just with…
7 years ago
EA's recently-announced The Sims 4 may in fact be a new Sims game, sources have revealed to RPS. The source, who did not wished to be named but who purports to have strong ties to the press release-reading community, claimed exclusively to this website that The Sims 4 is in fact the fourth in the Sims series.
