Pretty funny comments here, but I’ll quote so you don’t have to scythe your way through his daughter’s tea party adventures and observations on Target:
I was looking forward to playing SimCity 4, but it’s not out for the Mac yet. This is probably a good thing, since SimCity is one of those games that does its damnedest to keep me from enjoying it. All I want to do is build cities. Design them, watch them run. That’s all. I use the cheats to build up huge amounts of money and build infrastructure for free, just for the pleasure of seeing the empty spaces blossom, the downtown grow. But like most Sim games, it puts a hundred obstacles in your path in the name of Fun. I remember Roller Coaster Tycoon - you had to earn money to build cool roller coasters, and you earned your money by running a good amusement park. This meant hiring enough janitors to clean up the vomit from the smaller rides, and it meant careful mangement of your janitorial staff so the vomit was promptly daubed from the sidewalks. It made you wonder how you’d explain the future to someone in, say, 1896. “See, we have these marvelous Difference Engines - everyone has their own, and they play music and moving-picture shows as well, but they also allow you to micromanage small unionized creatures responsible for swabbing the vomit of fictional fairgoers.”
I see. And this vomit comes out of the Difference Engine? From a hose?
No, it’s produced by it, but it’s not real vomit. It’s . . . fictional vomit.
So in the future, men and women will concern themselves with creating small street-sweeping mannequins controlled by a calculating apparatus?
Well, men, mostly. Although some women will enjoy a game called The Sims, which requires you to control and manage the bladder of a two-dimensional puppet who speaks in pictograms.
And will these computers be concerned with other bodily functions?
Sure! Anyone running Windows knows it’s all a piece of shi - sorry, that won’t make sense to you. Trust me, it’ll be fun.
I skimmed the message board for SimCity 4, and found the usual complaints:
I have 16 collegs but my sims are all iliterate.
Help! Hospital coverage at 100% but life expectancy is 36 yrs
My sims won’t take the bus!
#(*$@#(#$ My infrastructure health rating is C+ even thoguh I pass every bond issue and have hospitals every two blox
Volcano problems
Anyone else have their cities disapear?
Trouble with Carrot Top Disaster senario
Who needs this aggravation? In SimCity 3 I developed a perfect city layout, with exceptional infrastructure, clean industry, parks, docks, marinas, ballparks, schools; I had deals with neighboring cities to sell them power and water, I recycled everything, and my cities would turn into East St. Louis because I didn’t pass an ordinance mandating extended library hours. Why my cities failed was obvious when I played The Sims - these creatures were idiots who would literally piss in their pants if you didn’t pick them up and drag them to the bathroom. I tired of that game so quickly I soon walled up my Sims in their rooms as they slept, and let them die of uremic poisoning.
Thus concludes day four of this week of exceeding lameness. I’ll be spiffy when I’m well.