Paradox Interactive Puts Out What Could Potentially Put Sims 5 on the Ropes

Well, evidently the announcement came today. The secretive Paradox Tectonic has just made its announcement of their new "Life Simulator" called "Life By You". Here is the teaser trailer that was announced at Paradox's New Game Announcements

I'm gonna warn ya right now...

If you play Sims 4 and like that graphic style, you're NOT going to like #LifeByYou by Paradox Tectonic. Rod Humble, I think, listened to those who were unhappy with the direction EA went on Sims 4 and catered to them. He was one of those who had full direction on the way Sims 3 went when he was at EA and thus has leaned more towards that in terms of creativity.

I'm starting to think of this as Sims 3 rebooted with way better graphics. And with the assets and DLC, this is going to stomp Project Rene (Sims 5)'s ass.

I watched the teaser trailer this morning and HOLY ****! I was blown away by the opening shot. I'm getting shades of Cities:Skylines. This is going to take away the monopoly that EA holds on the life-sim genre and turn it on its head.

To me it looks like the spiritual successor to The Sims 3. It looks as though we're getting an open world and cars right off the bat like in Sims 3 in the base game. Also there's a shot of the realistic looking art-style that may put those who like Sims 4 off this game with the argument that it's uncanny valley.

I personally like the realistic style of this game and the various sections of this game that were teased show that Rod Humble (formerly of EA/Maxis on Sims 2 and Sims 3) was making sure that he envisioned a sequel to what he did with Maxis in Sims 3. And he mentioned in a number of interviews that he wanted to pursue deeper gameplay. And I think he's accomplished this with "Life By You".

Now Paradox's game Cities:Skylines tends to call their little people Cims as a sideways barb at Sims. So I'll continue to call Life By You's little people Cims in that same vein.

Most Sims 3 players who haven't migrated to Sims 4 have felt cast off by EA and perhaps ridiculed for continuing to play a game that by all intents and purposes has been considered by devs as "finished". Their opinion is: Time to kill that game and go onto the next one. Except that the next one hasn't met our expectations. I prefer Sims 3 and will continue to play Sims 3 until such time as Life By You is released. Then I expect that I will jump to that game.

Now five and a half months after Project Rene's announcement by EA, we still only have the furniture shots to go by and no actual view of any Sims that have been shown other than a leak on Reddit with some wireframe models, I don't see how Project Rene could be any better than what has been tabled by Life By You from Paradox. Understandably, Project Rene is still in early development, but they still have a lot of catching up to do. If I don't like the Sims, I'm definitely going with Cims from Life By You.

Certainly Sims 5/Project Rene is going to be a monumental project for the development team at Electronic Arts, but unless EA decides that they will cast off their business practices of releasing half-baked, buggy EPs and GPs, nothing will improve insofar as Simmers complaining about them and being rightfully annoyed at the lack of quality control. I'm pretty much done with EA and for the past 7 years I've hoped that somebody out there would come out with a true competition to the Sims franchise: to force it to step up to the plate and give us quality instead of tossing us a bone here and there and telling us to give them money. That tactic doesn't work insofar as making me open up my wallet.

With Rod Humble at the helm of Paradox Tectonic, I'm pretty sure that Life By You is Paradox's go for the jugular as far as life simulations to go after the market share that The Sims monopolizes and it's about time.

Happy Holidays.

SWTOR - The Latest Adventures with NikkeiSimmer's Claria Redsun.

Claria has been the main Pub-side protagonist (Jedi Consular - Shadow). Wielding a double-bladed lightsaber she has ascended the ranks of the Jedi from Padawan to Master and having learned the art of shielding against the Dark Side, she has become the Barsen'thor of the Jedi Order.

Many have fallen for her red tresses and striking green eyes, but she remains faithful that she can bring her love, Keron Yun, back from the clutches of the Dark Side. But he is a fearsome Dark Lord who has ascended the ranks of the Sith to the Dark Council and is now monikered as Darth Nox.

Even if Claria is successful at swaying her love from the Dark, it will still be a long and arduous road for Keron back to the Light Side.

What the Hell is Going On with Sims 3 Store?

Going back in to try to get CAW back, I run into this problem.

Evidently something's gone hinky with the store...because CAP (Create-A-Pattern) is still available, but the Error 404 on the Sims 3 Store with regards to CAW (Create-A-World) is annoying.

My friends are probably nervous when I start creating them in Sims 3

I have a tendency to make old schoolfriends for shits and giggles.

Of course, like his RL namesake...he's up to shenanigans.

...like scaring the shit out of Phil.

While I'm trying to rebuild my game, I'm basically trying to test everything that I put in. I have very few cc right at the moment, since my entire collection of cc got borked at the same time that my HDD drive bit the dust. I'm not happy about that, but I have one other HDD drive that I MIGHT be able to recover.

At least I don't have to listen to someone going, "You shoulda bought a Mac..." Yeah, shaddup, Noel..."

Found out that I'm going to have to redo all my Sims...

...mainly because the HDD drive is a) missing a cord that I need (it's busted), b) all my other stuff is on a 3.25" HDD on my laptop which I'm going to have to get another case for and turn that into an external. Otherwise...if I don't want to wait, I'm going to have to re-make ALL my sims all over again.

Joy of joys. Oh, well, it's gonna give me some time to get some stuff done in terms of remaking all the CC I had before, but hopefully, I won't go so crazy on it this time around...except for the hairs and all that.

Here's a few more pictures from the game that I'm using as a test-bed for what I plan to do with the Selfacy when I get it back to where I want it to be.

Given the right makeup, River's still pretty.

Added in some cc

Welcome, Tiny.

Meet Tiny our newest member of our digital family. And she is TINY

She’s a Dell Optiplex 3050 i5 6500T 2.5 GHz -3.1 GHz with turboboost. So she’ll be able to play Sims 3 and SWTOR. She is a stop-gap system till I make my gaming system. But it’s impossible not to fall in love with how cutely tiny she is. It’s a desktop computer you can move easily.

To give you an idea of just how tiny she is…. Well here’s my hand and that’s her, right under it. 🤣 Adorbs right?

Well she’s got 16 GBs of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB SSD under the hood. 😁 so for that little frame, she’s got a lot of punching power. 😁

Now, I’ll be setting her up tonight and downloading SWTOR then Sims 3. I’ll also be setting up Photoshop and Premiere Elements. Then linking up my USB external drive. Gotta pick up a powerbar tonight too.