MySims Kingdom Wii (and DS), My Sims PC preview

Yesterday (08-09-2008) DMS2c was invited to a producer tour of MySims Kingdom, MySims pc and MySims Kingdom for DS.
First Tim LeTourneau told us about MySims Kingdom

MySims Kingdom WII
If you’re thinking great another expansion, well then i’ve to disappoint you, because MySims Kingdom is a standalone game and it’s not like the 1st MySims game!
MySims Kingdom is a puzzle adventure game and is not really focused on building like the 1st game.
The game has some mini puzzles you need to solve to get further in the game.
Of course there are some sims you know from the original MySims game, like Buddy, Elmira, Violet and more, but there are also new sims like King Roland, Princess Butter and Gonk.
Also your sim is able to jump now and you’ll have to use it as well.

In MySims Kingdom you can choose to play a boy or a girl, that’s new

There are new outfits, new hairs and when you play the game you’ll unlock more clothing, but also furniture, walls and other stuff.

When you start the game a story will come up and tell you stuff about the game and your role in it.
It’s like opening a fairytale book and you become part of that fairytale.

You are a wandolier, and it’s your job to help King Roland and other people.

After the cut-scene you’ll begin in front of a house, where you’ll be given your 1st task.
The game is all about tasks and solving puzzles and of course saving the kingdom.
When you’re done your friend Buddy will give you another task.
During these tasks you’ll learn how to play the game and how to jump and stuff like that.
All these things come automatically and sometimes even with a cut-scene.

After that you’ll meet up with Lyndsay, she and Buddy will stay with you through the whole game.
And they will help you with advice and also bring a nice funny element to the game

Then it’s time to meet King Roland himself, and new sims of course.
King Roland turns out to be a funny guy as well.
After everyone is set you’ll be taken to a magical island where you’ll learn how to handle your wand.
When you play the game you’ll notice that you almost have no loading time between changing to the building mode or anything.
And mostly you’ll get a really funny cut-scene as well.

The Travelogue contains a lot of useful information, like the tasks you’re working on and more.
The currency they use is called Mana and you can collect Mana from shaking the trees.
But something has changed when you want to chop down the tree you really need to make chop movements!
You still need to collect essences and build things, but it all works to get further into the storyline.
You can also trade essences for Mana with Lyndsay.

These are the lands you can travel to and do tasks for sims.
There is a cutetopia, a spooky island and my personal favorite: an Island with Elves

On every island there are new and old sims you can talk with and get tasks from.
And of course Buddy and Lyndsay will follow you.
When you select an Island, you’ll get a funny cut-scene with the 3 sims on a boat.

When a sim has an exclamation point above their head they will have a task for you.
A funny twist will be the story of our favorite goth sim Violet, but you’ll have to find that out on yourself.

If you want to place anything you’ll need your wand, and for solving puzzles you’ll need it as well.

With the right amount of essences you can even get more power with your wand.
You can find essences on trees, in walls and of course you can treasure hunt for essences.

You can unlock several things, and to build / place them you’ll need the Mana.

You can build things on top of each other, and sometimes you’ll need to build stairs or bridges.

There are also some new things you can do between sims, this makes the game more fun.

Conclusion
MySims Kingdom is really different from MySims because of the puzzle element, it’s also funnier and the controls are still the same.
I doubted the original game of MySims but having played that game at home it changed my opinion completely, with MySims Kingdom i just know that if you liked the 1st MySims you’ll love this game as well.
Also because of the puzzle – adventure type gameplay it’s more fun to play, then just build stuff.

Then Erik Zwerling producer of MySims for the pc told us about this new game.

MySims PC

Well this looks familiar, and it is.
MySims for the pc is just like the WII version of it, but it has a little more then the WII version.

Ok a little recap, you’ll get into a town and sims have left, your the towns new builder and you need to build houses and furniture for the sims that want to live there.
Everyday new sims will arrive in the hotel and you decide which sims will live in your village.

In the pc version there are 5 new NPC’s, and 1 of them is Wendolyn, you might recognize her, because witches and warlocks in the Sims 2 apartment life can make a statue of her

Besides new NPC’s there are also some new things you can build.
But still the game is the same as the Wii version, except for 1 big thing!

With the pc version the trainstation has a purpose
Through it you can go online and chat and play online with your friends! For Free!

You can see which friends are online, and which are not.
To play online you either need to invite people or you need to get invited.
A total of 8 sims can play online together in a place called the garden.

You’ll need to know the exact MySims name of your friend, because it’s not like an online chatbox, it’s a private garden.
When you invite your friends you can exchange things you’ve made, or essences, just chat, play tag or even redecorate the 8 houses.
Only 1 person at a time can change a house.

There are also other structures so you can even play hide and seek as well.
There are over 50 new animations to the game.

Conclusion
MySims for the PC is really great due to the fact you can play with your friends online and you can really share your creations with everyone.
You can give things you’ve made to your friends or put them on a website for everyone to download.
The game is also laptop friendly, and the building system works the same as the building on the WII.

Then Tim told us a bit about the DS version of MySims Kingdom
We didn’t have a lot of time left so the information will be short.
The plot line is you’ve come to a kingdom and everything is gone, you need to fiend out who did it and why.
Through 9 mini games and talking to people you’ll need to solve this mystery!

The games will come out at the end of October.
Of course i propably forgot stuff to mention lol, but it gives you an idea about the games, well except for the DS game, we spend most of our time on the new WII MySims kingdom game.

We would like to thank Tim and Erik for telling us about these new games, and also we would like to thank EA Netherlands for the great day!

Sims 2 Apartment life preview

Last thurday DMS2C was invited to yet another preview of the latests expansion Apartment life, you can read all about it on our website
Here’s the direct link of the news page: http://dms2c.net/info/?p=220

Bye *Boing 33 kaas*

It’s been quite some time since i’ve posted here, i know But i’ve got my reasons, a very good one i might add!
Well the story i’m about too tell isn’t pretty, as usual like my post about my real life are a good news show
Ok the tittle, first off all kaas means cheese in Dutch so the tittle is: Bye *boing 33 cheese* weird tittle huh.
But some people know what it means, but for those who don’t i’ll explain it.
On Friday 24th of June i was invited for the 1st time to attend a meet & greet for the sims 2, it was the Nightlife presentation at that time.
We agreed to meet a bunch of other people who would go there as well, so we set up a rendez-vouz at Schiphol (a big airport in Amsterdam)
When you park your car in the garage there all the rows have numbers and pictures, like windmills, cows and cheese.
I parked my car at row 33 Cheese.
The Nightlife presentation was held at boing avenue so i kept saying *boing 33 cheese* i thought it was funny, still think it’s kind off funny
I didn’t had my car that long so *boing 33 cheese* became the nickname of my car.
Yeah i’m weird i know, but you should have know that already by now
So my Renault Clio Symbol 1.2 was called *boing 33 cheese* from that time on.
And now he’s no longer with us well he still is he hasn’t been demolished (yet).
So what happened?

On Friday 20th of June i had a car accident, how? I was going home from work, and because they’re working on a sort of highway right now i have to ride through the town to get out of it, and a lot of people had to do the same thing.
Unfortunately for me some people didn’t know the way, so what happened was that the signs we’re too late, and people had to switch lanes very fast, so they just switched lanes and we all had to hit the breaks.
The last part went wrong, well i hit the breaks but it was already too late and then b00m, i parked my car in the rear off the car before me.
Immediately my car started smoking from the engine and inside as well, so i got out of the car as fast as i could.
Thankfully he didn’t blew up.
Then all sorts of thoughts entered my mind, i didn’t know what to do.
After a few seconds i pulled myself together and realised that i should be lucky that i didn’t had any injuries, the man who i bumped into didn’t have anything either.
The weird thing is that my car was fully checked a week before the accident and they had replaced the direction indicator hood, and that was still intact, but the other parts of my hood were bumped.
To give you an image of what it looks like, see the 2 pictures below:

To make a long story short, i heard the next monday that it would be to expensive to let *boing 33 cheese* be repaired, the costs were to high and since it was an old car it wasn’t worth it.
So i had to get a new car i really didn’t want to get a new car because i really liked this one, and it was still a good car (especially when you look from it’s back now )
So i needed a new car, a safe one with big bumpers please
Fortunately for me the garage had a nice car, that wasn’t to expensive.
So now i’ve got a Peugeot 106 it has some nice features more then that my old car had.
But the best thing of this new car is it’s color: Rouge Lucifer
To make a long story even shorter (i’m very good at it ) i’ve got my new car and it already has a nickname!
I had the nickname even before i was sure i was the new owner of it!
Well world meet Lucifer

The roads are officially unsafe again

I had a lot more then this but i did something wrong and the whole post was gone gheheh, i’ll try to push the right button next time
But the most important stuff is in it now

pictures

I’ve added pictures to the MySims preview, thank you Starrats!

MySims preview

Preview in Dutch

On Monday June 4 DMS2C was invited for a preview of MySims! for the WII and the DS. Because there was an embargo on this preview we weren’t allowed to post about it until today.
Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures because our camera is broken, but when the other previews come online you can look at their photo’s (links will follow shortly)
Also we didn’t get a real impression of the DS version because there was only 1 DS, so this preview is mostly about the WII version.
Pictures in this preview are used with permission of starrats!

The MySims preview was held in Utrecht, and it was lead by Tim LeTourneau and by Robin Hunicke ( she also worked on the sims 2, her first experience with the sims 2 was with the expansion pack OFB, she worked on the crafting tables)

MySims is really different then what we are used to of a sims version, this is mostly because MySims is designed for Nintendo.
Because Nintendo is Japanese the sims look a little Japanese as well.
When you start with the game it’s really weird because they don’t really look like the sims we know, but after a while you start getting used to them and they’re just sims again.

The game is played in a ghost town, well at first because when you start playing the town get’s more alive.
The goal is to rebuild the town again, a 5 star town to be exact.
You start the game by creating your sim.

You create your sim in a sort of cas, but it’s different the the cas of the sims 2, you’re not getting a screen with all the clothing that’s in the game, but you have to click your way through it until you see something you like.
You can change your sim just by clicking on it, head, hair, clothes.
When you start a new game you only have a little selection of options you can choose from, but when you start to play it you’ll get more options.
There are a lot of clothes and hair styles you can unlock during the game.
You can also change the voice of your sim, there are 5 voices and you can make them very high or low.
There isn’t an option to choose a male or female sim, you just create a sim that looks male of female.

When your done creating your sim you can go into town. The fun thing is that in MySims you’re not bound to a house, but you can walk freely through the town! And even better, you can create all the furniture and houses yourself! YES ALL!!! You have a workshop, there you can create the furniture with help of a blueprint.
Again when you first start the game the blueprint will be rather simple but as you progress in the game you’ll unlock new blueprints to create the weirdest looking furniture you’ve ever seen, or not if you just want normal furniture.
After creating you give it a texture, again it’s limited at first.

The goal of the game is to get your town rated with 5 stars, this means the town is living again. To get stars you need to fulfill tasks from other sims who live in your town.

The 1st sim you’ll meet is Poppy, the local florist, she’s going to ask you to make her something. To make objects you need essence, there are many different sorts of essences, you can get essences by making a sim happy, or sad or later in the game you unlock special essences fields.
The game doesn’t have a money currency, you collect the things you need or just steal them.
When you’ve accepted Poppy’s task you can go to your workshop to build the object she wants.
In your workshop you’ll get a blueprint of the object you need to build, you can use blocks to build the object.

There are a lot of different types of blocks so you can create everything like chairs, tables, beds and tv’s.
Now you can decide if you want to make Poppy the thing she wants and make her happy or just create something you like!
If you create the thing Poppy wants you’ll get a nice happy looking town, if you create somethings people don’t want your town with get a Gothic look.

Whatever you choose it’s going to determine the type of sims that want to live in your town, also you decide which sims are going to live in your town.
When sims want to live in your town they’ll go to the hotel, from there you can decide whether they’re going to live in it or not.
There are about 80 NPC’s in this game.

Besides the furniture you also create all the houses in the game, you can also redesign the houses that are already in the game.
Again you build the houses with blocks, when you start to build a house you’ll see a green grid where you can build your house on, there are a lot of creations you can make with different sizes of blocks, but you can’t make something like a cathedral.
It’s very easy to build a house, you just put the blocks on the grid and give it a nice color.
You’ll get more colors during the game, there is also a lot of decoration for around the houses and you can even place things on the roof.
You can build a 1st floor, but there are no stairs in the game, so it’s there only for decoration.

The gameplay is very easy, you meet new sims, you talk to them and ask them what they want, then you’re going to collect the things you need to make the object, after collecting everything you’ll go to your workshop and create it, then give it back to the sim.
At first the tasks will be easy, but the further you get the harder they’ll be!

There’s also a garden where you can make essences grow, we’ve been told that it’s possible to grow an eyeball tree for a specific kind of essence.
You can also chop down your trees to make room for new trees. You just plant the seeds and give it water and a new tree will start to grow immediately!

It’s a single player game, and you only play with the sim you’ve made, there is no family connections and the sims don’t have needs.
At one point in the game you’ll get a costume shop, there you can give your sim a new outfit, you can dress your sim up as a social bunny, or the cute panda bear suits for toddlers, or just dress your sim up like a pirate or a princes.

There is no connectivity possible between the DS and the WII, because they’re both different games.

In the DS version you control a holiday island and you need to satisfy all the people who come there for a holiday.
The DS versions also has mini games.

A release date isn’t known at this time, but it should be somewhere this fall.

Conclusion:
MySims is a very fun game, especially for someone who’s never played the sims on the pc. For the sims 2 players it will be getting used to because of the graphics of this game. Whether “die hard” simsfans will like this game really depends on the simsfan.
A really great aspect about the WII version is that you can create new furniture without using other programs to make new meshes.

Of course we would like to thank EA Benelux for inviting us, and giving us a great afternoon in Utrecht!

DeKDeS with producer Robin

Altador Cup

Finally after waiting so many months the Altador Cup on Neopets has started again.
It started last year as a parody on the WC soccer, but now it seems to be a tradition in Neopia.
Unfortunately i couldn’t play much last year, because i’m a rather big soccer fan (Italy world champion!!!! One year later and i’m still having fun because of that )

This year they’ve really changed the Altador Cup, we have a new team (Shenkuu, well they needed to at it because we discovered it with last years plot) and there are also new balls (well yooyu’s actually )
But now you can really “feel” the difference between the yooyu’s, if you could win a match with 12-0 last year, you’re going to be smashed this year, they really made it more difficult, and the difference between the yooyu’s is also working.
The fun thing is that almost everyone on Neopets is playing the AC (short for Altador Cup )and all the players are developing a carpal tunnel syndrome.
I think i got mine last year of playing to much Yooyuball
Yooyuball is really great because it’s almost like a soccer game, well except for the offside (this is very easy for the children and women who don’t know anything about soccer ) and they don’t have corners or throw ins, no the yooyu is in the game all time.
The purpose of the game? Well score more then you opponent, makes sense………………….
Although the game is rather simple it’s still addictive and because a lot of teams playing who Neopia is divided.
Just like last year, i’m playing for Altador, why…. well maybe it’s because of the similarity of the natives with the old greek – roman civilization, so a nickname for Altador is TOGA

So if you happen to have an account on Neopets and you’re not playing support Altador you’re also invited to join the TOGA guild

Oh yeah more troubles at work today, it was really a mess. A colleague has heard that she needs to start her new job this Monday
So that’s really bad for me and someone else because now we have to practically run the department and she only works 2 days so that means that i’m alone 3 days, and then i’ve got to run the show, but i’ve only been working there since January
Oh well it will all turn out just fine when everyone is at home with a burnout

Always look on the bright side of……. work?

Finally after many weeks we would get an answer about who will be fired from their job, well at least that’s what they told us.

Here’s a little background info. I work in a Hospital in the Netherlands, and like most companies these days (yes the hospital is sort of a company believe me) the hospital has financial problems. Nobody knows why this has happened (well unnecessary moving of departments and unnecessary rebuilds of departments, or a operation centre that was really expensive and where they have only 1 operation a week….. must i continue?).
Well let’s just say the Ceo finally found out that the hospital has a lot of debts, and how do they solve it?
They want to save money on materials and personnel.
In December 2006 a reorganisation was held, they looked at the departments if they could do the same work with less people.
And so a number of people was considered unneeded, me included.
But like most unneeded employees i still work at the hospital.
Somewhere in April they told the personnel that the hospital was in serious trouble and that at least 255 jobs would disappear. The problem is that most jobs are done by more people so the number of people that actually have to leave will be higher then 255.

So now the latest developments, the unions don’t agree with forced dismissals, and the works council doesn’t trust the situation anymore, so nobody knows what’s going on. But today would make a difference.
So the whole department had to go to the chapel (they must have chosen that location so we would curse, or that’s what they believe )
It’s quite a walk to the chapel from out department, so we left early and went into the elevator…………

WRONG

That moment my worst fear became reality, we were stuck in the elevator, 13 people
We should have gone up but we went down instead, and then the lift didn’t go up anymore and the doors would open either.
Then someone saw a very little sign that only 6 people were allowed in the elevator
It was such a small sign, make it bigger! But we were still trapped.
A colleague thought to be funny and started jumping :0
It’s always been my fear to get stuck in an elevator and being claustrophobic doesnt help either.
Luckily for us someone from technical service was nearby, so we were stuck for about 5 minutes or so, but it felt much much longer.

Finally we got out, but we still needed to go up, so most people took the stairs
In the chapel we got an envelope with a paper inside with the amount of jobs that would have to disappear.
I was already out, but from my old department people still have to leave.
Also my old chef has to leave, almost every chef has to leave.

Conclusion: we still don’t know anything, but for now the forced dismissals are canceled due to the unions.
But everyone is encouraged to seek another job.
Well i hope i’ll have another job soon, preferably one where i don’t need to use elevators

Post added

In February DMS2C was invited to a sneak preview of The Sims 2 Seasons, i made the Dutch preview but my boyfriend DeKDeS made an English preview, i’ve added this to my blog as well.
DMS2C goes Seasons!

Waiting For This Moment

I think this is one of the best songs in the Tarzan musical

Jane:
Carila papaya
Bixa orellana
Callistemon linearis
Campanula incurva
I know you all

 

Oh, I’ve been waiting for this moment
Oh, it seems like all my life
Here I am – my head is spinning
Because I’m finally living the life that I dreamed
It seems I’ve been waiting forever

 

Mimulus aurantiacus
Pedicularis attollens
Boehmeria tricuspis
I always knew you’d be this beautiful

 

Here and now nothing matters
Everything I wanted’s here
I feel at home, I’ve found my place
All this beauty before me was out of my reach
I never imagined such wonder

 

All these friends, I feel like I know them oh so well
And though it’s strange I feel they know me too

 

There’s something strangely intoxicating
And it’s going to my head
That makes me feel oh so alive
I could stay here forever and never need more
Embracing these wonders of nature

 

Calliandra hustoniana
Campanula barbata
Babiana rubrocyanea
Campanula fragilis
Calycanthus occidentalis
Gentiana saxosa

 

Oh these friends, it seems like I know them oh so well
And I can see that, ooh, they want to know me too

 

It’s such a liberating feeling
And it’s happening to me
I’ve never felt this glow inside

 

New, exciting, inviting, wanting to play
I cannot resist this temptation, temptation

Me Jane you Tarzan

Yesterday it was finally mother and daughter day again.
Well we started this new tradition last year, because my mother never knows what she wants for mothers day, so we went to the Lion King last year.
I just realised that i never blogged about that
Oh well so we went to Scheveningen and the weather was really beautiful.
The first thing we did was drink some coffee lol, after that we went for a walk on the promenade and of course watching people
The weird thing was that some people were almost naked while other people had sweaters on
So what do you do on a promenade? Ah yes of course shopping LOL me and shopping that’s not a good match.
But hej it’s a special day so shopping is part of it as well.
About 6 pm we went to the same restaurant we ate last year.
The food was good as usual, and then it was finally time, the reason why we went to Scheveningen.
We went to see Tarzan the musical

The ticket said that we must be on time, because the opening would be spectacular.
And it was I’ve seen some musicals, but this musical really gets your attention when it starts.
Unfortunately some people can’t read and always come late, so you have to stand up to let them through and miss something
Really it said on the ticket BE ON TIME, but no some people always have to…………. ugh never mind.
The musical was really fantastic, you need extra eyes and ears!
Luckily we had the 2 Dutch stars of Tarzan, Ron link as Tarzan and Chantal Janzen as Jane.
I’m not going to tell to much about it, because it will spoil all the fun if you still need to see it
Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, but at the end the cast got a well deserved standing ovation!
So what to do next? Of course more shopping But this time it was more fun, shopping for Tarzan goodies
I’ve bought a lot of stuff as usual lol, and of course the official CD, that’s also great (i’ve been listening to it all evening )

After we did our shopping we went for a drink in the bar, because everyone runs to their car after the show and they all want to leave at the same time.
So we were drinking our coffee and talking about how great the musical was, and then Chantal Janzen walks into the bar :O
OMG i almost lost my mind, ghehe i’m weird i know.
I tell my mother, look it’s Chantal Janzen :O my mother start laughin and says that i should ask for an autograph.
NOOOO WAAAYYYY i’m not going to do that LOL, sure i can ask Tim LeTourneau if he wants to be on a picture with me but asking Chantal an autograph that’s to scary for me
But i got her autograph A real autograph of Chantal Janzen on my program book
I was as happy as a little kid in a candy store.
After that it was time to go home, around 2 am i was finally in bed, tired but satisfied.
My mother and i decided that we want to see the musical Tarzan again, but this time the men may come along
I really hope they like it as much as we do.

Dutch Tarzan Commercial

I’ve read on the internet that some people who have seen the Broadway version of Tarzan like the Dutch version better
Oh yes welcome to my first post at wordpress