Preview Event: The Sims 3 Supernatural

Hello!

I was lucky enough to go play The Sims 3 Supernatural in London yesterday and asked the Sims 3 community here to give me some questions and some things to look out for.
The answers are in the order I wrote the questions down which are in the order that they were posted, FYI :)
Scroll down for info on the new CAS items and for information on Bonehilda.
So, here is what I found:

• The Lunar Cycle doesn't really seem to have an effect at all unless it's a full moon however when it is the New Moon some SN Sims will have a 'Missing the Moon' negative moodlet.
• You can control the types of Sims that spawn in your neighbourhood but only in a discontinuous sort of way. In the options menu you can tick/untick what you wanted. There was the option for 'Pets', 'Horses' and 'Celebrities' but they were greyed out due to missing expansions. There was only one option for Vampires which means LN vampires are really no different from SN vampires.
• The magic mirror had interactions like 'Admire Me' and 'Chat to' and it also had 'Magical Makeover' which could pretty much make over your Sim to be all flash and handsome or put their moods right down.
• I realised that curses were negative, and charms were positive. All of them are only temporary though.
• There was a Velvet Lounge that looked like it was designed for the vampires and a few other community lots that looked Sim-specific.
• The new music type was called Dark Wave.
• The phonebooths are like teleportation pads for the Sims and are dotted around the neighbourhood much like the subway stations are in LN.
• There is a skill for broom riding but it only builds in the arena, I think as a hidden skill. The arena had options like 'Joy Ride' and 'Do Stunts for Tips' or something similar to that. It kind of looked like a Quidditch pitch too and the broomsticks had the feet-holders like the Harry Potter broomsticks do.
• You can now make ghosts in CAS and choose their type of death. From what I saw there were 5 new deaths: watery grave, human statue, transmuted, haunting curse and jelly bean death. Jelly bean death is just eating from the jelly bean plant and one of the jelly beans will eventually kill your Sim.
• You can harvest honey from bees yourself. One of the new CAS hats was a bee net thing and you could buy beehives in the Buy Mode section.
• Zombies can't really do much of anything, but if a Sim is turned into a zombie it only lasts for around 2 days then wears off again. However when it is the full moon zombies will spawn around the neighbourhood that will always be a zombie.

CAS Items

• These are the new items for female adults in CAS: 16 tops, 11 bottoms, 7 outfits, 2 shoes, 13 hairs.

The tops mostly were just to suit certain species, like ripped up tops for zombies and majestic-looking ones for vampires. There were some normal looking tops in it though. There was only two new shoes; a boot like one and a dolly shoes type one. The hairs were all quite short or quite voluminous.

• Items for male adults: 17 tops, 9 bottoms, 1 outift, 1 shoe, 11 hairs. The hairs for males were quite short and there was one hairstyle that looked awfully like a famous vampire in popular culture these days ...

Bonehilda

• Bonehilda can be bought in Buy Mode via her coffin.
• The only interactions she had were 'Chat' and 'Dismiss'
• When a Sim interacts with her she did not show up in the relationship panel.

Other Info

• When a fairy walks she walks like a normal Sim and but when set to 'Run' she will fly instead. The wings don't move at a faster rate though.
• Moonlight Falls had no past pre-made Sim families that I recognised but it did have a family of ghosts from the Goth family. There was a zombie who popped up on my lot that was also a fairy called 'Oberon Summerdream' though.
• I thought there were quite a few references to media figures. Bewitched, Twilight, Toy Story, Sabrina and Being Human being some of them.

All in all I'd say this expansion pack is a lot of fun and worth the money.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask here or on the forum topic.

Thanks for reading!

Elder Scrolls Online Announced

Bethesda have announced today that they are making an online game set in the Elder Scrolls universe. It wasn't much of a shock to most of the community but hey, it's still good to hear an official announcement.

It's the first project made by Zenimax Online Studios and is said to be set a waay before the events of Skyrim or even indeed of Oblivion and Morrowind and will be about Prince Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of domination and enslavement of mortals. So it doesn't bode well for the mortals in this game.

It's said to involve three player factions, PvP combat and areas such as Skyrim, Cyrodiil and Elsweyr. According to the Kotaku article there have been rumours that the three factions will be represented by a lion, a dragon and a bird of prey.

Even better is that a teaser trailer will be up tomorrow. Bethesda have been busy, haven't they?

Sources:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/03/elder-scrolls-online-announced-an-mmo-set-in-the-world-of-skyrim/
http://kotaku.com/5907372/the-elder-scrolls-online-coming-next-year
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/03/june-cover-revealed-the-elder-scrolls-online.aspx

Skyrim DLC Announced 'Dawnguard'

So today the first Skyrim DLC has been announced with little more than a picture of the typical Helmed Nord with the word 'Dawnguard' underneath. Not much to go on, huh?
Something to take note of, however is the glowing eyes. Kind of reminds me of a Draugr personally except a yellow hue instead of blue.
Others have speculated that Dawnguard could have something to do with Dawnstar and its museum, especially the bit about the Mythic Dawn (remember them?).
One attentive player even found these files referring to snow elves (ancestors of the Falmer) and crossbows inside the Creation Kit.

So who knows what this DLC will be about. Considering Bethesda promised expansion pack-like DLC we should be able to expect quite a lot.

Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend (27 April) First Impressions

So I caved and pre purchased Guild Wars 2 Normal Edition in order to take part in the beta event last weekend.


My first impression was that loads was happening. Gosh I didn't know where to look first (luckily a guy shouting and waving at me pointed me in the right direction). Here are my first few impressions I got in the first five or so hours I played (if you just want an overall impression scroll down to the bold bit):

Controls: You can jump! And swim! It was amazing being able to do such things and were quite intuitive. I did change the assigned button for Jump from space to page down, however as I didn't want to move my hand to much for such a handy movement (and I play left handed). The new dodge movement was useful and only required a double tap on the arrow keys - saved my life a couple of times. Swimming was good too with the respective buttons to make you go up or down quite easily.

Interface: The interface was confusing at first. I was an Elementalist and so was confused when I tried to equip my Glyph skill as well as my brand new healing spell and found out I could only have one. Hm. The energy bar disappeared, as far as I could tell so I was dishing out skills like there was no tomorrow.

Storyline: The story started officially with the cinematic, which was different for everyone depending on what race and background you chose. I looked at human for both 'grew up in the city as nobility' and 'grew up on the streets'. You were shown certain characters in the opening cinematic who looked like they were to become important characters to you (like Fable). I only managed to see one of the three I was shown who had a bit of an Elliot feel to him from Fable 3. The only thing I missed was the few characters I came across did seem to feel a little shallow, with not much personality to them. But this isn't a RPG I suppose.

Professions: I only tried out the Elementalist profession, my favourite and the Thief profession.
    Elementalist: The energy bar seemed to have been ditched so instead of normal attacks with my staff/stave/whatever I just continuously barraged my foe with the first skills in my list. I couldn't use any other skills until I had gained enough EXP (I think that was what it was based upon) which unlocked the next one in the list, than the next and so forth. Some of the skills were awesome though.
   Thief: I didn't get to play this one as much (damn university exams) but it was loads of fun. It almost replaced Elementalist as my favourite. When I attacked with my dagger (I only had one at first) a could keep clicking on my first skill to build up a combo that steadily made more damage or added a condition such as bleeding. When I wanted to gain some health a nifty stealth skill was available which enabled me to turn invisible for a little bit while I regenerated health.

Character creation: The choices this time were a lot larger. You were able to modify how your character looked quite carefully with lots more skin tone, hair and eye colours. The hairs were nice too and were animated well when you moved the model around. Some of the hairs, however did look a bit naff but hey - it's in beta still, right?


So all in all I absolutely adored playing the game. I died countless times and ended up just in my underwear at one point (your armour disappears, literally if it gets broken). It was incredibly laggy, but considering the popularity of the beta that was understandable. The controls were easy to understand and the story was intriguing.


So that's my first impression of Guild Wars 2. If you want to know any more feel free to ask in the comments below.


PS: The swimming! It was so fun (and pretty). Just watch out for the Barracudas.