The Sims 3 - The Best Money Maker

30 May 2009

It’s writing. Explanation:

With the right traits and rewards, you can write 1 Romance book in about 2 days and assume it’s a best-seller, it’ll give you around $5.000 a week for 6 weeks.

That’s $30.000 for 2 days work (it takes some time to collect, though)

Additionally, you can basically write 4 books per week (even 5 if you work hard enough)

Assume that most of them are Best-Seller (believe me, it’s easy to write a best seller than you may think), you’ll get around $5.000*4*6 = $120.000 per week.

With that much money, you can invest (and should) on businesses for even more profit and it's take so little time that it won't effect your writing career.

In the end, you can easily make $200.000 per week with ONE SIM forever (with the help of Ambrosia)

If you find a way to earn more than that, make sure to let me know.

The Sims 3 - Ambrosia

27 May 2009

Required Skills: Cooking (lv 10), Gardening (lv 7), Fishing
Required Items: DeathFish, Life Fruit, Ambrosia Recipe

Reasons:
-Cooking (lv 10) to learn the Recipe
-Fishing to fish DeathFish (higher lv to have better chance)
-Gardening (lv 7) to grow Life Plant (which give Life Fruit)

How to obtain?
-DeathFish: Fish at the Graveyard after 2 a.m using: Cheese (buy at grocery) => Alley Catfish => AngelFish => DeathFish
-Life Fruit: collected somewhere (Collector Helper really help here) or from Science Career (9)
-Ambrosia Recipe: Buy at the Grocery ($12.000)

What it does?
-Make your Sims young forever.
-Revive your Ghost Sims.
-Give +75 Mood Boost for 7 days.
-Make you feel acomplished. (The real you, not your Sims)

The Sims 3

19 May 2009

The Good: stay true to the series, a lot of choices, more realistic.

The Bad: the graphics is kind of the same as The Sims 2 and I don't know why it run much slower

The sequel of one of the most popular computer games. The 3rd version of the series has many improvements over the last one but its still stay true to the formula: you create sims and have them interact with the other sims.

To create a sim, you’ll have a lot of choices this time. There are 6 life spans: Toddler, child, teenager, young adult, adult and elder. Younger sims have fewer choices than older ones. You can customize many appearance feature, ranging from skin color (yes, you can finally officially create a sim with alien green skin) to tiny moles.


That’s the physical side. Now, we’ll go on the mental side. This is where The Sims 3 different from The Sims 2. Instead of the confusing point based system, you get the traits that help you give your sims personality.


There are a lot of traits to choose from. You can create a sim with positive traits or a sim with negative traits like lucky and unlucky, good and evil. Yes, this is The Sims, not a MMORPG game where you try hard to make your character more powerful. Here, you create your character just for fun; there are really no competitions, just your fun. You can create a horrible sim and watch him suffer. There is no right or wrong choices, just choices.

The relationship system works a lot different this time (and more realistic). Now, you can’t just interact with one sim constantly and expect to see your relationship rise magically. Instead, you have to learn their personality (traits) to become their friend. Friends are important in certain careers just like in real life.


There is no “invisible barrier” that keeps you in your lot. Your sim can travel around his/her neighborhood and you can just follow them as they walk, no more loading screen and the town became really alive as there are many activities taken simultaneously.

Your sim are not alone here. You can mix variety of sims to one lot. What’ll happen if you put one police and one criminal into one house? That’s what The Sims series is about. It’s the interaction of Sim and see what will happen if…

The Sims 3 is an interesting game. It fixed many limitations of the series. I recommended to buy The Sims 3 if you like a game just to relax, not for competition (and, if you like The Sims 2, then its a much buy title). If you like competition, then, don't buy this game as it'll be a waste of money.

Battlestations: Pacific

13 May 2009

The Good: unique gameplay

The Bad: outdated graphics, extremely difficult to play (and enjoy)

Battlestations: Pacific is a very innovative game that offers an unique feature: it's a strategy game with the ability to control your units directly like simulation games.



The ability to control your unit directly sounds really cool for a strategy game that make me wonder why this idea turn out this late in the gaming industry (that is in my knowledge, please forgive my ignorance if there are other games like this one). But in reality, Battlestations: Pacific just does it the wrong way.


You may think something like "Wow! I can destroy them with my awesome skills personally rather than just sit back and rely on that stupid machine to shoot them at my orders". Well, you can really do that for sure. But Battlestations: Pacific will make you practice too much. When you're able to pull off something like that, it's just not as awesome as before and you feel a bit tired of the game itself.

Why? Because Battlestations: Pacific just makes it too hard to control the unit yourself. It's not impossible to control your units better than your computer; it's just too hard to do so.



Aside from that, Battlestations: Pacific is just your standard strategy or simulation game without anything to offer. My recommendation: you buy it if you think it's look interesting or just to satisfy your curiosity (or rent it if it's legal for you)

The Last Remnant (PC)

10 May 2009

The Good: Interesting fantasy setting, very good story, innovative combat system and level up process, wonderful music, one of the very few JRG that hit the PC in the recent years (if you don't count games that can run through emulation)

The Bad: Overcomplicated combat system, the story became dull after the first play through, not much side quest (as compare to games such as Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3), buggy leveling system that can make the game unplayable

As expected from Square Enix, The Last Remnant is a very story driven JRPG. The main character named Rush (yes, you can't change his name). He's a young (happened to be) hero that begin his journey to save his sister and eventually stumble upon political struggle that center around Remnants - the powerful artifacts with great magical power that give the game a name to called. Yes, It's not very interesting but as the story go on, you will surely think otherwise.

The world is constructed very well with a lot of sightseeing. The graphics' also impressive as it use the powerful Unreal 3 engine (although it's buggy for some systems, I'm not sure it's because of the engine or not but I do not suffer from other games that use the same engine).

The game combat system is really hard to learn but also very interesting. At first, you will control a handful of characters and the fact that you cannot control precisely how they act can be very frustrating. But as the game move on, you will happy with it simple because you cannot (and surely don't want to) control 18 character at the same time.

There are three main paths for Rush to chose (he can learn nearly anything you want him to learn, as oppose to these not-very-important-characters): Weapon Arts, Mystics (magic) and Item Arts. The way to train is up for you to decide as there are many sub-paths in these three main-paths, which make a very complicated class system (one of the most complicated out there)

If you are willing to seriously learn how to play a game, then the depth of The Last Remnant will be very satisfying. Although hard to learn, this is a great game once you get through that barrier and enjoy the game itself.

Velvet Assassin

9 May 2009

The Good: beautiful graphics, realistic atmosphere, interesting music

The Bad: Bad level design, terrible AI, a lot of bugs

At first, the game seems to be a shining gem of the stealth action genre. Actually, it turns out to be really shining, in a way of its own: as you hidden in the shadow, you will be shining as an indication that you are hidden. Yes, it's just like that and it's even more unrealistic than Splinter Cell shining Mobile.

Aside from that, Velvet Assassin also suffer from really bad AI. The enemies hardly do anything more that scripted. They patrol with a predetermined path and just stick with it, no variation or anything fancy.

As you sneaking around, you'll have to stick to the shadows. If you wander just a little, they will see you no matter how far or dark. And the fact that there is nearly realistic damage system will make Velvet assassin much harder.


Aside from these problems, Velvet Assassin is an interesting Steath Action game. You play as an Allied agent in WW2. Although Velvet Assassin did not bring anything new to the genre, it sticks with the genre. Velvet Assassin borrows most of its gameplay from big names such as Splinter Cell, Thief and Hitman.

Although buggy, Velvet Assassin is a good game in the genre. If you are fan of Stealth Action, this game is recommended (just because there are none Stealth Action game lately that I'm aware of). If you're not, then this is not the game that will lead you to the Stealth Action realm.

X-men Origins: Wolverine (PC)

8 May 2009

The Good: Bloody, brutal action, not that bad for a movie-related game, a few interesting boss battles.

The Bad: Repetitive, nothing innovative, gamepad problems.

The healing factor in X-men Origins: Wolverine make Wolverine nearly unkillable with a very interesting visual effect. As Wolverine damaged, he lose his skin and muscle. Eventually, you will see his organs and skeletal. The healing will reverse this process. But this process is flawed because sometime you will see that Wolverine's health bar is full but you can see his injuries. Anyway, this feature really put a new concept into the healing system (although I don't think it's suitable for other games out there because it's just too mutant-like)


Good varieties of enemies and location will make X-men Origins: Wolverine must more interesting to hack and slash. Boss battles just feel the same over and over

Interesting combos make playing Wolverine feels powerful. You can chain nearly any attack into combos. However, it's nothing spectacular or stylish as Devil May Cry.


X-men Origins: Wolverine is a really good game for a movie translation. The fact that the PC version is the same as the ps3 and x360 versions clearly makes it much more superior than the recent superhero games out there.

Fallout 3 - Broken Steel Perks

Level 22:
-Deep-Sleep: You get the Well Rested benefit of +10% XP for eight hours no matter what bed you sleep in.
-Puppies! : If Dogmeat dies, you'll be able to get a new canine companion from his litter of puppies. Just wait a bit, and you'll find your new furry friend waiting outside Vault 101.
-Quantum-chemist (Science 70): Every 10 Nuka-Colas you acquire are automatically converted into a Nuka-Cola Quantum

Level 24:
-Devil 's Highway (not Very Evil) : Karma is instantly set to Very Evil.
-Escalator to Heaven (not very good): Karma is instantly set to Very Good.
-Karmic-Rebalance (not Neutral) Karma is instantly set to Neutral.
-No-Weakneses: All SPECIAL stats lower than 5 become 5.

Level 26:
-Nerves of steel (AG 7): Action Points regenerate faster.
-Rad-tolerance (EN 7): No effects from minor radiation poisoning.
-Warmonger (IN 7): All custom weapon types become available to you without the schematics.

Level 28:
-Party-Boy / Girl Party: You no longer suffer the withdrawl effect from alcohol addiction.
-Rad-absorption (EN 7): Radiation level slowly decreases automatically over time.

Level 30:
-Almost Perfect: All main SPECIAL stats are raised to 9.
-Nuclear-Anomaly: Whenever your health is reduced to 20 or less, you will erupt into a devastating nuclear explosion affecting enemies and allies alike.

Source: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Broken_Steel, edited by Me

Fallout 3 - Broken Steel DLC

Broken Steel is the third Fallout 3 downloadable content pack, released on May 5, 2009 for the Xbox 360 and May 5th, 2009 for Games for Windows Live. The DLC costs 800 Microsoft points. After difficulties with the initial download for PC users it was re-released for Games for WIndows Live on May 7th, 2009.

In this DLC pack, the player will join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all.

In addition to amending the main quest to let players continue their adventures after the end of the main quest and raising the level cap to 30, Broken Steel's quest line is of the same length as the ones of Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt. In order to access the new story content from Broken Steel, the player has to have finished the main storyline from the base game. However, the level cap expansion will take effect upon installation of the DLC, so players previously stalled at level 20 will once again accumulate XP even if they haven't finished the main storyline.

Broken Steel also adds a couple of new side quests, most of which have to do with escorting freshly processed clean water across the Wasteland and protecting it from Raiders. Broken Steel takes about five hours to complete and side missions could take up to an hour to finish.

The third DLC for Fallout 3 adds new enemies including Albino Radscorpions, Feral Ghoul Reavers, Super Mutant Overlords and Enclave Hellfire Troopers. These are equipped with new armor and weaponry which the player can acquire. Broken Steel also adds several new perks to cover the additional 10 levels as well as new encounters.

The player's action throughout Fallout 3 is woven into some of the quests in Broken Steel. For example, if the player decides to infect Project Purity with the modified FEV, it will affect how the Capital Wasteland looks as well as the interactions with the local inhabitants.

Source: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Broken_Steel