When Kara is not generating human beings, I understand she plays a fair bit of The Sims. Outside of Kings Quest VI, it's the only game Brenna has ever genuinely tolerated. I've played a fair bit of the new one myself, but it's not wrong to say that I mostly watch television. That is to say, I watch sims watch television, because apparently just watching regular television isn't lazy enough. I watch television by proxy.

The primary feature Brenna was looking for in The Sims 2 isn't there, which is the ability to put furniture in the corner, facing a room. There are hearth configurations she can't manifest in the game, which strikes her as criminal act. For my part, there's a lot more "game" there - in addition to whatever short and long term goals you have established on your own, each sim has a series of wants and fears that need to be managed. You'll find that these things are correlated a lot, in that you'll have a teenaged sim that is extremely enthusiastic about kissing girls but also mortally terrified of being refused. Not really anything I need to explain, there.

Everything else just has greater depth: if you buy a couch, you can choose different upholstery and woodgrain options. There's a fairly elaborate (at least, by my standards) "make-up" option when creating your sims now. You have absolute control over their facial bone structure. When you want to cook something to eat, you aren't limited to "dinner" or something like that, there are a host of menu items based on your cooking skill. Anyway, yes. It's a better dollhouse than the first one, which will either attract or repel you. That's all you really need to know.

I've completed the main campaign in Dawn of War, but that doesn't mean I'm particularly dedicated - unlike offerings from Blizzard, which I will admit are almost ridiculously elaborate, Dawn of War has a single campaign which is only ten or eleven missions long. The campaign hits all the right notes though, as far as the setting is concerned, but I'm really not satisfied. I don't feel like I wasted my money, I feel like I want another "helping." The game is from Relic as you'll recall - Relic, who gave an entire RTS expansion away for free. Hopefully they will recall some of that old benevolence and dish it up.

Though the game in the box is already terribly amusing, as a fan of 40k in general my mind has already wandered to the ineluctable retail expansion pack. It's customary to get a few new units for existing armies in the *Craft games - but there's still so much left in Warhammer 40k to kick out. The anime-inflected Tau. The Matrix Space Zombie Necrons. The Tyranids, which Starcraft players know better as the Zerg. Relic could also forego a new army, and go the Command & Conquer: Generals route - each of the armies they've already implemented in Dawn of War have, according to the tabletop rules, myriad sects within each to which special rules apply. I'd rather see a new army altogether, but honestly I'm still so elated that they didn't completely fuck this up that I'm willing to invest a bit of faith in them.

(CW)TB out.

nous sommes le generation lazi