I wanted this game for so long. I got it for Christmas and played it once for half an hour. I then fell asleep and havent played it since. I wanted SO MUCH to love this game!! It just seemed like an aweful lot of damn work for what? “Meowmoo mememe” she said, “Wa Wunk ma chu Fa NUCK!” he replied. Gack… I don’t get it.
Help me love it?
I don’t know how much of a game purist you are, but I like playing the Sims with lots of money. I cheat. Press your “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “c” keys to enter a cheat code, and then write “rosebud” (without the quotation marks) in the appropriate bar. This will earn you an automatic §1000. The next time, you don’t have to write “rosebud.” All you need to do is type “!” (again without the quotes) as many times as you like (up to 30, I believe) separated by semi-colons.
Example: !;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!
Once you have a pile of money you can build huge houses and buy cooler stuff.
The Sims appeals to the part of me that has always loved miniatures and dollhouses…I build cute little homes for my Sims and decorate them with darling furniture and then force them into relationships and intrigues and eventually condemn them to horrible, screaming deaths by starvation or drowning. (The evil goddess part of me also likes The Sims.)
Boscibo’s right; it can be a lot more fun when you don’t have to worry about money for the household. The “rosebud” cheat only works on the patched version of the game, though. If you try it and it doesn’t do anything for you, do everything the same as the first time, but type “klaupaucius” (no quotes) instead of “rosebud.”
I play it both ways - I use the cheat codes when I want to build a cool house, I play without when I want the challenge of getting my sims through life. It’s fun to start with a cheap house and add on to it as your sim makes more and more money as he gets promoted. I’ve found an easy way to make LOTS of money without cheating, though it only works with the Livin’ Large expansion pack - get a workbench and start making garden gnomes. Keep at it, the more you make the higher your mechanical skill goes, the faster you can make them, and the more you can sell them for. Before long you can sell the gnomes for $100 each, and you can easily make 30 or 40 a day (which adds up to more than you can make in any job in the game). If you have a few family members making them, you can build up a lot of cash very fast.
The Sims speak gibberish for a couple reasons:
I got bored with the Sims pretty quick. Until I realized it was much more fun to be Sim God than Sim Citizen.
Do everything you can to wreck havoc on the lives of the puny Sims.
Get married Sims to fornicate with other married Sims. Pit Sim families against each other. Play all sides.
Rack up huge cash (via cheats above) for Sims you just moved into a shack and leave them alone for awhile.
Send the Sim kids to the new pool you forgot to put a ladder in. :eek:
Be a bad decorator. Wallpaper the outside of your new house. Put a fountain in the living room. Put a toilet on the front lawn. There is no end to the lunacy you can create.
Sim World is your oyster!
Some folks think I’m sick for my Sim habits. I call it “thinking outside of the box.” 
ROFL
I’ll do that as soon as I get my hands on the espansion set, just the idea of a massive Gnome empire that’s run and operated out of a family house is hillarious ! 
— G. Raven
Yes… a copy of Quake 3.
Speaking of playing god in a simulated computer game world . . . How many of you are anxiously awaiting the release of Black and White as much as I am?
Different people get different things out of The Sims.
For my friend, there’s nothing better than building and decorating a house. She’s not interested in playing the game, just building great houses.
For my sister-in-law, the best bit is making new families. She loves to download new outfits and faces, and come up with funny names for them.
My brother-in-law gets a kick out of being the Psycho God he never gets to be in real life. He enjoys killing off Sims - his favourite method is to build a small room in the backyard with only a door. He then gets his Sim to invite neighbours over and lure them into the room. Once the neighbour is in, his Sim ducks out the door, and he removes it. The unfortunate neighbour eventually starves to death.
I like advancing my Sims through the career paths as far as possible, but this gets very tricky. I did manage to get one guy really high in his career path, but then I formatted and had to start over
The Sims Resource (www.thesimsresource.com) is a good place to go for extras like wallpapers and skins that make the game a bit more fun. Living Large is a great addition to the game, and I can’t wait until House Party comes out.
The trouble with ‘playing’ The Sims is that it isn’t a game. If you open up the software with the expectation that, like a game of, say. Civilization II or High Heat 2001, there is some fixed end, some path to take to that end, and rules to follow, you will be dissapointed.
Maxis makes software toys. The Sims is no exception. Someone has already compared it to a doll house, a very appropos analogy in my mind. Just as my eight year old enjoys playing with his LEGO men and castles or his GI Joe men, doing all sorts of weird things with them, he enjoys playing with his Sims, making them do all sorts of interesting things. His mom also enjoys it, trying to create ‘perfect’ relationships and lives. I invent families from hell, then make them live together.
I haven’t had this much fun with software since I got SimEarth back in the early 90’s. Well, ok, I admit that I have never kicked my Civ II habit… (rushing off to create more colony pods)
One other thing: Don’t you just LOVE those television commercials? I have fun identifying the type of commercial you are hearing. Some of them have analogs only on Spanish language channels…
My favorite is the one that ends “whoopi scoopi doobi wabi schwa!” I often find myself singing that at work… 
If I may, I’d like to refer you to my game review and cult experiment of the sims.
Right after I opened the box, the first thing I tried to get my sim to do was hump the neighbor’s wife. I worked and worked at it. Flowers, sweet talk, the whole 9 yards. Got her heart meter, or whatever it is, up to 99. Unfortunatly, they must have programmed some family values into the game. Never even got to first base.
DSYoung has it right, its a toy, not a goal oriendted game. You have to make your own goals. I have done everything from maxing out all of the career paths, to cheating and making a 'hood full of the grandest houses I can think of, to killing off families because my goth house needed a graveyard and ghosts to making my family (I’m away at college and get homesick…so I made my house so I can visit.)
I think its fun, if you’re self motivated and never play by rules anyway.
The first time I played it I created a family and had the man cook dinner (before giving him any cooking skills!) and he promptly started a fire and was burned to death! I think that the hardest thing to do is to have a baby! If one of the character’s has a job they usually end up losing it because they have to help take care of the baby. I haven’t been able to take care of a baby with just one Sim… is there a trick to it? Too bad you can’t hire a nanny for those 3 days!
Blackclaw, I loved your review, and I laughed out loud at this:
and I agree with:
And I loved this, too:
I am a Sims addict, and I love creating worlds and watching how they work. I have had this game for about a year (maybe more?) and have the upgrade, and I have yet to grow tired of it. It’s a great escape from real life when you need it!
Zette
HA! My sim has a harem of all the Women in the neighborhood. Every loves him, and the women all love each other(that was the hard part).
I’m laughing so hard I’ve got tears in my eyes, and people at the office can’t figure it out. I have to dust off my copy of the game and try some of this stuff y’all have mentioned. This could take up my whole weekend.
Here are some of my Sim experiences:
Man, I love this game!