Going For Broke - Chapter 3: Betty
Sorry about the 3 week break.
You get a two-fer this time, though, with Chapter 4 going up very soon after this one.
This is a VERY short update.
We're back with Betty and her parents. Fatima wanted to earn some money from playing guitar AND she wanted to play guitar in the park so I tried to combine the two plus throw Betty doing homework into the mix. The only parts really working are being in the park and Betty doing homework. It was a ghost town. I was seriously panicking, thinking something had gone epically wrong and started scanning the town for people. There was nobody around in about a 2 block radius. It was freaky.
Finally found some people at the pool and Fatima earned the 25 simoleons she wanted so badly.
Betty had a bit of a boogie and a swim but I've been sick so didn't feel like taking a ton of pictures so there aren't any. Because it wasn't all that interesting, anyway. Or I was too sick to care, probably.
Betty did a spot of gardening back at home.
And Fatima rolled a wish to go to the cemetery so off she went, catching some moths in the process.
The next morning I realised that I had seriously stuffed up the game. Everybody was unemployed, the school was missing (see pic!) and there were no "ploppables" in the lots bin to replace them. Exit without saving, fix the My Documents folder and restore to a backup. Play from the beginning of the chapter again.
It went pretty much the same as last time, except that this time the moth landed on Fatima's nose.
Meanwhile, Betty continues to work on her Lifetime Wish to max the guitar skill (and charisma).
And happily the school and all workplaces are back where they should be.
Betty: Booo! I liked it better when there was no school!
Fatima got a phone call telling her to host a party pronto and invite a particular co-worker and get to know him better.
She brought along a picnic basket that everybody rushed towards but nobody would use. Then the chick with the long red hair (top left) started playing guitar, Fatima improved her relationship with the co-worker, then everybody left and declared the party a roaring success despite nothing happening. WTF???
Time passes when you pose in between doing every action...
Vadim wanted to compete in the chess tournament. By the time I got him seated at the chess table he got a page from the hospital saying he was on call and to get his butt over there for an emergency. Which is when other competitors started turning up. Naturally. So I decided to send Betty and Fatima to the park for Betty to try her luck at the tournament. But of course by the time everyone had finished posing and tapping their feet thr tournament was over by the time Betty was in the middle of her first match. Don't know how they're supposed to finish three matches in that time, there's so much posing and standing around going on.
If a mod maker is reading this - for the sake of all that is good in this world, make a "kill the idle pose" hack!!! PLEASE!!!
It's almost 2 game weeks since I started playing this family and Vadim is still trying to upgrade that same toilet.
Spoiler: he didn't get to finish. Either they need uber mechanical skill to do it quickly or the upgrading takes so damn long it's easier to buy a new toilet every time the old one gets dirty than to do the self-cleaning upgrade.
Betty brought this girl home from school Her surname is Shallow, can't remember the first name. They seemed to get along OK and then...
...trait incompatibility!
So they posed at each other for a while and wouldn't interact due to the continued posing. So I sent the Shallow girl home. She was Evil, anyway.
Fatima continued to check herself out every chance she got. In tha last week I found out that apparently this is part of the flirty trait. Because being vain = flirty. WTF EA???
Betty got the opportunity to work at the Business office building for a day, so here she is going in on Saturday, the last day of her teen-hood. She's not due to age up until the evening so I figured it was safe to send her in, then switch to Bob when she completed the opportunity.
And that's all folks! Because I was unwell, I found I wasn't taking much of an interest in the gameplay or concentrating on the game at all, hence the lack of pictures.
Just a couple of things that amused me:
The obvious choice here is Bloatyheaditis. For those who don't know why, this is a reference to the classic game Theme Hospital, in which there was an illness called Bloaty Head. Theme Hospital was released by Bullfrog Games and developed by Peter Molineux. Bullfrog (and Molineux) were then bought by Maxis. You know the rest :)
A couple of the charities to which Betty can donate money. LOL
Chapter 4 will be up in the next few hours!
I swear there are a couple of typos in there but now I can't find them Don't haet me for the typos :)