Thursday, September 23, 2004

Sims 2: Face Lift of the Original. The sequel delivers all the stuff that made the original the best-selling game of all time, and adds a couple of nice touches. By the end, though, you realize the new version is just a tuneup of the old. Lore Sjöberg reviews The Sims 2. [Wired News] As soon as they get this ported to the Mac, I'm going to buy it. I never got expansion packs for my original copy of the Sims. So I may just as well jump up to the next logical step in the Sims evolution. It sounds kind of interesting, enough so that it would feel different enough from the original to make it worthwhile. And the introduction of WooHoo is by far and away the most important step towards making the Sims appeal to as wide an audience as possible. It will be interesting to see the avalanche of add-on modules that follow the release of the base game module. 8:18:10 PM    comment []

A New Reason to Love Star Wars. The production of the original Star Wars was a disaster. But as the riveting documentary Empire of Dreams shows, underdog director George Lucas somehow pulled it off, which makes you appreciate the trilogy even more. A review by Jason Silverman. [Wired News] I'm glad to see the early reviews of the DVD box set are so positive I may ask for it for Christmas. And it's cool the documentary is so good and reveals so much new info about how "bad" the initial phases of the Star Wars filming were. Who knew that the British crew were going to be so hard on the director? And the frustration with how flimsy the costumes were, now that's funny. 8:10:50 PM    comment []