Never mind, I’ll have to settle with the robo-dog for now. And it’s totally not weird that I’m looking forward to breeding my pets to make adorable little mongrel pups, right? See the one 2 minutes into this video, narrated by Randall of Honey Badger fame.

Did any of you try making your own pet? Link us a pic of your creations!

Due to the popularity of the original Sims Pets expansion, pets for The Sims 3 has been one of the most-requested features since the game launched in 2009. The pets that in this upcoming game are fully playable characters. You’ll be able to choose from a horse, cat or dog and, just like your human Sims, each pet will have three personality traits of their own. You have complete freedom to to play them as difficult and cruel or loving and helpful to their owners – give your human Sims a kicking with the horse when they’re looking the other way.

My favourite feature, however, is the customisation. Accessories for the pets include bridles, saddles and reins for the horses, while cats and dogs have all sorts of collars and bows to choose from. You can adjust hair length, hair cuts and dye their coats all manner of colours. Me? I’m planning on making a horse with skin using the rubber ducky pyjama texture. Or perhaps a nice cow print. It could go with my custom-made Wild West Cowpoke Kitchen Suite.

There will be several different versions of The Sims 3 Pets, depending on the format.

• The PS3 and 360 versions are a standalone game that will only include cats and dogs. You can choose from a range of predefined breeds or create your own custom creature. Once you get into the game, you’ll be able to mate with other breeds and create little mongrel babies. Should you want to pretend you have a real pet, you can use the Kinect voice control to give commands to your pets.
• The Nintendo 3DS version is another standalone game with over 60 predefined breeds of cats and dogs. You’ll be able to trade pets with other 3DS gamers over StreetPass and use the pedometer to collect Play Coins to spend on your Sims.
• The PC/Mac versions are an expansion pack, so you’ll need the original Sims 3 game to play. This version will have a much wider range of pets: Horses, cats, dogs, birds, lizards, rodents and snakes.

I wonder if we’ll get the boom-chicka-wow music when we breed our pets…

Soft-porn musings aside, EA have released a demo today for the PC and Mac that lets you create your own cats, dogs and horses. If you already have a copy of The Sims 3 you’ll be able to upload your creations to The Sims 3 Exchange. See you later, gamers. I’m off to make my rubber duckie horse.

Screenshots

Google Plus is going for web-browser gaming in a big way as well, with last month’s launch of Games for Google+.

Since a large chunk of my Sundays seem to be spent clicking on these attempts at sucking the into the murky waters of microtransactions, I’ve decided to launch this new weekly column focused on browser games. First up: The Sims Social, which has been available in open beta for a few weeks now.

At heart, it’s The Sims but faster. You have the classic meters that go down over time: social, fun, food, bladder, hygiene and sleep. These decline over time and you only need to perform four of the appropriate action to fill up the meter. Make Sim friends with your Facebook friends and pootle about little house and gain simoleons to buy new furniture, build new rooms and so on. Click on an object to bring up a radial menu, choose what you want to do. Practice skills like writing and cooking to level up and visit other people’s houses to improve your friendship. Same old, same old, right?

Not quite. For those of us who know The Sims, the differences are jarring. Firstly, there are no jobs. We all seem to be perpetual Open University students who just lounge around at home, occasionally slapping some paint on a canvas or jamming on a guitar to feel like we’re achieving something.

Secondly, playing on your guitar improves your fun levels but not your skills. And learning to cook will improve your skills but not assuage your hunger. It’s an annoying little time sink and I don’t see any advantage from a business perspective. On a slightly different note, playing lightsaber wars with your torch appears to be a seduction tactic in the Sims Social universe. Geeks represent! ;)

Third and finally, the entire game seems to be geared around spamming your friends. It’s virtually impossible to progress without being prompted to post on at least three Facebook walls. Bought a double bed? Sorry, can’t build it yet. You need a wrench, four pillows, four “dreams”, 8 “loves” and a “bling”. You could try generating them yourself through the suggested actions but it’s far faster to just spam your friends with messages saying “Can you help me build my bed by sending me 1 soft pillow? They’re free to send!”. Bought an expansion room for your house? Sorry, you need to ask three friends to help you out. It’s just not possible to build a house by yourself. If you go over to a friend’s house and see something incomplete, you can’t click on the object and volunteer to help them out. Nope, gotta wait for that help request. Not just on the wall, either. You get the notifications in game as well for a double whammy.

It’s sad, really. This could be quite a fun but every time I log in, I’m greeted with a scene like this:

The game is still in beta so it’s entirely possible that all this will change as times goes on. On the other hand, what websites aren’t in beta these days? Facebookers, head on over to The Sims Social to virtually shag all those friends you’ve secretly been lusting after. They won’t even know…

As a Community Reporter, you’ll get a chance to go to GamesCom 2011 in Germany this month to report on the show – one of the largest gaming shows in the world! With behind the scenes access to the latest Sims and SPORTS games, interview opportunities and much more, it’s a brilliant opportunity for any fan of the games to get the scoop on the latest news. You will also have selected opportunities to attend other The Sims or EA SPORTS events in the UK throughout the course of the year.

To enter the competition you need to tell EA how big a fan you are of either The Sims or EA Sports games and why you should be picked to go to Gamescom 2011. Written entries should be no more than 1000 words and videos should be less than 3 minutes in length. The competition entry form can be found here.

Note: You need to be 18 years or over, have a valid passport to travel and be available between the 16th – 22nd Aug to attend Gamescom 2011.

The closing date for entries is midnight (BST) 9th Aug 2011, so you better get writing/videoing quickly.

I'm not really one for browser games. Almost 5 years ago I really got into Defend Your Castle for a couple of days. Earlier this year I played a lot of Mafia Wars, but neither of those were particularly compelling. I think it was more lack of anything better to do. 

Barclays have come out with a new educational browser game called 56 Sage Street and it's actually quite addictive. Not addictive in the Caesary take-over-your-life way, thankfully. It's compelling in that just-one-more-turn sort of way where you turn around and suddenly realise that the sun has set and three hours passed. Pretty damn good for a banking promotional game.

The basic concept is a rags-to-riches deal. You're poor and homeless in the dodgy part of town and you need to work your way up. There are loads of job opportunities, Make $$$ FAST schemes and places to stay for a price. You can take all the crappy jobs but you'll wind up smelly and unable to get the better paying customer -facing jobs. Wash your clothes to be more presentable, stay in nicer digs for more energy, and all that stuff. Put your money in the bank in case you get mugged. Open a savings account to earn interest. Essentially it's a mini life-sim. I love life sims :) Even better when you can crack through them in just a few hours.

What's the catch? Well, there isn't a REAL catch. All the banks have Barclays logos and you are heavily incentivised to use their services – e.g. rent a scooter and you'll be prompted for insurance. Stay in a dodgy place and you'll get robbed with a note that HAD YOU BOUGHT INSURANCE your stuff would have been replaced for free. And yup, the only place to get insurance is from the bank. There is some less product-pushing education as well. Once in a while you'll get a text message or email telling you to verify your bank details at www.verify-bank-details-barclays.co.uk or something to that effect. Obviously you SHOULDN'T do that but the game lets you try and pay the price.

If you're particularly foolhardy, you can also throw money away on scams or get awards for detecting and refusing scams. Doing well in a job in one area will unlock more opportunities in the next area. Networking where you can will offer other rewards. As life sims go, it's pretty good without aping The Sims. As educational browser games go, it's just awesome. Much better than the recent bunny-shagging attempt by the NHS.  It looks nice and the controls are okay, although the click-and-drag map scrolling can get tedious. You can even save your game if you link to your Facebook account.

I admit, this a sponsored post but I was pleasantly surprised by 56 Sage Street. There's depth there and you can play as a girl or a boy. It's also nice to hear a British accent that isn't playing someone evil or making bad attempts at comedy.  56 Sage Street is a free game so go check it out if you have some time to kill. 

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You’ve probably heard of the recent Sims 3 expansion Barnacle Bay, right? Pirates! Treasure! A tropical paradise! The Sims 3 team have kindly given us download codes for 3 lucky Sims fans to get the Barnacle Bay expansion for free. Here’s what we’ll do:

1. Around 3:20pm (GMT) today we’ll send out a competition tweet from @TheAvgGamer
3. Follow us and RT to enter the competition
4. We’ll pick winners at random on Thursday 14th October and get in touch by DM.

Yup, it’s that simple. You’ll need your own copy of The Sims 3 to play Barnacle Bay – it’s an expansion after all.

Best of luck! Take a look at these screenshots to whet your appetites.

Gallery:

The Sims 3: Pirate Edition Barnacle Bay looks fabulous! As I’m sure you all know, I’m a sucker for the Sims games. They are the ultimate RPGs, even though sometimes I feel silly working my Sim out in the gym every day when I know damn well I should be going there myself. >.< The Sims + Pirates? I am so there!

Barnacle Bay is available now from the Sims 3 store for only 1650 sim points. (That’s £11.55 in real money)

I know I’m usually the one going “narrative, blah blah, games need plot, blah, characterisation, blah blah blah…” Screw it. These are not hard and fast rules. I like virtual dollhouses open-ended simulations too.

In a nutshell, The Sims 3 is The Sims 2 only more awesome. Here are just some of the annoyances that they’ve fixed:

• Lives were too short: When I wanted to focus on career or relationships, my sim would insist on aging and dying. It takes time to build up all those logic and charsima points while trying not to set fire to your dinner! Now you have the option to give your sim a double-length lifespan or switch off aging entirely.



• Customisation: You can now put a custom skin on everything. Should you, for some obscure reason, wish to have suite of cow-print kitchen appliances, there’s no need to trawl websites looking. You can go straight into the Design function, chose from a huge range of textures and pick the colours you want. Or you could download them from my Sims 3 studio ;)
• Other sims are no longer a mystery: In 2, you could talk about certain subjects but you’d have to squint at the speech bubbles to see reactions and track inter-sim relationships, likes and dislikes by yourself. Yeah, right. I’d just guess and occasionally kill a friendship outright by flirting with the wrong person. Now you can discover traits, partners and jobs of the other Sims and look them up later when you’re planning parties. No more time wasted ringing people who are at work.



• Mood triggers and timers: Previously, you could sneeze at the wrong time and completely miss what your sim was complaining about. Now there’s a tracker that shows all the things affecting your sims mood and a rough guide as to long until she hits her tolerance threshold. Yep, she’ll still wet herself but you can’t say she didn’t warn you.
• Lifetime rewards are useful: Rather than buying effort-inducing gadgets like the money tree, your reward points are now spent on traits that make the game easier. I wanted a totally career-focused Sim that didn’t care about cooking, but a lot of my free time was still spend preparing food. With the Hardly Hungry trait, she now eats once every three days. Way more time to spend in the gym to become a a super-fit super-spy!

I should be balanced here; it’s not all brilliant. The community areas are smaller. Some of them don’t have interiors at all. I went on a date to a fancy restaurant with a prospective partner. All the camera got to see was the outside of the restaurant while the meal progress bar ticked away. Even so, it’s nice to be able to wander around the town watching other Sims living their little SimLives.

Content creation is limited to reskinning, so you can’t build your own custom items. It also seems to me that there are fewer interesting models of each appliance/furniture available out of the box. Everythings so far is very… conservatively designed. As in, they mostly look like furniture you’d find in Argos. Hopefully some more outlandish stuff will turn up in the online store over the next few months.

On balance though, it’s the Sims 2 upgraded, with lots of usability tweaks. Exactly what the franchise needed.

Screenshots

I have to say, I was surprised by how easy it was to get sucked into this game. Every decision has an effect on your stats – walk to work and you get a little healthier but you’re far more tired at the end of the day. Take the bus and it costs you money. On the other hand, you have the energy to have fun with your friends after work and build up your relationships. The year is seasonal too, so getting rained on will probably make you grumpy as hell when you’re already tired. All the implications make logical sense and you see the outcomes straight away. If you you like playing games by running the numbers, this game is perfect.

That’s not to say that it’s just for maths fans. I know I play a lot of RPGs but I couldn’t care less about numbers. I’m in it to build characters – Kudos 2 lets you do that too. There’s a good range of options for everything – after work you can hang out with a huge range of people, each with their own likes and dislikes. You can go bowling (increase your fitness and fun) or go to the opera (take in some culture) or just out for fried chicken (build up that flab!) and grow or lose your friendships along the way. If you don’t like feeling sociable, you can take evening classes to further your career or just read a good book.

The main annoyance I had with the game was the interface. I like to explore things and this game constantly pops up windows that you then need to close individually, which quickly gets tiresome. Even more so when you know that one of your friends likes the cinema but you can’t remember which one of the 10+ it was.
Most option selections are annoying as well – you can only see one at a time and have to scroll through the whole list one-by-one to find the one you want. They do compensate with some good mouse shortcuts like right-clicking anywhere inside to close a window and making use of the scroll-wheel. I still think a quick list view would work wonders.

In short, Kudos 2 is a good game by by Cliff “Cliffski” Harris. Cliff used to work on The Movies before starting up his own small indie games company. He even writes versions of his games for Macs (eventually). Get the free demo of Kudos 2 from Positech.