Castaway Stories: The Last of Barrett's Privateers

[strangetomato]

You know how awesome it is when you notice one of the in-jokes in the game? Well, I was all smiles over the Barrett family on Wanmami Island. I ended up with an ear worm, and started singing that classic Stan Roger's favourite. When my SO asked me about it, I told him about the Barretts, who were privateers before they were shipwrecked, and he was pretty amused too. He was like, "Really? They really put that in there?" Yup, really. Well done, someone who worked on Sims 2 Castaway Stories. You're pretty rad.

Best pub song ever, by the way, even if it's a touch played out. I know I'll never get sick of it, anyway. (A friend of ours is in an Irish band and they performed it on George Street on New Year's Eve. We had a very good time.)

I'm really enjoying Castaway Stories, which was a gift from the SO. It's been filling the void left where another Sims 2 EP would be for me, and it's a whole lot of fun. Lots of great characters and just different enough to be interesting. The story mode is much what you'd expect it to be (and full of bugs), but a pretty good laugh anyway. And once the scripted stuff is over, the real fun begins in the sandbox, as we all know. ;)




Morag and Murray Barrett had a son, and I named him Elcid, in keeping with the theme. I guess they're pirates now instead of privateers, since their government funding would have dried up long ago, what with them going missing and all. (What? You mean you didn't learn the difference between a priate and a privateer in grade school? Where do you LIVE? :P)

In other news, I dropped all holiday posting for holiday travel (in case you hadn't noticed, heheh), and the flu continues to wreak havok on my system. Yesterday, I ended up in the hospital and had to get X-rays done to see if I'd coughed so much I'd broken a rib. It felt like it. Instead, it's merely a pulled muscle, but still hurts like hell, and I'm home on bed rest (complete with a "certificate of incapacity" — LOL — I want to frame it) for the rest of the week. Do yourself a favour and get the damn H1N1 vaccine if you haven't already, alright? This thing isn't worth messing around with, take it from me. Ouch!

Comments

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

EAxis is very good at little, obscure and/or nerdy references like that. I still giggle whenever I see "Brickrolled".

I'm curious about Castaway. How much gameplay is there, really, compared to TS2 and its EPs? Is it more like the base game? Does the game generally work the same way, with wants, memories and so on? How moddable is it?

Also, hope you get well soon! Nasty coughs are the worst. Ugh.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I always wonder about the clever person who came up with the better little nods in there. I love that someone slipped that Stan Rogers reference in there. They're cool in my books.

Brickrolled is super funny too. :P

Castaway has more to offer than the Basegame, in some ways. It has weather, like Seasons, and fishing, but sadly, no gardening. It has some BV things, like finding cool numerous items in the sand. It has chemistry, but no dates. No LTWs or permaplatimum state. Only three careers (hunter, gatherer, and crafter). Limited items, but most of the essentials are there, plus some surprises. It has pets (oranguatans and also hyenas, I think, and also caged birds).

I'm not sure about the modding. My own experience was that defaults worked for eyes, eyebrows, and makeup (but not skin), and hair and other cc worked pretty well. None of the hacks I used worked, aside from the one to remove the censor blur and the red pause lines.

You can access a cameraman mode using the U button, but the camera is pretty lacking when compared to the camera mod for the main game. I'm not sure if it would work in CS (and I'm doubtful, given that the keys are different). I'm going to keep exploring what's out there, but I haven't found a hell of a lot yet.

Overall, I get a kick out of it. It's limited, but it's also a whole new environment to play in.