The End of the World as We Know It

... And I feel fantastic!

Oh wow, the Apocalypse Challenge. This is something I'm pretty confident I'm going to fail spectacularly, but it does make for something awesome to do while I'm home sick with something horrible. Pretty confident it's a sinus infection after some fashion or other.

Because having a cough that just won't go away isn't at all unnerving given my recent obsession.

So, because I figure it'll be easier, I roll together a male Sim named Joe Smith.

Per the challenge rules, he's assigned the Politics career track, which is roughly the most useless career to try and unlock in the game. It's not very useful to be able to build outside of your little 8x8 box when you're starving to death. But I go with it, figuring eventually things would work out.

Three out of four of the other politicians? Vampires.

This can only end well.

So, Joe slowly begins to climb the political career ladder, polishing podiums and a myriad of other things, I'm sure. Along the way, he inevitably catches The Death, and rises as a vampire. All good, except for the part where he's got a day job, but sure.

There's exactly one living person left that Joe Smith even knows. So Joe fixates on her, in the hopes of having living offspring (someday), not to say the occasional midnight snack.

He takes her home one day, feeds on her - and it's delicious, given the hefty mood buff he gets from it - turning her in the process.

And ... promptly keels over dead of thirst.

What.

As it turns out, Joe was suffering from this bug that caused him to suffer massive, permanent mood decreases every time he got a mood buff. Which ... is ... mind-bogglingly frustrating, not to say stupid. 

Apparently this caused him to contract depression and suicide on a full stomach. I don't even know.

So I started again, in the same neighborhood, with a different Joe.

Joe Mk II had the good fortune of being given the Criminal career track, which is immensely more useful than Politics. He's got a vampiric lover (who, herself, is in love with an Elderly Sim named Edgardo, as well; I'm pretty much letting Edgardo kick the bucket from old age). His subterranean bunker is coming along nicely, and he's almost done with the Criminal career track. He's written three books now, all of them nonfictional accounts of his life and times.

In short, Joe Mk. II actually has a chance in hell of succeeding at this.

Now we just have to hope true love really does conquer all ....

Fable III: A Ruler Reflects

Game Review! HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

I finally beat Fable III, and I am not ashamed to admit I cried.

Let me first explain why it took me so long to beat the game: I got spoiler'd about halfway through my first playthrough that I would need 9,000,000 gold in order to get the perfect ending, so shortly before I was going to head to Aurora, I stopped actually playing so much as just sitting in town accumulating money.

And that worked well enough, I guess. I did get the perfect ending.

But some of the plot-events, even if you're a good character and working to save everyone are ... touching, we'll go with touching.

Firstly, since I had somewhere toward eleven million gold, it actually made me giggle to kick Reaver in the balls with my enormous personal wealth, every time he proposed something eeeeeeeeeeeeeviiiil and I rejected it out of hand. Well no, I didn't reject it out of hand, I very pointedly waited until he was done speaking, holding down the "A" button all the while because I wasn't even considering evilness. Trampling Reaver's dreams because I just did not need him made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I also get the impression that the Princess/Queen's forays into the Road to Rule are representative of a psychotic break with reality. I say this mostly because of the last one's appearance on your anniversary, when you've got an incredibly boring day set up for your itinerary, when suddenly, you get whisked away to the end of the world. Maybe the whole game is the fantasy of a bored Princess.

Or maybe not, given the last hour or so of the game.

Aurora was ... depressing. Discovering why Walter is scared of the dark, and then seeing him break down because of how he's been blinded - not to mention being forced to abandon him in the desert - was heartbreaking. And finally, when you have to kill him.

Blessed Gods, when you have to kill Walter.

I beat Fable III, I cried, and I am not ashamed.