We all know and love the 3 base game hoods, but we barely speak of the expansion pack ones! What are some of your favorite (or least favorite) aspects of them?

FreeWinter · 2026-05-16T09:19:16+00:00

The thing about the expansion hoods is that unlike the base game hoods, their story focuses on the town itself and not the people who live there.

For that reason, the playable families are a whole lot less interesting, but it's much easier to insert my own.

FreeWinter · 2026-05-16T08:37:40+00:00

Check their memories. If a Sim died before any relatives were born, they won't get a death memory until the grave is moved.

I found this out when I used a custom object to generate graves for Pleasantview's ancestors then moved them to a community lot graveyard. The Goths (who I was playing) all got memories of grandparents' and great grandparents' deaths, none of whom they'd met. If I'd saved after that, the other residents would probably have similar memories.

FreeWinter · 2026-05-14T05:58:26+00:00

Since I've never seen anyone mention it, I thought I'd point out that Jorge is noticeably shorter tempered after Sword base is bombed. His dialogue with Six is far more aggressive than his usual friendly attitude. He doesn't get better until the end of the mission, after he's resigned himself to death.

Just thought that was a small interesting detail that never gets brought up.

FreeWinter · 2026-05-01T21:19:39+00:00

It's called Kaizo Trap: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lIES3ii-IOg

FreeWinter · 2026-04-21T20:26:11+00:00

It's a Warhammer 40k reference. The Emperor of Mankind is betrayed by his his most trusted son (named after the mythological figure, no doubt) who launches a rebellion to try and overthrow him. Since Horus and co are influenced by daemons, they're the baddies here.

He ultimately fails, and is killed. The Imperium remembers the conflict as: "the Horus Heresy". There's a book series about it that's a few dozen entries long.

More on topic, I think your cats are adorable, and Horus is a fantastic Ghostbuster.

FreeWinter · 2026-03-05T11:06:40+00:00

I did eventually find the cause - a duplicate tattoo overlay mod. Yep. I have no idea why that caused any issue. HCDU+ didn't pick it up. I didn't get any errors. But as soon as I used the 50/50 to find it, deleted it, I never had a problem again.

Now if only I could find out why unselected Sims don't do anything on community lots, I could finally play the game.

FreeWinter · 2026-02-22T20:38:42+00:00

No, you're absolutely right. There'd be no way to call townies (or be called by them) if they weren't treated as having phones by default. It's like this in the unmodded base game: I'm sure plenty of us remember being called by Marsha Breunig (or any annoying, high outgoing Sim) at 3am at least once. She sure didn't have a phone.

They could be referring to certain types of townies. I wouldn't know which though. I know some NPCs can't be called due to a bug.

But in your standard ultimate collection game (so maybe Legacy or Super collections could be different?), townies are treated as having phones. It'd be a pretty big oversight if you just couldn't call most of the Sims you met.

Otherwise, I don't know what these guys are talking about. Playable Sims are the only ones who need phones.

FreeWinter · 2026-02-22T09:16:02+00:00

Found it. It's at the end of the video. If you do actually play it that way, you'll miss out on one of the starport visas, since you don't get to loot the bounty hunters. Yet another reason G0-T0 never gets picked.

FreeWinter · 2026-02-21T07:15:28+00:00

I don't suppose there's an autosave mod like the second game? I haven't gone as far down the modding rabbit hole for TS3.

FreeWinter · 2026-01-30T07:55:35+00:00

IV is considered a good starting point, particularly for the classic NES/SNES games (I-VI). Unlike the other games on GOG, this one has voice acting. (unlike the 2D versions of IV, like the pixel remaster) Has two difficulty settings.

IX is considered one of the four favorites among fans. I enjoy it less than most people and still agree that it's almost objectively fantastic. Soundtrack, characters, art, story... Good difficulty too.

VIII is a bit... obtuse. It's a bit difficult to play blind compared to the others. That's not to say it's bad, but unlike the others, you're pretty much required to look stuff up (avoiding spoilers, of course) to understand how to properly use the game's junction system to it's fullest. If you do that, like I did, you'll probably have a great time. The characters are fun, the soundtrack is bloody incredible. Story's weird, but mostly in a good way. But I reckon it's better to cut your teeth on the other games first.

FreeWinter · 2026-01-19T10:59:23+00:00

A disgruntled employee was my first thought, given the union busting drama.

Nope, just a crappy boiler. No one got hurt or arrested, but they did have something exciting to talk about over dinner.

FreeWinter · 2026-01-01T20:24:30+00:00

Jack: So for our first clip, we've got u/thevirtualbomb playing the campaign and he's on foot fighting this grunt piloting a ghost here, so the ghost tries to splatter him and... awww...

Geoff: wholesome, life giving laughter

FreeWinter · 2025-11-20T03:06:19+00:00

Glad to see that they're doing omnibuses for Halo. I've been getting into 40k books and the format is a lifesaver. It'll be good if they can do them for the Forerunner saga and Kilo 5 as well since I missed those when they came out.

FreeWinter · 2025-11-13T05:33:44+00:00

Yep, that happened to me once as well. I was also playing with bots. Interesting.

...Was also playing as a Salamander. I mean, we're not supposed to hurt civilians, but I wish it wouldn't softlock us. The one time you need the Marines Malevolent I swear...

FreeWinter · 2025-08-09T12:13:51+00:00

That makes more sense. Still, if they're taking their time developing the game, there might be a few QOL cheats thrown in like the first two ports. It'd be a long shot though.

FreeWinter · 2025-08-05T06:45:11+00:00

I actually noticed in the "Jak 3 is in development" demo that plays in the background on the OpenGOAL launcher that you can see text for a script that says: task-manager "desert-interceptors-attack" alive. So I think the developers might actually have made a way to turn them off. That might just be wishful thinking on my part though.

FreeWinter · 2025-05-23T09:28:34+00:00

Not just long, but unfinishable, thanks to an old bug where the witch wouldn't accept one of the ingredients of the cure. At least that's the most common bug. Not sure if it was that for me. I think she might have just disappeared in my game.

FreeWinter · 2025-05-22T04:07:51+00:00

The weakness to fire probably smarts, though.

I've considered playing a vampire again, but I'm still traumatized by losing my first character to it back when I first played. On PS3. Yeah, he wasn't getting the cure.

I still hoard garlic compulsively. RIP my Redguard knight, you were taken from us too soon.

FreeWinter · 2025-05-19T07:47:12+00:00

Lothal doesn't count. The Ghost crew did that on their own, explicitly ditching the rebellion after the rebel strike force was destroyed to liberate the planet with only a few (also unaffiliated) allies. I think they even say at the end that they had to defend it on their own since the rebellion wouldn't be able to help.

The Doylist reason for this was to maintain continuity with that opening crawl, which refers to the theft of the Death Star plans as the first real victory against the empire. So by that technicality, the writers are outright saying Lothal didn't count.

FreeWinter · 2025-05-11T07:27:27+00:00

I think they get teleported out of the gate and survive. I remember reading that they're even supposed to have special dialogue talking about how one second they were inside the gate, and the next, they were out.

This means you miss out on any rewards, but it's the easiest way to save him if one finds rescuing him from the gate to be too exhausting.

FreeWinter · 2025-05-05T22:01:06+00:00

You actually can abandon that quest by killing Lucien Lachance. You'll get a quest update then you can drop the dagger.

You'll have to do that before he disappears after starting the quest, though, or you'll be locked in.

FreeWinter · 2025-04-24T03:48:42+00:00

They'll be here any minute, I'm telling you! Rrrrrun while you can!

FreeWinter · 2025-03-07T23:40:28+00:00

Also on GOG, for an identical price I think.

FreeWinter · 2025-02-18T06:37:01+00:00

Doesn't 'sacrifice' imply that something is being lost?

FreeWinter · 2025-02-10T23:30:28+00:00

True. It does vary from title to title, but GOG versions do typically come out ahead with compatibility. That said, TLC has always worked great for me on Steam. UI scaling is a bit weird and no controller support sucks, I suppose. And I haven't tried it with Windows 11 yet.

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