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The Sims Social: Facebook Application
by liz3yy
The Sims gaming franchise has been around since 2000 though during the last 12 years I haven't given the game even a passing glance when out shopping, why would I want to waste my time playing a stupid video game.......? oh how that all changed last year when the online version - Sims Social was launched....
What is it? ...
The Sims Social is an online game accessed via Facebook which enables users to create an persona for themselves, build and decorate their own house, start a career and interact with neighbours (hence the Social side to it)
How do you access it?
The game is run via Facebook so you need to create a Facebook account if you don't already have one to access the game. The game can be found easily via the App centre.
How do you get started?
One you've found the game in the Facebook App centre it guides you through the set up process, this is something you can't skip I believe but is useful if you're new to the concept of the Sims so you can learn how to make the most of it.
Initially you're shown your Sim character in all her or his glory and can customise them. You can choose hair, eye and skin colour, their clothes and shoes and any accessories from a pretty decent selection. You can also choose a trait for them - for example creative or sporty. You need to choose your trait carefully as if you want to change it later on it will cost you real money (!) called Sim Cash, that I will get to later.
Once you have selected the appearance and trait for your Sim character you are then shown your house, it's basic to begin with containing only the essentials - living / bedroom / kitchen and bathroom, with a small amount of furniture and decorations to get you started including a computer and guitar so you can start to earn money.
How do you progress through the game?
When you first start the game you are given a small amount of cash to get going - there are 3 types of currency in Sims Social world, I will try and explain them below:
*Simoleons - these are virtual coins that you easily earn by performing actions in the game, either by using items (known as skilling up) or by interacting with your neighbours. The amount of simoleons you earn can vary wildly depending on what you are doing, for instance simply playing a piano for fun can earn you 10 whilst working at the highest level on one of the art skill items whilst being inspired can earn you almost 60.
*Social points - these are a bit harder to earn, you mainly earn these by interacting with your neighbours in the game, they look like little blue diamonds. Once you have them they are worth saving up
*Sims Cash - this you can only gain by either buying with real money (which I personally don't agree with) or if you play the game regularly you are given a small amount every 5 days, up to 10 at a time. I have only ever received 5 free at once.
The above currencies can be used to buy things in the game, from extra rooms for your house, decorations such as wallpaper and furniture to clothes and shoes. Anything you buy adds to your game value which is shown at the bottom of the screen next to an image of your characters face. The higher your house value the more access you get to items in the shop, plus I've noticed that the area in front of your house gains more kerb appeal the higher your house level goes.
To keep things interesting in addition to expanding your home and increasing your wardrobe there are items in the game known as skills items. They are divided into categories such as writing, art and cooking. For instance you can buy a cooker and unlock levels in it using ingredients gained from working through the game. The higher the level the more Simoleons you can earn.
How do you add neighbours to the game?
This is easy, simply click the add neighbour button whilst in game and wait for your friends to accept. The more friends you have using the game the easier it is to progress and it makes it more fun as you have more neighbours to interact with. Once the game starts you do get one neighbour called Bella to get you started though that isn't enough to make the most of the game.
What else can you do in the game?
When you start the game there are a multitude of little quests which pop up, they are relatively easy to complete and earn you varying amounts of Simoleons and other items to help you progress though the game. In addition to these are there are also weekly larger quests which require more time and effort to complete - this is where having several friends / neighbours comes in handy. Some of them are timed, in that you have around 7-9 days to finish them with the incentive of earning a prize of extra house value at the end.
Downsides to the game?
There are a few, as with any online game the Sims Social isn't perfect and at times is a bit buggy. The game is often down for maintenance by the developers and there are snags where it reloads itself. This doesn't happen enough to affect playability I think.
Once you start the game there is no way to reset it. You can only carry on and not go backwards. If you want to start from scratch you'd have to create a brand new facebook account and start again.
The game is very addictive, I have been known to spend several hours at a time on it! It is great fun and a brilliant time waster ;) it's definitely worth a look if you want a cheap bit of entertainment
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FarmVille - Facebook Application
by bettyboop2002
Farmville is one of many facebook games I have played over the years since I joined the site. I find myself coming back to it from time to time but soon getting sick of it again.
When the game starts you are presented with a farm, it is your job to place plots to grow fruit, vegetables and flowers. You are to plow the land, ... plant the seeds and then harvest them when they are ready.
You also buy animals and trees and harvest them when they are ready. The time animals, trees and seeds take to harvest varies depending on the species, for example strawberries can be harvested after 4 hours and watermelons take 4 days.
You can add neighbours and visit their farms to gain coins and experience and sometimes find gifts. You can send and request gifts to and from your neighbours. You now have the ability to add neighbours without having to be friends with them on facebook.
You progress to a higher level by gaining experience points. There are many ways to gain experience points (XP's) and here are a few examples:
HARVESTING SEEDS, ANIMALS AND TREES
Plowing a plot of land costs you 15 coins and gains 1 XP. You also gain XP's for planting seens, the amount of XP's varies depending on the harvest time ranging from 1XP to 10XP.
Each crop, tree and most animals have mastery rewards. For example if you harvest 200 plots of one type of plant you will reach mastery level 1 and receive a generous XP and coins reward, harvesting 500 will get you to level 2 and bigger rewards and harvesting 1000 will get you to mastery level 3 and larger rewards again. Seeds you plant will wither if you forget to harvest them, most of the time you will have to start again plowing these plots and lose the coins you spent on the seeds. Occasionally you may find an unwither spray which you can use to unwither crops and harvest them as normal.
The mastery levels also apply to trees and most animals although these will not wither.
MISSIONS
You also gain XP by completing missions which are on the left hand side of the page, there are usually 2 or 3 requirements to complete a mission. One element of the task may require you to publish a request asking for an item. You will need neighbours to click these requests to give you the items you require. Another part of the task may require you to harvest a certain breed of animals so many times and another element may require you to harvest a certain amount of plants.
When the mission is completed you will receive coins XP's and a reward (this could be an animal or a decoration).
RIBBONS
When you first start farmville the quickest way to increase your levels is by gaining ribbons. There are lots to get. Each type of ribbon has 4 levels.
You gain ribbons for the amount of neighbours you have, how many coins you have, coins spent, trees harvested, plots plowed, crops harvested, fertilising neighbour crops, the amount of animals you have, buying and placing decorations, placing fences, opening mystery eggs (found in neighbours' chicken coops) and many more. For each ribbon you achieve you will receive coins and lots of XP's.
CO-OP JOBS
You can either start a job yourself or join one which a neighbour has start. These jobs require you to set up a team and harvest a required amount of crops in a time limit to gain medals. For completing these jobs you receive coins, XP's and some kind of reward.
TROPHIES
This is quite a new feature. There is a leaderboard for each task which changes weekly. You are to compete with your neighbours to reach the top of the leaderboard and receive XP's and rewards for moving up the leaderboard. The task could be to harvest a certain plant, to harvest the most trees, feed the most baby animals or craft goods in your workshop.
You will start with quite a small farm, but you can expand this as you go by paying coins or asking neighbours for help in expanding. You will also need to collect parts to create storage buildings to save space on your farm. There are many types of buildings now including a horse stable, dairy farm, chicken coop, orchard, duck pond, zoo and more.
You can also buy a tractor, seeder, harvester or combine harvester which is good for large farms as it allows you to seed and harvest multiple plots in one go.
You will receive bushels from harvesting plants and trees which will go to your workshop and market. This allows neighbours to buy bushels from you and you can buy bushels from your neighbours. You will need a combination of bushels to create goods in your craftshop. These goods can then be converted to fuel to use in your machinery.
I enjoy the game but the problem I have is that they have tried to add so much to the game to improve it and it's just too much to do. With these added features came more glitches and I frequently have to refresh the page as it freezes or something goes wrong.
You now not only have your home farm, you also have an english countryside farm, Lighthouse cove farm, Jade falls farm, winter wonderland and Hawaiian paradise. Each land is a new farm with different scenery and animals and you can either pause these while you are on another farm or let them running so you could have plants growing in every land.
When they added the first couple of farms I thought it was a good feature as I would use one for my trees, one for animals and one for crops. Now there are too many, sometimes it takes a while to travel between farms and it's too time consuming.
Another negative in this game is it is difficult for people with few neighbours to complete many of the tasks. Also some of the items in the market can only be bought with farm cash (FC). You receive 1 FC every time you reach a new level. Others use a credit/debit card to purchase FC so it would be very hard to catch up with your neighbours' level if they are spending money on items.
Overall I found it fun at first and tend to go back to it to kill boredom now and again but normally end up giving up again because it is either too slow or freezing up.
The application is also available as a mobile app for phones or tablets so you can tend to your farm on the go. I don't use this as my make believe farm isn't of that much importance to me.
I think this started out as a fun game and I used to enjoy competing to reach a higher level than my neighbours, but I think they have tried to add to much to the game which if anything has made it worse.
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Driving Test Success All Tests DVD-Rom
by helenc72
I am learning to drive at the moment and passed my theory test this week.
When I first started to think about taking my theory test I bought the official DSA theory book. It was okay, but I found a few aspects of it quite irritating (for example, you constantly have to flip to the back to check the answers) and I never really ... felt motivated to pick it up and study my theory. My driving instructor recommended me the Driving Test Success CD-rom as an alternative. She thinks it the best product out the there when it comes to preparing for the theory test, as it is interactive and uses exactly the same format as the real test. After using it, I agree that it is excellent and far better than the DSA official material.
Installation was easy and whenever I put the disc in it asks whether I want to check for updates, so it seems they keep it up to date with any new questions.
The CD rom has three sections: theory test, hazard perception test and practical driving lessons. As I was using this to prepare for my theory, I used the first two sections a lot but did not try the practical driving lessons section.
=== Theory Test ===
The theory test section contains every official question from the DSA, covering all 14 of the test topics such as road signs, attitude, what to do in an accident etc. You can do the questions in pre-ordered sets, meaning that if you wanted to you could systematically work through every single question. When you are in this pratice mode, you are immediately shown whether or not your answer is correct and an explanation is provided. Alternatively you can take unlimited randomly generated mock tests of 50 questions and this mode has the exact same format as the real test. When you use the mock test mode you do not immediately see whether the question is right or wrong, but when you submit you can see the incorrect answers are marked in red and you can go back and review the question to see the correct answer. There is also a separate road sign test area within the theory section so you can take a mock test focussing only on the road signs.
I found these tests an ideal way to practice as it is more fun than using a book because it is interactive and the program keeps track of your score, so you don't have to keep checking to the back of the book for the answers. The program also allows you to see your progess over time, showing a graph with how your percentage score has progressed and it highlights the topics in which you are weaker or stronger to make you aware of where you should focus.
The only thing which slightly annoyed me about the mock theory tests was the voice over. There is a very loud voice over which reads all the questions and answers. Apparently this is optional but I never managed to turn it off, even when I went into the settings and turned the sound off, the voice was still there. I usually just turned my speakers off to avoid it, but this meant I couldn't listen to music on my computer while learning my theory.
The program told me that in total I had attempted 800 practice questions and I had not failed any mock tests on the multiple choice section, so I felt very confident when I went in for this part of the test. I actually passed the real one with 100% so obviously Driving Test Success had prepared me very well!
=== Hazard Perception ===
First of all I was a bit worried about the hazard perception section of the test because I didn't really know what to expect. My driving instructor had told me that the hazard perception part of Driving Test Success was really good as it includes videos in the same style as the test, allowing you to practice and get used to it. This was the main thing which attracted me to buy it.
Like the theory section, you can either work through pre-set groups of videos or you can take a full mock test of 14 video clips, as you would get in the real test. I have used both of these modes and the only difference is really the number of video clips, as the practice sessions are much shorter than the mocks.
The videos include a very wide range of scenarios, including country roads, busy cities, residential streets, motorways, night time scenes, scenes with bright sunlight, and just about every possible situation you could think of on the roads! In the hazard perception part of the theory test, you have to watch the videos and click the mouse when you see a "developing hazard", which is something which causes you to slow down, change direction or stop. The faster you react to the hazard, the more points you get. There is a time window in which you can get points, ranging from 5 points if you are very quick, to 1 point if you are slower. You get 0 points if you are too slow or miss it entirely. The reason I am explaining how the scoring works is that it is sometimes slightly flawed. Occasionally it is possible to be too quick and click just before the time window opens, meaning you should have got 5 points but in fact you get zero. My instructor warned me about this and said that if you have seen the hazard very early, you should wait a second and then click again just to make sure you get the points. You will get the points for your first click, so if the 5 had registered then there is no harm done. I had kind of taken this on board from my instructor telling me, but a few times I saw this "error" in action on my practice tests and got a zero when it really should have been a 5. After experiencing it myself a few times, it really drummed into me that I would have to make sure I clicked again on my real test if I had been too quick. I think this was really invaluable as I was able to get to grips with this slight bug in the test system.
In my opinion the harzard perception tests are not difficult but they definitely take some getting used to. When I first started practicing with the CD I did get some poor marks on a few videos and occasionally missed the hazard completely. By the time I had my real test this week, I was scoring 4s and 5s and passed with a good mark, so the practice had paid off.
The CD shows graphs and analysis of your results on the hazard perception too, as with the theory, and informs you which situations are your strong and weak areas. For example, it tells you which times of day you perform better in (for example I was scoring lower in dusk time videos), which types of road you score better on etc. This enables you to get enough practice in the areas which need it.
=== Highway Code ===
The CD also includes a full and up to date edition of the High Way Code, which is easy to search. This is useful when you just want to check something such as a road sign, stopping distances or rule. I didn't use it much, because I found it easy to learn most of the information from the practice tests as I went along.
=== Overall ===
This CD rom is so easy to use and really helpful when it comes to learning the material and getting used to the test format, which is especially useful for the hazard perception. I would recommend it to any learner driver and I think it is much better than the DSA theory test book. I was able to go to my theory test with full confidence after using this and was able to pass with ease.
Driving Test Success costs £5.99 on Amazon with postage included, which I think is great value for money.
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