Category: Video Games

Posted in Crafts, Video Games

Summer’s here

Posted on by Evallone

So I’ve taken the last few weeks off from social media and studying, just to enjoy chilling for a bit, playing the sims and AC and getting back to crocheting (see featured photo). I’m revived!

I got the wool haul from Watt Brothers in the city centre… the whole stash was only £15 because the smaller (looking) single coloured balls were 5 for £5! I’m getting more once I blast through this lot. As with most of my interests I go through obsessive phases where I have to work on it every single second until I complete the project… so while I’m now having downtime from crochet, here is a picture of what I did make:

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A shawl!

It’s a perfect size and just over 200g of acrylic wool made it (you can see the little white edge I needed to finish up with). It fits around my shoulders and hangs comfortably without being cumbersome and will be great come autumn when it’s a little cooler. I’ve already started taking requests from family for blankets, scarves, and shawls (and a poncho) so we’ll see how well that happens and I might consider opening it up for online purchases.

I visited Hobbycraft a few times before work and got a lovely marble effect chunky wool that is also currently being worked into a shawl, once I get a bit further along I’ll post updates of it, for now it looks like a knotted hanky. Hobbycraft also have the Caron Cakes, recommended by Jayda In Stiches, a fairly reasonable price of £10 a ball (200g), it’s a self-variegated wool, meaning the colours change as you crochet which saves on changing yarn every few rows.

Everything I’ve learned about crochet and the patterns have been from Jayda In Stitches who I found on youtube first. She makes videos that are super easy to follow and literally takes you through each step several times before letting you continue on your own. Her enthusiasm is inspiring, as is her work ethic! So if you’ve ever had a hankering to do some crochet, then go check out her website and youtube.

I’ll leave it here for now, I’ve much more to say – I’ll queue up a few posts over the next couple of days, especially as I’m preparing to GO ON HOLIDAY NEXT WEEK!

ciao

e x

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Posted in Video Games

The Sims 4 PS4 Review

Posted on by Evallone

After three years, the Sims 4 finally arrived onto consoles mid-November this year. It has been a long-time coming for those who are strictly console but the release wasn’t quite as minimal as has been with previous releases in the past.

Although I waited a few weeks to purchase (as I wasn’t sure if I wanted/needed it given that I’ve bought almost the complete set on PC) I’ve decided to review the game for anyone who is still on the fence or just plain curious about this crossover.

First things first, I was surprised to see that the game is a straight copy of the PC version, like everything, down to the menu functions, the neighbourhoods and the characters available. Instantly I warmed to the game, not only was I already familiar and comfortable with the game play but it meant I could go back to old townies long since dead in my laptop version. The fact that you are playing on a console is never going to replace the speed of using a mouse and rapidly darting across the screen while pressing various buttons to fast forward time, move up and down between floors or even to view menus. However, it’s not the worst handling I’ve had on a sims console game so I won’t berate the programmers for what is the best version yet.

My biggest bug-bear with the controls is that I can’t keep the Needs panel visible while playing, it must be hidden in order to move around the screen otherwise. Again it’s not a major cause for concern, just a minor adjustment on my part to get used to playing like this.

The actual problems I’ve encountered are those which were issues in the Sims 3 on PC, game freezing, not saving, system crashing, and actions building up but not clearing. I played the game for most of the day yesterday and I had to restart my PlayStation about five times because of the game freezing and becoming unresponsive. HOWEVER! Despite being sickeningly annoyed at the prospect of having lost so much gameplay (the curse of TS3 but TS4 on PC has been a far more stable game) it turns out somehow I hadn’t lost any progress with my game. I’m not certain if there is an underlying autosave that I’m not aware of but I knew that my manual saves had been few and far between so it was a delightful surprise that my sims were safe and up to date.

I’ve played it for a few hours today and so far the only issues have been the action queues building and not clearing, but much like the PC version this will probably be fixed with travelling somewhere with the sim or just starting the game over again.

As I had mentioned earlier, as a new release we were treated to more than just the base game; there is the Vampire game pack and a few stuff packs available for purchase. I bought the triple gift set of Vampires, Luxury Party Stuff and City Living to boost the features of the game. In saying this I have purchased most of the additional packs for the PC version and while I was surprised that there were any packs available for the console, considering there has been a three year wait for this there really should have been more, if not all expansions readily available. A quote I read from another reviewer was that although this is probably the best PC to Console version of the Sims, no matter how you cut it, it’s still three years behind the PC version.

So for now I’ll probably give it 3.5 stars out of 5, not because it’s not fun, but simply that we’re lacking the extras of the PC version.