God is an Adolescent Virgin with Acne

It's been a while since I played The Sims, so tonight I thought I'd go check on my creations and see how they were doing. While it was loading (and loading, and loading ...), I went to the toilet, made a coffee, tidied the lounge ... it seemed to be taking far longer than usual, then WHOOSH! back I went to my desktop. It really annoys me when it does this. There's no reason for it, because sometimes it will work quite happily for several hours on the trot.

I hope The Sims 2 is better at loading than the original. I was actually envying the Americans this week, because they already have it and last I heard we had to wait until the 10th of October. Then I found out today that it is out here TOMORROW (actually TODAY, because we're already into Thursday, which means it was yesterday I found out, not today ... still with me?), which is rather annoying as I need to get a new PC before I can play it and I'll have to get that set-up and sorted first.

I've found a few cheap copies on eBay already, including one which is priced so low (£15 to be precise, the rrp being £39.99) there has to be a catch in it. And no, it isn't an auction, it's Buy it Now. There were four of them originally, now there's only one left and I am sorely tempted, but I'm not going to take the risk. I checked the feedback and it seems this person has sent out pirate copies of things before now, or DVD games advertised as being for the PC.

I went to the official Sims 2 site earlier and even though the game has only been out for a couple of days from what I can gather, there are custom-made houses and even families with histories already uploaded by people who've bought it. They must have been playing solidly for the last 48 hours without a break!

I also found myself at a site that gave away the money cheats (already) but I closed the window. I regretted discovering those the first time around. My Sims can damn well work for their money like everybody else has to. Well, I might have just one rich family, so everyone else can suffer from mad bouts of jealousy. One thing's for sure, it certainly won't be the Newbies. I think this time I'll kill them off fairly early on and let them be my first ghosts. I understand the ghosts will be more fun in this one, so I think Bob and Betty would be ideally suited to the role.

Playing a computer game for hours on end may seem a very strange way for a menopausal middle-aged woman to pass the time, but I'm not just any menopausal middle-aged woman, I'm a menopausal middle-aged SCORPIO woman. Anyone into astrology will understand exactly what I mean by that. It's the 'playing God' aspect of it really. I can create a life, control it, and even dispose of it if I so desire.

Even before I realised that The Sims was known as a 'God game', or even that there was such a thing, I hadn't failed to see the correlation. I was playing one day and suddenly had this impression of some geek up in the clouds with a computer, looking down at me and laughing maniacally as he clicked away with his mouse. In fact, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. I see him as being a virgin of about 15, riddled with acne and almost insane with teenage angst.

Not everybody's idea of 'God' I don't suppose, but it certainly makes more sense to me than any other version. Just don't ask me to worship him.