I recently jumped on The Sims Social bandwagon on Facebook. I tried The Sims once before but I didn’t really get it. At the time it seemed like a lot of work with little pay off. Recently however, while on twitter I kept reading tweets from Trixie360 and her husband Reighvin about how their sims were interacting on facebook, and well, I got curious.

I played for hours the first night, made friends, rearranged my apartment and even got PsychoVandal to make a sim as well. I spent the next few weeks trying to woo and woo-hoo with his character and almost broke up with him one night due to his unwillingness to put out. I felt so confused and rejected — ahem, I mean my sim. My sim felt so confused and rejected.

Although my relationship with John was slightly frustrating, I was essentially hooked. I questioned how I’d gone so long without getting into any of the sim games. Having to wait for my energy points to recharge got annoying and that’s when a light bulb went off. “I could be playing this on my Xbox and getting achievements!”

I spent the next 48 hours playing Sims 3 on the Xbox 360. I worked in a bookstore, John was a Chef (that got regularly promoted) and we lived in a 3 bedroom house. We ate, we cleaned, we watched tv, and woo-hoo’d like there was no tomorrow. Eventually my sim started puking and our daughter was born shortly afterward. We cared for a baby, then a toddler and the next thing you know she was taking the bus to school. I was disappointed to find out she skipped her first day of school (to play in the park) but that’s neither here nor there.

Days went by and I was happy. I was playing a game I enjoyed and scoring gamer points too! I hadn’t played video games by myself in while. It was great to both have the time and the desire. But as we know, good things never last.

My sim ended up pregnant for the second time and then something happened that completely ruined ALL my fun. DISGUST. Disgust on me, Disgust on John, Disgust on our daughter. My once happy (and perfect) family now had permanent stink face. The music was stuck in this “wah, wah, wah…too bad, so sad” loop. I didn’t know what to do. I ran to google in search of answers. Was something broken or dirty? Did I let food rot somewhere? I checked everything!

I got rid of all the food in my inventory even if it wasn’t rotten. I cleaned every room and checked to make sure there was nothing that needed repairing. My kitchen has caught on fire a few times and just so that I could rule everything out, I replaced EVERYTHING in it. That stupid loop continued to mock me.

For each of my sims there was a disgust moodlet that said 10m and hung there. It was the ONLY moodlet that didn’t count down and refused to go away. Surely this was a bug. I scoured the internet hoping someone else had come across this bug and found a way to fix it. After exhausting all my options I sold my house as a last ditch effort. Nothing changed. Same music. Same mood. My sims hated life and I couldn’t figure out why.

I was so incredibly frustrated by this I packed up the game and returned it to GameStop. I used my store credit to buy Catherine (more about that later) instead. But I haven’t given up on the sims completely. During my momentary infatuation with the game I watched a trailer for The Sims: Pets. I was intrigued and vowed to give the sims another chance once it was out later this month. Keep your fingers crossed that Sims: Pets leaves me with a more positive (and less buggy) experience.