...it's devilishly addictive.

I've just spent the last seven hours straight playing the copy of the Sims I received this morning, excluding the 40 minute installation time (bearing in mind this computer is only a year old).

Where did I go wrong? I promised myself I wouldn't go off on one of my gaming binges as before.

I broke my promise.

It was a basic family. A young couple with a toddler. Beware: toddlers are almost too cute. They sound like characters from Happy Tree Friends (minus the killing) and of course you cannot just stick them in a cot or in a high chair and hope they shut up. They won't.

The game kept warning me that there was only two days left until the toddler would mature to child status. It was then I realised it wasn't very long to teach the toddler how to walk, talk and crap (or go potty, depending on how conservative you are).

I just squeezed it in, and now he was a child, going off to school. The man was being promoted as a politician and the woman was a housewife that spent more time doing aerobics than actual housewivery (in the end, I just hired a maid).

There was one nice touch to the cooking system. If you have a servings-sized plate, the person who has cooked it doesn't just leave it for others to run towards like hounds. It locates dining chairs and the dining table and sets an individual place for each person awake in the house. Very useful, very effective, very realistic.

The making a friend system is improved too. No longer do you 'talk, joke, talk joke, talk, joke, compliment'. There are thousands of interactions.

Sooner or later, perhaps when the boy turned into a teenager, he succeeded the man as the main character. The father was now just the shmoe that brought in the cash. His son was now in the picture, holding parties, going to parties, going to the local pool and chilling with the local hooligans.

Then the blasted mother got pregnant. Although they had been wanting a pregnancy, it became a burden on me. The mother needed to eat, shit and wash more frequently, leaving less time for fun and sleep. She was more frustrated than I was. Luckily, the man's recent promotion earnt a nice few thousand simoleons for the baby.

The man came home one day, his energy bar almost nil. I was hasty to send him to bed. It was a Sunday (he works on Sundays, natch, but gets Wednesdays and Thursdays free), and his teenaged son had been partying all day, so he was sleeping in the evening, as was the wife, what with her pregnancy.

The problem was, the man had brought two female colleagues back, who made straight for the hot tub installed on the patio. At about midnight, the son and the mother stirred and decided to play with the remote control car. Her waters broke. Everyone gathered round. There was panic.

They were twins. One boy and one girl. I was shocked. This was a blessing and a curse. They wanted a baby, two babies = bad news. No sleep for anyone.

Soon, the teenager was playing with his new brother and sister, so I quickly bought two cribs and put them to sleep. And the father of the babies? Sound asleep, the lazy bastard.

I decided to log off there, and come tell you an important message:

When you buy this game, you will not get any homework done. I have an 800-word Shakespeare essay to write, and I don't intend to do it now. I'm f*cked, what with three kids, a mother recovering from pregnancy trauma (and will no doubt get the baby blues) and the once lively, now drab father who seems to do nothing but eat, sleep and go to work. But his wife still loves him somehow. Maybe it is because when he gets into bed, he snuggles up behind her and cuddles her as he goes to sleep. Oh, and the teenager is overweight, the fat bastard.