HomeSims

Vima - Clean and pleasant with a very nice layout, I've been here before, but don't come frequently.

The wallpaper is less than good. Some of it doesn't tile correctly, some of it is flat and the better ones have no moulding around them. It would be nice to offer a choice of moulding or none. I thought the posters would be objects, but discovered they are wallpapers. If you don't mind your whole wall being covered, that might work.

While I didn't download the floors, some of them look really nice, seem to tile well and have nice style and patterns.

The roofs are good. Most of them are just Maxis roofs recolored, but some of them look oddly familiar (www.simfreaks.com) though not copied. I think they could expand this section to give more color variety.

The house section has a small variety of houses. The pictures are a little small and it's difficult to see any detail the house might have.

The object sets layed out in WDS Style (www.welldressedsim.com) shows one victorian kitchen set which is a resurface wood grain on the green tiled counter. The tile was recolored to a dark brown and the wood almost passes the test. The only problem is the top of the trash compactor and bookcase. The wood needed to be skewed and scaled before being cut out.

The miscellaneous objects are surprisingly nice looking. I haven't really checked them out thoroughly in a while and must say there seems to be a lot of improvement. The previews come in a 7DS (www.7deadlysims.com) style pop-up display. The objects here are at the right angles and there are some really cute ones amidst a few that really don't blow my sail. With such quality, I would think a better job could be done on the paintings...ditch Art Studio...please.

The link for skins should be at the top of it's section I think. It gets lost with the other stuff. Maybe a new section titled skins with the women, men, and kids links underneathe them. The skins area has a large variety of men and women, though a small selection on the kids. One boy and one girl skin, clearly the skinners aren't interested in children. Neither is Dane.

The people here seem very nice and helpful and there are a few sections dedicated to information and help on the game.

Four martinis and a bookmark.

Storel - It's been a few months since I last visited HomeSims, because for a while their updates had slowed down to a bare trickle. They seem to have been updating more frequently for the last couple of months, though, and it's good to see so many new objects. It's also nice to see that their more recent objects are available in Mac format as well. I wish they'd change the interface for their object pages, though; I do get tired of having to click the Preview button just to see a picture, for every single object.

House Hold Objects is about the largest section, with two pages of objects, including what I think is still the most original bed anyone's made yet, Kerry's Blonde Bed. It's too bad Kerry doesn't seem to have done anything for them since then. The description of the Haunted Play House is hilarious, and makes me wish they used humor more often throughout the site.

Outdoor Objects has an interesting selection of shrubs and hedges, some of which are rather starkly geometrical, like the Sharp Shrub (which reminds me irresistibly of a crayon!). A number of the more recent objects show this geometric influence, like the Circlewood Hedge and the Water Well, and I believe this reflects the creators' use of Blueprint since it was released a couple of months ago.

The Electronics section has been all but dormant lately, but I do like some of the table lamps. This section also isn't sorted by date the way most of the other sections are, for some reason. The Action Figures section is definitely dormant, with only three objects in it and nothing new since last October. I like the Lego car, though. The Decorative section is much larger and busier; I particularly like the two Easter objects, and the very realistic Telescope. The Alien Sculpture is cute, too.

Walls and Floors are both large sections, with over 250 files in each, so you can spend a while looking through them.. I could swear I've seen some of these walls at other sites, though, but perhaps some of them have been uploaded to The Sims Resource. You'll get through the Roofs section much more quickly, though, as there are less than 30 of them. Most of the roofs were a bit too brightly colored for my taste, but some may enjoy them.

The Forums seem to be out of order, alas; several recent news items indicate that they are being redone with lots of new features, so I look forward to seeing what's new.

Overall, HomeSims is a good site, with many original and interesting objects. They're also one of the oldest Sims sites still around, with at least one object (the Retro Jukebox) that dates back to May 2000. I don't care for some of their interface decisions, and some of the objects are a bit odd, but the site is definitely worth keeping an eye on. Four martinis with a bookmark.

Squeegee - I would not be trying to lie if I suggested that I already have a bookmark in my browser with the name "Home Sims" already on it. I am a fan of this site. But not enough to where I check it every day. But a fan none the less.

Homesims.com always has a new commentary for each passing day. It might be a new download or just a few quick comments in the update section.

There is really too much information and goodies to declare. The color selections used are not really to what I like (orange, yellow and white). But they do work well together and the colors accent the pages without drawing attention away from the download and information features.

What is great about Home Sims. Is that they recently took over the responsibility of hosting "Sim Community News" that used to be featured at About.com. "SCN" was a favorite site of mine that I used to check daily. They had some problems with the main person always being too busy to post updates. And so the service sort of died down until Home Sims jumped in and took it all over. I urge all Sim fans to look at the Sim Community News area at this website even if you might not enjoy Home Sims.

There are no negatives to this site as far as what my eyesight could detect. I enjoyed my time at this site and hope others do as well.

I submit a review of four martinis and a bookmark.

Sister Cecilia C. Robertsim
Pastor of the Church of Simmintology -

Homesims, is very organized, and orange and there is nothing what so ever the matter with that! I like the nice normal text, easily readable. The site isn't overly flashy or artistic: I quiet like it. Praise be!!!

The only problem I have at all on this site is the way that you have to click on one button to preview it and another to down load it, invariably I clicked on the download button every time....so really this is my problem with not being able to stay on task.

Everything really seems to load pretty fast and the objects are nice enough, I do prefer to look at a page and see the objects all spread out before me, but that is once again a personal preference.

So this is going to be short tonight, and I will be giving the site four communion cups!

That is all, I am sort of preoccupied tonight....Pat is waiting.