The Tour of Egypt

Egypt: Basecamp

Holly and Joann check out adventures on the sparkly Adventure Board.

Now, aside from the adventures she would take part in thanks to the Adventure Board, Joann also had another objective: her primary one, in fact. That objective is to jog for four hours in Egypt. This will gain her money and an increase in Athletic skill for some reason.

The Sims get these little "Opportunities" now and then: they have to read a certain book, grow a certain plant, find a certain object, learn a certain recipe or piece of music, etc. Sometimes these opportunities result only in cash prizes, but sometimes you get an increase in a related skill, or something really, really cool like the ability to grow a steak plant.

The Sims 3 World Adventures updated the game with a handy little Adventure tracker that keeps track of whatever it is that you need to do to finish your opportunity or adventure. It's much more convenient than searching the town map for the gold Opportunity/Adventure star, and less stressful for those with bad memories (like me) who will often forget that they even opted into an opportunity and then feel an unreasonable sense of shame and failure when the opportunity goes unfulfilled and they hear the sad "You foolish and lazy person, you didn't fulfill even this simple task!" music.

A-hem. Anyway.

Both the adventures were LAME. Joann got the exact same "Find these papers for MorcuCorp" assignment that Candy had when she and Marion came on this little jaunt. At first I wasn't sure, so I followed her to the tomb and took a picture:

Things got even lamer when I realized that, since this is basically one game, all the things that Candy fixed - hidden stairs, pushing around statues, etc - had remained fixed, so Joann didn't have to do anything. And yet, the papers were still in this completely accessible room.

Holly just had to go to every single tourist spot in the city which took forever because things are super far apart and she can't drive everywhere because they're in a desert for Pete's sake. But at least she got some pretty pictures.

The Great Pyramid

The Sphinx

Ruins

Temple

Meanwhile, something actually exciting happened - Joann had a wish to sleep in a pyramid, so she went to one of the big pyramids, where she was hunting for turquoise to give to MorcuCorp, and opened the pyramid's door!

Unfortunately, her tent wouldn't fit in the pyramid, so she had to sleep outside.