This weekend Steam had a 50% sale on everything The Sim 3. Anniken has sometimes mentioned that she used to play the original The Sims every now and I played it quite a bit myself way back then when I studied in Grimstad. Terje was the undisputed The Sims master, though, but he will try to convince you otherwise. Anyway. I bought Sim 3 at a low-low price and inspired by the Exploring the Mysteries of the Mind with the Sims 3 article posted on Cracked.com, I decided to make my own freak of nature and see how he’d manage in a digital fantasy world.

With further ado, say hello to Tom Cruise.

Yes, you’ve probably heard the name before, but the name is the only thing they share. The Scientology Church Tom Cruise’ The Sims 3 namesake is slightly overweight, has a weird fashion sense, is neurotic, insane, inappropriate, a kleptomaniac and evil. He loves Egyptian music, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and his favorite color is yellow¹.

The original idea was to control Tom, to get him to do all kinds of weird stuff. But before I was even able to take a screen shot for his portrait, he ran off. For I while I struggled to figure out where the hell he’d run off to, but eventually I found him skinny dipping in the top floor pool of Bridgeport’s celebrity gym. I kid you not. At that point I ditched the original plan and decided to let Mr. Cruise control his own faith.

After he got out of the pool, Tom walked up to a thread mill that he looked at for ages before he decided to give it a go. And he really got into it. It was so fun that he totally forgot to change into his gym outfit and kept his causal jeans on. Unfortunately, he sucked at running and managed to fall down quite a lot. That the weird kid in the sofa kept staring him in the back probably didn’t help.

After an impressive four hours of running and falling down he got off, took “an evil shower” and changed into his swim wear - a white muscle t-shirt and a pair of very small blue shorts. He strolled back to the thread mills where he sat down to watch TV, but as you can see from the picture below watching TV was just a lame excuse for staring at a woman in high heels and a dress (hmmm?) who tried her best to stand upright on the thread mill.

Even though Tom found watching TV entertaining for a while, he eventually got bored and left the gym. He didn’t go far, though. Still in his swim wear, the sat down behind a hot dog stand where he spent an hour staring into the void, only interrupted by the occasional monologue. Sitting there looked both cold and boring and I considered making him change into something more comfortable and go get a hot dog to do something about his growing hunger - but before I got that far Tom got up and bought a hot dog all by himself. Good call.

With the hot dog secured, Tom returned to the table where he was shortly after joined by - somewhat surprisingly - the dress clad woman he stalked at the gym. She had also bought a hot dog and they ate their skin wrapped meat and shared stories about the Loch Ness monster and the economy. Unfortunately, talking about money got Tom a little bit too excited and he made it very hard for people around him to eat in peace. He also spiced the conversation with the odd rude comment, but the unknown woman didn’t scare easily and right before Tom’s bladder was about to burst, he made his first friend, Lala Angelista.

It later turns out that Lala is insane, something that explains a lot. The name seem appropriate, at least.

Tom then returned to the gym to empty his bladder just seconds before he had an accident. He had now spent hours discussing with Lala and it was getting very, very late and Tom was getting very, very tired. In spite of that, he decided to work out a little, but gave up after about an hour. In the haze of sleep deprivation, he went over to a woman who apparently had a thing for nuclear power and started telling her about his new apartment - which he hadn’t even seen yet, by the way. And what do you know, he made yet another friend at the gym, Moxie Logan.

Starting to get even more sleepy, Tom went to have another dive in the pool, this time with his clothes on. At this point we were a bit worried he’d fall asleep while swimming and drown. That would have been quite an embarrassment, managing to kill of my Sim after twenty minutes of gameplay. But in the end he got out, walked to the elevator and started talking to himself.

After a while, Tom snapped out of his The Shining moment and decided to go home and get some sleep. Little did he know that I’ve totally forgotten to buy the poor man a bed, meaning that there was no place for him to sleep. His apartment is amongst the more sparsely furnished I’ve seen, to be honest.

Realizing that he got totally screwed when he bought the apartment, it totally snapped for Tom. He started screaming and pulling out what little hair he had left. Look at that face - that’s a face of pure desperation.

But as the sun rose over Bridgeport, he did what everyone with no shoes, no bed and an unhealthy obsession for Egyptian music would do: He went to the park and fell asleep on a bench.

At the end of the day, I’m surprised how well Tom managed his first twenty four hours in Bridgeport. After all, he has all the attributes of someone who shouldn’t have a single friend and that the first building he decided to run into was a celebrity gym was quite a shocker. He also manged to make three friends; Lala, Moxie and some woman playing the guitar at the gym.

I’m tempted to have my computer turned on over night to see how Tom will do when left unattended for a while, but I’m afraid I’ll find him tomorrow morning, sitting in a corner of his dark living room, in a pool of his own urine with the refrigerator stuffed with body parts.