Happy Musings Thursday my friends! I’m back with another musings post for you. I’ve got some thoughts, so let’s get to ’em…
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written a musings post. One of those was intentional, the other completely unintentional.
Last Thursday I sat down to write a musings post about my initial thoughts on the Holidays of Future Past mini-event, and Murphy’s Law struck me from every which way. So before I knew it, the day was over…and I didn’t get the musings post written. Such is life sometimes, right? The best-laid plans…
Anyway, I’m back this week. And now, rather than giving you an initial impression overview of the event…I can give you my full perspective. Since I’ve now finished the mini-event. So, let’s get cracking…
I’ll do this in the usual post-event wrap up style…with the good and the bad, and give it my final grade, but I want to preface this by saying: I enjoyed this mini-event. Future episodes are some of my favorite Simpsons episodes, so I LOVE whenever the content comes to TSTO. In fact, we recently sat down and recorded an Addicts Live Podcast all about the Holidays of Future Past update, look for that to air on Saturday, and things got a little heated. So be sure to check out that episode on Saturday to see why I got a little “mom” on Safi and Pat.
The Good
– Prize track full of new items. All 5 prizes with this mini-event were NEW prizes for TSTO. Not a single returning item, donut, or land token to be found. Just 5 brand new, unique, prizes to Springfield. Say what you want about the prizes…but a prize track with 5 new, unique prizes proves EA is listening to us.
In the last several events, our #1 complaint (outside of the event format) has been returning content, donuts, or land tokens on the prize track. This event has none of that. At least for 1 mini-event, EA listened. And they should be applauded for that. We’ll see what happens in the next event…
-Prizes fit one cohesive theme. Another top complaint of Tappers recently has been that the prizes don’t work together. They don’t fall into a specific theme, or they’re from random episodes, which makes decorating hard.
Every prize from this event is from the future. And they work well with other future items in Springfield.
-Future characters. I love that Jiff and Skippy are part of the prize track with this one. And I love that we can finally get the future versions of Marge and Homer. Granted, the future versions of Marge and Homer are just slightly older, and more hunched over, versions of regular Marge and Homer…but it’s still nice to complete the Future Simpson Family Set.
Now we have future versions of ALL the Simpsons, Jenda, Zia, and Jiff and Skippy…we just need Future Milhouse and we’ll be all set! (and Hugh…we need Hugh! Oh and Future Nelson! And Future Ralph! Ok, so it’ll be awhile before we’re “all set”, but you get what I’m saying!)
The Bad
-The dialogue. I’ve been praising the writers for a year. The dialogue for TSTO during 2019 was phenomenal. Great storylines, funny jokes, topical…but apparently, the great dialogue stayed in 2019. Because the dialogue for this event is…awful. It feels forced and disjointed. Not a fan.
-Not timely. Once again EA proves they don’t have a calendar. This event focuses on the New Year, and New Year’s resolutions. So it should have been released, at the very least, on New Year’s Day. Instead, it was released 2 weeks later. I think this has more to do with a programming issue on EA’s end than anything…after all, based on the files, it looks like Christmas was released a week later than it should have been, which likely pushed everything else back a week. But still, a New Year’s mini-event 2 weeks into the New Year feels off.
-Lack of independent visual tasks for Empty-Nest Marge. I don’t like that she only has 1 independent visual task. For her other visual task, you need Retired Homer.
Final Grade
Overall, I’d give the Holidays of Future Past a solid B. The dialogue prevents it from hitting the B+ to A- range. For a mini-event it’s pretty good, but not great. If the rest of the mini-events in 2020 follow suit with this I’ll be ok.
As I said earlier, we’ll see what the rest of 2020 brings…but so far it feels like they’re off to a good (not great) start!
Thoughts? How would you grade the Holidays of Future Past mini-event? Your Good? Your Bad? Sound off in the comments below, you know we love hearing from you!