The Sims 3

Having spent a considerable amount of time with The Sims 3 last night, I have decided to break my review into a couple sections to remain both thorough, yet punctual, because if you’ve ever played a Sims title, you know there is an almost unlimited amount of stuff you can do. Throughout the week, I will be adding to this review, so be sure to check back.

So far, if there’s one thing I can say this game has expanded upon, it’s options. You have several options for almost everything you do. I can also say this right off the bat: The Sims 3, looks better, loads faster, and runs smoother than The Sims 2 ever did; quite an accomplishment if you ask me.

Creating a Sim

Holy crap you can spend a lot of time in this mode! Even more so than before. Aside from every aspect of your Sim’s face, you can customize the fat to muscle ratio, the skin color is a slider instead of having a couple presets, you can design a Sim at any age, and as you are probably aware, you can completely tweak the colors and patterns of any of the clothing (and hair–OK not so much the patterns for the hair), which basically gives you an unlimited amount of choices for attire. You should have no problem creating anybody you’d like. I was blown away by how many different patterns there were to choose from–and then I realized I was only looking at one sub-category of them. So anyway, lots of choices. You’ll recognize a couple things that came from expansions for The Sims 2, like jewelry.

After you’ve spent hours (if you so choose) tweaking your Sim’s looks, you proceed onto selecting their traits, of which there are 80. Traits are things like:

• Athletic
• Commitment Issues
Never Nude
• Flirty
• Inappropriate
and so on…

Then you are given the option of choosing your Sims’ life goal, which is based off of your previous choices. So that’s nice, because for some reason every Sim I ever made in The Sims 2 wanted to be a master criminal.

I’ve been impressed with the graphical improvements so far; while not a huge leap forward, your Sims do tend to look more like real (albeit stylized) people. This is my first Sim, Peter.



And here is his horrible trailerhouse I had him purchase (which could be procured furnished or not; a nice touch):


And this is his neighborhood:


And yes, it’s that easy to zoom all the way out to look at the whole city. Then you can just click and go wherever you want. Finally! This is what I’ve wanted since the first Sims. At last, I was able to jog over to a neighbors house, invite myself in, and proceed to watch some T.V. on their couch, just like all my horrible neighbors do to me. These are Peter’s traits:



Schmoozer, Daredevil, Easily impressed? Yeah, as you can tell, he’s kind of obnoxious. So of course he wanted to be a CEO of a mega corporation, or a star athlete. No offense to the athletes out there.

The Life and Times of Peter Goodman

In the beginning, when Peter was only a Rabid Fan in the sports career track, money was tight, so he spent a lot of evenings jogging to the neighbors house for free T.V. and food. They didn’t seem to mind, and Peter had no shame. He started spending more time pumping Extreme Iron, and taking Extreme Showers, and finally got a chance to join the minors.

In between all the late night jogs to the neighbors house, Peter didn’t have a lot of time for cleaning house, so he decided hiring a maid for $125 dollars a day would be worth it. Plus, he basically didn’t know any women, so double score. He made the phone call, and the next day, his maid showed up.

It was a dude. Things were not going according to plan. Not only was he not a hot woman, but he would sneeze and cough and retch all the time, which didn’t seem very sanitary. Peter thought about firing him, but decided he could deal with it, since we wouldn’t be home during the day very often. The minor leagues left him with four work days, two game days, and only one day off.

Now that he was a high roller with a maid and all, Peter decided to spruce up his image a bit.

But he still came across as pretty white trash while leaving his trailer and flamingos behind to ride his bike to work.

The next day, luckily, the maid service realize the error of its ways, and sent a female maid to his house. Peter wasted no time in asking her if she wanted to hang out, which she took to mean “stop cleaning right now”, so he still paid the $125 that day, but no cleaning was received. The two of them seemed to hit it off well enough, at least for Peter’s standards, which means she thought he was “OK”. So he called her up the next day, to hang out before work (Game Day–nothing to do until 3pm). Apparently she skipped out on work to show up, as she kept saying there was somewhere she “needed to be”, but under Peter’s barrage of bad jokes and attempted pickup lines, she apparently missed whatever appointment she had, and decided to spend the night. The male maid from the previous day was called in to cover. He didn’t seem happy about it. Peter had also started to suspect the male maid of stealing things from his house.



Peter was really getting into the whole fitness thing, and attempted to give the maid a few pointers on working out. Unfortunately he was a little too intense about the whole thing.


Finally Peter made it to the major leagues, and didn’t have much time for the maid,

but they got engaged anyway. Peter took the next day off work to have a surprise private wedding. So he put on his best suit (which wasn’t very good) and called up the maid. When she showed up, she looked… different. She was dressed in sweats, and her hair was pulled back–it was white. She was a senior citizen, having apparently aged over night.

Peter did the right thing, and married her anyway. Mostly because he had no other prospects, and had recently matured into an adult himself. Sure, the maid would be dead long before Peter reached old age, but they could have a few happy years. So she moved in and pottered around the house, being as she either retired, or had been fired for skipping so many days of work. It was then that Peter learned a couple shocking things about the maid (not having bothered to before they were married).

• 1. She was a kleptomaniac (poor, poor wrongly accused male maid had been fired long ago).
• 2. Her life’s goal was to be a heartbreaker, which meant she wanted to be with as many Sims as possible. Would this be a problem, even in her old age?



Apparently so, because later that night (the day of their wedding) she invited the neighbor whom Peter had been borrowing T.V. and food from (and also turned out to be Peter’s boss at the stadium) and proceeded to flirt like crazy while Peter was extreme weight training in the other room. While walking from the weight room to the shower, Peter happened upon his boss and the maid making out. He yelled at his boss to “chill out” and in a moment of anger, insinuated that the maid’s mother was a llama.

Needless to say, the whole thing didn’t go over well, the divorce was finalized, and the maid moved out that very night. Peter also bought a T.V. of his own, because he wouldn’t be spending any more time next door. He then went on a late night bike ride of anger (still in his wedding suit), and while cruising past City Hall, remembered that someone there wanted him to give a speech on fitness.



So he stopped by, gave a speech for a couple hours, which apparently went over well, because he was paid, and then he started to think that maybe “Peter Goodman” lacked the excitement needed for a pro ball player. So while at the court house, he had his named legally changed to “Lightening Awesometown”. Tomorrow was game day, and the Llamas had been on a savage losing spree so Lightening went home to work out.

The game was a huge success (12-1), so to celebrate, Lightening Awesometown went straight home and slept with Monika, who was the manager of the local gym, and someone he barely knew from a few casual run-in’s around the stadium. He was growing old, and didn’t have time to waste, so later that afternoon Monika (whatever her last name was) became Monika Awesometown.



After a little while, it became quite clear that Monika was pregnant, whether by Lightening or someone else. It didn’t really matter to Lightening, because he needed an heir to continue the Awesometown legacy. Sometime later, in the middle of the night, Monika sprang from the bed, and Lightening rushed her to the hospital (in a taxi) where she gave birth to a brand new baby boy, Thunder Awesometown. And for all intents and purposes, they lived happily ever after.

Final Thoughts

The Sims franchise receives some needed freshness with The Sims 3. While it’s nothing too drastic (people who don’t like The Sims aren’t going to be changing their minds, and long time fans aren’t going to be angry) it does change enough to make it feel like a new experience. Finally being able to leave your house is obviously the biggest addition, and the feel of an actual living city comes across nicely. I find myself missing being able to control multiple households in the same city at a time, (if a roommate moves out, they become controlled by the AI) but that would probably be a nightmare for even the most proficient multi-tasker (which I’m not).

A lot of things that needed to be made easier, have been. You can now click on the mailbox and choose “pay bills”, instead of placing stacks of envelopes all over the house, and then having to return them all to the box. If it comes down to the last day to pay a bill, you get a pop-up warning you, and can just click “Pay Bills Now” which just deducts the funds without even stopping what you’re doing. In build mode you can move entire walls, windows and door included, instead of demolishing and reconstructing. The same goes for table and chair sets. You can move a dinner table and six chairs by only clicking the table.

The much touted traits add quite a bit to gameplay by giving you more choices to make your Sim different from their neighbor, and even the worst traits can add bonuses. A snobbish Sim can look at themselves in the mirror and gain a “moodlet” that leaves them feeling pretty (thus improving their mood) for hours. Or maybe your Sim is a kleptomaniac. Not the best of traits, but swiping stuff from your neighbors can be a real Simoleon saver. Even when your friends come to visit, they’ll never notice their recently stolen car parked in your drive way.

Keeping your Sims mood up is a lot easier, as there are more things to help them, other than having fun, being social, eating, sleeping, and the like. Now things like listening to music, (which they don’t have to actively do– it can just be playing in the background) or smelling that new car smell, can add to their overall mood. Conversely having a boring conversation, or becoming stir crazy can bring them down.

There is a bit of an adjustment period in getting used to some of the new features, and a few of the things changed seemed less handy (you can no longer click on your Sim to make a cell phone call, but instead have to access their inventory, and click on the phone itself), but the bottom line is, if you’re a Sims fan, there is a lot of new content you’re going to enjoy in The Sims 3.



Tags: The Sims 3