Nanor
Well-Known Member
So the story of Alice & Kev have got a lot of you interested in getting The Sims 3. I feel it's my duty to fill you in on the facts. Scroll to the bottom if you can't be bothered reading my ramblings.
I'm sure all of you have played The Sims 1 or 2 so you know the jist of it. The Sims 3 is effectively the Sims 2 on steroids. You're not confined to your lot and you suffer only 2 loading screens in the entire game. It streamlines the experience and means you can look about the town while your sims sleep.
The experience has been streamlined. Big time. In the other 2 sims series I never got to the top of a career. It took proper dedication needing maxed out skills and bajillions of friends. With my first person I got to the top of the career and on the dude I'm playing as now I got a promotion every day. It's nice to get paid loads but money is no problem at all and it was nice to have a bit of a challenge.
Doing stuff is more awesome. When you go to work you can choose how you behave in work. If you're feeling a bit tired you can sleep on the job or if you want a promotion you can work hard. There are a few others depending on what it is your doing and all have an effect on job performance.
Of course, this is only a substitute for actually being able to control your sim in the workplace. Your sim simply walks into a building and you wait until the shift is finished. The same is with shopping. You go to the book store and you're only given a menu of what you can buy. You can't look around the shop or break the toilets. I suppose all this will come with expansion packs.
Exploring the town is a bit... pointless. If you want to see something you can leave your sim at home and just move the camera. There are a number of collectibles; Fish, Rocks, Insects and Plants. Fish can be used to aid in your cooking, rocks can be cut into diamonds for display or smelted into bars for display, insects can be sold and plants can be, well, planted with the ultimate goal of cooking them. A bit boring and the only real reason to leave your house a part from work. You can always visit another sims house but why would you want to? Your social bar can be refilled at home on MSN or housemates.
Frankly what it needs is expansion packs. Not the god damned "S&M Stuff" content editions (I think they're being done away with as you can buy new chairs and curtains from the game launcher with "Sim points") but proper expansion packs like University and Business-something. In those things I could set up a business selling my paintings and use the money to build my own castle. I can't do that in this because I can't set up my own business and the level of content is a bit crap.
Moods are different too. Your mood doesn't scale with various feeling bars but if a feeling bar is full after eating a nice meal you get the Nice Meal buff giving you +x mood depending on how good the meal was. If you have an awesome house you'll get the beautiful vista buff until your house burns to the ground. Of course there's debuffs like "embarassed" or "mourning".
There are the lifetime achievement points. You fulfill a sums wish and are given some of these points which you can spend on things like Steel Bladder, Fast Learner and others. Some of the others are useful which help specific skills but the other few are crap like cheaper diner food or cheaper books. There are about 15 of these in total and maybe 3/4 are useful.
Traits are good but lacking. Having traits allow you to do specific things like if you're sporty you can tell people they need to exercise or if you're flirtatious you have more flirting options.
I'll cut to the chase because I'm quite tired:
Conclusion:
At the minute it's an average game. Spend the £24.99 and you'll get a good few hours fun. You'll master a few jobs, master a few skills, build a massive house and have a couple of children and then you'll be bored. In a few months however when some expansions are out the game will really shine. The Sims 3 is a good base to build on. Buy it now and get the feel for it and when a few expansions come out you'll get the real value for money. Until then kill people with strategically placed toilets.
The review is a bit bare so please ask questions so I can clarify.
I'm sure all of you have played The Sims 1 or 2 so you know the jist of it. The Sims 3 is effectively the Sims 2 on steroids. You're not confined to your lot and you suffer only 2 loading screens in the entire game. It streamlines the experience and means you can look about the town while your sims sleep.
The experience has been streamlined. Big time. In the other 2 sims series I never got to the top of a career. It took proper dedication needing maxed out skills and bajillions of friends. With my first person I got to the top of the career and on the dude I'm playing as now I got a promotion every day. It's nice to get paid loads but money is no problem at all and it was nice to have a bit of a challenge.
Doing stuff is more awesome. When you go to work you can choose how you behave in work. If you're feeling a bit tired you can sleep on the job or if you want a promotion you can work hard. There are a few others depending on what it is your doing and all have an effect on job performance.
Of course, this is only a substitute for actually being able to control your sim in the workplace. Your sim simply walks into a building and you wait until the shift is finished. The same is with shopping. You go to the book store and you're only given a menu of what you can buy. You can't look around the shop or break the toilets. I suppose all this will come with expansion packs.
Exploring the town is a bit... pointless. If you want to see something you can leave your sim at home and just move the camera. There are a number of collectibles; Fish, Rocks, Insects and Plants. Fish can be used to aid in your cooking, rocks can be cut into diamonds for display or smelted into bars for display, insects can be sold and plants can be, well, planted with the ultimate goal of cooking them. A bit boring and the only real reason to leave your house a part from work. You can always visit another sims house but why would you want to? Your social bar can be refilled at home on MSN or housemates.
Frankly what it needs is expansion packs. Not the god damned "S&M Stuff" content editions (I think they're being done away with as you can buy new chairs and curtains from the game launcher with "Sim points") but proper expansion packs like University and Business-something. In those things I could set up a business selling my paintings and use the money to build my own castle. I can't do that in this because I can't set up my own business and the level of content is a bit crap.
Moods are different too. Your mood doesn't scale with various feeling bars but if a feeling bar is full after eating a nice meal you get the Nice Meal buff giving you +x mood depending on how good the meal was. If you have an awesome house you'll get the beautiful vista buff until your house burns to the ground. Of course there's debuffs like "embarassed" or "mourning".
There are the lifetime achievement points. You fulfill a sums wish and are given some of these points which you can spend on things like Steel Bladder, Fast Learner and others. Some of the others are useful which help specific skills but the other few are crap like cheaper diner food or cheaper books. There are about 15 of these in total and maybe 3/4 are useful.
Traits are good but lacking. Having traits allow you to do specific things like if you're sporty you can tell people they need to exercise or if you're flirtatious you have more flirting options.
I'll cut to the chase because I'm quite tired:
Conclusion:
At the minute it's an average game. Spend the £24.99 and you'll get a good few hours fun. You'll master a few jobs, master a few skills, build a massive house and have a couple of children and then you'll be bored. In a few months however when some expansions are out the game will really shine. The Sims 3 is a good base to build on. Buy it now and get the feel for it and when a few expansions come out you'll get the real value for money. Until then kill people with strategically placed toilets.
The review is a bit bare so please ask questions so I can clarify.
.