The uber popular Sims franchise strikes again. This time with multiple new additions. This game is more about making your Sims’ life wishes come true compared to previous Sims titles. New to the series are traits for your Sims such as excitable, unlucky, evil, hopeless romantic, virtuoso, and many more. You get to pick the traits if you raise your children well; if for example your toddler learns how to talk, walk, and is potty trained, then you pick out two traits for it. If your “child” doesn’t grow up well then you might get stuck with a bad trait like unlucky or excitable.
In The Sims 3 the houses are cooler and there are more skills your Sims can learn, like gardening, where you get to have your own garden and harvest your own vegetables. Another of the many skills your Sims can gain include logic, which you can use to write books that will earn you royalties over time. You can also take classes for a fee to learn any of the skills. New in the series is the ability for your Sim to go around town and to places like the day spa, parks, or fishing holes (where you can build the fishing skill). You can also have your own cars and it’s loads of fun.
Alas, there are many downfalls to the Sims 3. The graphics stink, your Sims have fat faces, and it takes a while when you first turn on the game for your house’s furniture to appear. You cannot go inside buildings except for the library. I would have preferred to see what happens to my Sims when they go inside their work buildings. One of my favorite things to do on The Sims Life Stories was to make households and families, but in The Sims 3 you can only have one household at a time so if you love creating families like I do, this game is not for you.
Speaking of work, there are now lots of new cool careers like Ruler of the Free World and CEO of a Major Business Corporation, and more creative ones like Masseuse/Masseur and Grave Digger. Promotions to achieve keep things interesting even though you can’t see your Sims working. Before they go away to their jobs everyday, you can set how hard you want them to work. There is some strategy involved, as telling your Sim to work hard may get them to climb the corporate ladder faster, but they might work through lunch and come home tired, hungry, and angry.
You can download things that other Sims 3 players have created like houses, designs, and furniture. I myself have found many cool user-created objects such as a Spongebob bed and a Mickey Mouse lounge chair. The official EA-created objects (including hair styles, furniture, and clothing) are fine but I don’t think they’re as cool as say, a Hello Kitty crib created by a user. The version of The Sims 3 that I bought came with a $10 download code for the online Sims store but once I’ve spent all of that, I don’t plan on spending any more money on the service.
If you have The Sims 2 and are happy with it, I wouldn’t bother spending the dough on The Sims 3. The second game is fine, and although the additions in number three are nice, they aren’t worth the money if you already have a Sims game laying around.
Pros: More careers, you don’t have to go out to a store and buy your clothes, deeper customization than ever, traits can be chosen, lifetime goals more prominent in the gameplay, cars, cool online store, well-designed pre-made houses, young adult phase, great replay value
Cons: Fat faces, long loading times, can’t see Sims inside most buildings, horrible makeup choices, not all that different from The Sims 2
Final Score: 8.5 out of 10
By iLovPugs with Josh60502
I would not say Sims look fat but they do not look as good as Sims 2.
Loading time, I don’t have any issues since once you are in the game, you are in, no more loading screens, your seems can go anywhere in the neighborhood.
Rabbit holes for most community lots: not much more that you can do in Sims 2. We can sill go in parks, library, graveyard, art gallery… Sad part: no clothes shops as you get your clothes from the dresser… for free…. the other shops we could go into in Sims 2 was mostly because of Open For Business expansion (not everybody buys ep).
But now we do have a bit more control for work since we chose interactions like work hard, suck up to the boss, chat with co-workers… and also more opportunities that are more interesting than the chance cards in Sims 2 where you had a 50/50 chance of losing your job or money….
You could not play more than one household at the time in Sims 2, this has not changed in Sims 3, it is just a bit different the way we have to switch to another household and the fact Sims lose their wishes sucks a bit… but they always come back anyway.
So in my opinion, Sims 3 is worth it.