REVIEWED – The Sims 3

Title:  The Sims 3
Platform:  PC
Developer:  EA Maxis
Publisher:  EA
Reviewed By:  Kobacha
SCORE:  A-

You can find more reviews of The Sims 3 at TestFreaks.com

Ah, Sims 3… a title that’s been lingering on the minds of Sims-veterans for ages. A lot of people are running around lately screaming that the game sucks, but I would like to argue that fact- Sims 3 is the best Sims game to date.

Not to say it doesn’t have some problems, though. Whenever I played Sims 2, there were only a few things I could think of to make the game better: I wanted more hair and eye colors, to be able to tilt my furniture at angles, and I wanted a wider array of personalities for my Sims. Tadah!

Anyway, how’s that for an introduction?

Story
Sims having a story? Bah! But you’d be surprised! Sims such as the Goths are easily recognizable by Sims 2 buffs. Sims 3 is a prequel when it comes to the timeline of the Sims franchise.

The patriarch of the Goth family in Sims 2 is just a toddler in his pre-made family in Sims 3! Because of this, a lot of lot descriptions are rather humorous and contain inside jokes- for instance, one family in Riverview expresses a father’s concern for his son, and goes something along the lines of ‘will his son stay in Riverview, or go somewhere more… Pleasant?”

Sims 2 buffs would laugh when they realize that the son in question is a notable premade Sim from Pleasantview. Other than that, the story is pretty simple, and doesn’t really matter in the long run. However, it is fun to play around with the pre-made sims, just out of curiosity.

Neighborhoods
Okay, so I was a little miffed that the Sims 3 didn’t come with at least 3 preset neighborhoods. One of my favorite parts of Sims 2 was playing around with the Shakespearean Sims… and with the increased personalities in Sims 3, I was looking foreward to playing around with the characters. Unfortunately, Sims 3 comes with only 1 neighborhood to start with… and even then, there aren’t a wide array of families already set in. They do have a good deal of families in the Move-in bin, but it doesn’t seem like the back story of the Default neighborhood was thought of much.

However, there is a catch. You can make as many replicas of this default town as you want, and each one of these towns is fully editable. You can move all the pre-made Sims out, make family after family of your own, and move them all into this town. You’re given a bin full of pre-made houses and lots to put whereve you wish, not to mention you can build your own houses from scratch. If you really wanted, you could make a themed-town—for instance, you could fill a town with nothing but Harry Potter-Sims, or Lord of the Rings! I’m aspiring to make an Artemis Fowl town myself!

Most players most likely heard about the One-House per Town rule. Each town has what’s called an Active House, which you automatically play with whenever you start that Neighborhood. However, it isn’t as bad as it seems. There’s an option to let all the families in the town progress as you play; for instance, Sims in other households can marry who they want, have kids, and even die! However, you can also switch this off, meaning that you can play with one family for a few weeks, then switch to another family at any time and nothing should have changed at all.

Furthermore, most Sims 3 discs that were purchased have an option to Register. If you register, you’re given a free Sims 3 car, as well as $10 worth of points, and a brand new Town to play with. Whereas Sunset Valley has little planned out storyline, Riverview, the free town, is chock full of interesting premade Sims. There’s one family with an old lady who is trying to get her children to follow in her footsteps and become master thieves- and another where a musician is trying to honor his dead mentor by being the best of the best.

Create-a-Sim
Create-a-Sim is used to make your own pre-made characters. I’ll admit that it’s options aren’t widely arrayed in that you can truly make ANYONE… but you can make Sims with enthralling similarities to people you know. The Create-A-Sim is 100x better than the one in Sims 2, and there really are a lot of facial choices.

There are enough options in the Create-A-Sim so that you probably won’t make a Sim that looks EXACTLY like another, like what happened a lot in Sims 2 in my experience. Admittedly, the choice of hair isn’t really amazing, but more hairstyles are offered from the Sims Store, even now. For those who wanted Sims with long hair, now they can have them, to an extent. What’s even cooler is the fact that you can choose peachy, blue, green, and even pink skin tones. You can make your Sims fat (and yes, they really do look fat, not just chunky… you can have a Morbidly Obese Sim!) or thin, muscular or twiggy.

The list of facial choices are amazing- there are loads of preset eyes to choose from, and many noses to tweak in just as many ways.

One error in Sims 2 I suffered was that when I chose a nose, sometimes it’d sink so low in the face that it’d look grotesque and I’d end up settling for an ugly default nose. However, in Sims 3 I haven’t experienced anything like that. I can tweak each setting and see the result on my Sim instantly, and I can edit the nose without affecting the cheeks or eyes. You have options for the mouth (upper and lower lip), nose (bridge, length, and tip) and eyes (many options), as well as cheek, jaw, and head size and height.

In the hair menu, you can choose four different colors for hair (Base, Tips, Roots, and Highlights)—and all of them can be chosen from a drop down color menu. For instance, I had a Sim with white hair, bright pink highlights, and aqua tips! Now you don’t have to find a Mod just to have pink or purple hair! Also in the hair menu is an option for eyebrows, and even how thick the eyelashes are!

The eye menu is similar, however your eyes have only one color choice. This color choice, though, can be any color from a drop down menu that you can find.

There is also a wide array of clothing choices, and even more are offered at the Sims Shop. But even with the basic clothing you can make your Sims look different by using the Style Creator. You have a drop down menu for every color you can think of, and loads of preset patterns to use and edit as you see fit. Besides the clothes, you can choose shoes, glasses, bracelets, gloves, and earrings, all of which can be edited, as you like.

Playing with Genetics
Man, let me tell you, I had a blast with this! All you have to do is have a man and a woman in your Create-a-Sim family, then you can choose to play with Genetics. You can choose the age and gender, and push a button to randomize a child.

It’s very interesting to see all of the traits passed on between a Sim and their child. The best part is that the two sims you’re blending together don’t even have to be married! One time, while playing around with it, I made two male Sims (who were brothers) and a woman. Then, I proceeded to blend out three children- two from one man, and one from the other. The unfortunate bit is that you can’t make a child recognize unmarried Sims as their parents. However, even if the Child is the child of Male Sim A, you can set them to recognize Male Sim B as their father instead. Pretty cool.

Personalities
Perhaps the most heavily marketed aspect of the Sims 3 is the personalities…and I can see why! As cool as Sims 3 is, it’d be nothing without the array of personalities. In Create-A-Sim, you pretty much have a choice of 5 traits, and depending on those five traits you can choose one of 5 calculated Lifetime Aspirations. There are more in total than 5, but dependent on your Sims’ traits those 5 are the ones they’re likely to be interested in. Here’s an example of a family of my sims and their traits.

First there’s Andrea. He has no sense of humor, meaning that he can’t tell jokes without confusing other sims.

He’s also neat, which means that not only does he automatically clean after himself, but if your house is dirty you can click anywhere in the house and choose for him to ‘Clean House’. Doing this, he’ll continue to clean until the house is clean, or you tell him to stop.

He’s also brave, which not only lets him stay calm in scary situations, but he can also beat up a Burglar without any trouble, and can put out a house fire without screaming like a pansy. Thanks to his bravery, he also excels in Law Enforcement and the Military.

This bravery ties in with another trait, being a Light Sleeper. This trait lets Andrea automatically wake up whenever a burglar enters his lot.

Andrea is also Genius, so not only can he get the Logic Skill faster, but he enjoys playing Chess more, and can also solve math questions on the computer for money, if his Logic is high enough. With all of this put together, I decided that his lifetime aspiration would be ‘Renaissance Sim’, meaning that he wants to max out 3 skills before he dies.

Then there’s Andrea’s wife, Silas. Silas is a Great Kisser- which means that whenever she kisses someone, she and that person will have a mood boost for a few hours.

She’s also a Virtuoso, which means that not only does she learn music skills faster, but she also gets more money when she performs her music in public.

As a joke, I made it so that Silas is never nude, meaning that every time she bathes, rather than seeing that infamous blur over her body, Silas wears her swimsuit.

Silas is also artistic, so not only does she learn guitar faster than other sims, but she also learns writing and painting faster too. You can also click on her and choose to go to the Art Gallery if she wants to have some fun.

Silas’ last trait is ‘Schmoozer’. This means that not only does she get a bonus when she socializes with her boss and coworkers, but she also has more socialization choices to impress other Sims. As a whole, she decided that as her Lifetime Aspiration she wanted to reach the 10th job level of the Symphonic Branch of music. These are only ten examples of traits, yet already so many different traits there are!!

Mood Meter, Moodlets, and Lifetime Happiness Traits
A cool, half-new aspect of the Sims 3 is the Lifetime Happiness Traits. Okay, so we know about the Mood meter– it’s green when the Sims are happy, and red when they aren’t. But Sims 3 goes one step further. The mood meter is influenced by not only the Sims’ stats, such as hunger and bladder, but also by wishes that they express.

You can ‘promise’ up to four wishes, which can be canceled at any time. These can range from a simple wish to take a bath (valued at about 250 points) to having a baby (3,000), and all the way in between. By fulfilling these wishes, you can Happiness Points that can be viewed under a seperate menu, per Sim.

Besides fulfilling wishes, Sims experience positive and negative ‘Moodlets’. If a Sim was able to eat a well cooked meal, they will get a mood boost. For instance, my Sims experienced a 40 point boost in mood after the birth of their first child, a value for continued for 24 hours. Furthermore, because I took care of my Sims, their Mood Meter was nearly capped off for those 24 hours. As such, they got a huge boost in Happiness Points!

Moodlets come from almost anything. Sims can get positive moodlets for sitting on a comfortable object (effective for however long they sit or lay there), or from being in a well decorated/built house or room. It can be from a good night’s sleep, or a well cooked meal, or from a particularly nice kiss. But there are negative moodlets as well. Some examples are from eating a bad meal, seeing something gross (like a plate left out too long), or from being particularly sleepy. You can get a 4 hour negative moodlet if a Sim walks in on your Sims Woohooing!

But what are all of these points for? Well, this is where it gets pretty cool. Happiness points can be used to buy PERMANENT traits to add. A few examples are ‘Steel Bladder’, which makes it so your Sim never has to use a toilet again; Multitasker, which allows Sims to get a boost in job or school performance without stressing out over it; or, one of my favorites, Vacationer, which lets a Sim duck out of work every now and then without any negative job feedback. Another favorite is the ‘Fertility Treatment’, which almost promises that every time your Sim and their spouse get pregnant, they’ll have twins or triplets.

You can buy however many of these traits you can, and while some are rather silly (like a Food Replicator, which clones food) others are invaluable if you want your Sim to focus on more important things, like work or Family.

Socializing
Ah, socializing, one of the highlights of the Sims. It’s very little fun to just play with one, isn’t it? There’s romance…rivalry… and, of course, children! You can make your very own soap opera!

What’s pretty cool about socializing is the amount of exchanges Sims can make. When a Sim barely knows another, the list of commands is rather limited. You can be polite and ask about a Sim’s day, or use the ‘Get to Know’ expression, but it’s a bit limited. Unfortunately, it’s a bit harder to spam the ‘Make Out’ key to get a friend to be friendly with you, because it doesn’t always work out.

Depending on a Sim’s Traits, Sims can have different options for socializing. Daredevil sims can use the command ‘Watch This!’, and proceed to do something crazy for a boost in relationship. Schmoozers can spam ‘Praise’ and ‘Compliment’, etc. Children can play tag, and Family Oriented Sims can hug and kiss on their family members like there’s no tomorrow.

A humorous exchange is for Sims with no sense of humor, who can opt to ‘bore to death’ their family members. It goes on, and you’d be surprised how many conversation points there are that are related to traits.

Another thing that’s cool about the Socializing system is the fact that whenever your Sim talks to another, a box pops up on the top left telling you what that Sims’ impression is of your Sim. These can be ‘thinks — is flirty’, or ‘thinks — is socializing’, but can also give you a tip when your Sim is boring them. It also shows you a bar of how friendly your Sim is with the other, and helps you keep a grip on how well you’re doing with the Socializing.

Children
Okay, so I already talked about ‘Playing with Genetics’. But when you’re actually in game, trying to raise a kid up from a baby, I’ve always been worried about how ugly my Sim babies will be. But in Sims 3, I ventured into it. My two Sims were on the Fertility Treatment (see Mood Meter, Moodlets, and…) and had children. As babies, all babies seem to look, basically, the same. You can see when they’re hungry or lonely, so they’re a lot easier to care for than in Sims 2.

It’s when kids turn into Toddlers that things get interesting. Not only do their stats decrease a lot faster, but they have free will and can get in the way and make a ruckus. When a Toddler is crying, no Sim can fall asleep until they’re cared for. Toddlers can be taught to talk, walk, and poop. So when they are Potty Trained, they’re a bit easier to care for in that you can leave them on the floor a while to play and poop. They can even be given bottles to eat on the floor, and good news! The bottles disappear when they’re done, so no cleanup!

It’s when the Toddlers turn into kids that you can feel awe at their appearance. The twin girls my Sims had looked like a perfect mesh between their parents, and both looked similar, but with VERY slightly different noses, and one had thicker eyebrows. They were pretty good looking too, which was much better than my experience in Sims 2.

Children and Teens are easier to take care of, in that they can feed and take care of themselves. In my experience so far, the only time Sim kids need their parents is when they have a Wish to talk or hang out with one.

Jobs
Jobs! Yay! There are a lot of different jobs your Sims can jump into. There’s Law Enforcement, Culinary, Music, Writing… Thievery… it goes on! You can work from home, or be unemployed. Jobs even split into different concentrations. Law Enforcement splits into Special Agents (maxing out in Super Spy), and Forensic. Music splits into Rock and Symphonic.

What’s also neat is the amount of different reactions you can have at work. Whenever a Sim goes to work, in the top left corner there’s a drop-down list of actions that Sim can participate in, including ‘Work Hard’, ‘Business as Usual’, etc. In another menu, you can see how close your Sim is to being fired or promoted. Working Hard promotes you faster, Slacking helps a Sim boost their fun. Sims can choose to socialize with Coworkers, or sleep while at work if they’re tired enough. Another interesting option is to work on a skill that’s related to that job.

Law Enforcers can choose to increase their Athletic skill while at work, and musicians can increase Logic and Guitar at the same time.

On the menu that shows how close your Sim is to a promotion, there may also be a list of skills that your Sim needs to improve in order to get a promotion. Here’s an example- my Musician Sim has to learn not only Guitar skills, but Logic (for a job involving being a manager, and stage hand). Other than that, they also have to improve their relations with fellow musicians. To do this, you have an option while working to ‘Meet Musicians’, then you can either assign your sim to ‘Socialize with Musicians’ during work, or you can invite that Sim over on off hours to socialize.

You can tell when you’ve reached the required level thanks to a bar of smiley faces. A frowney face means that your Sim doesn’t have near enough skill in that area, while a Green grinning face means you’ve achieved the requirement, and can just chill during work until your promotion. This makes it easier to get your necessary friends for work than in Sims 2, which simply tells you you need so many friends to be promoted.

Opportunities
Opportunities are rather simple- they’re used to increase a Sim’s Job, School, or Social bars. Most opportunities pop up through working or simply going to school. Others are skill based. A few Opportunities I’ve come across in multiple jobs concern a Sim being sent home after work with a book to read. Once this book is read, and the Sim returns to work, they will get a boost in their job bar, and will get all the closer to their promotion.

Another Sim of mine, a child, was given the opportunity of running permission slips to Study Hall for a school boost, or attending a Free Concert on the weekend. Weird, but it worked out fine.

Skill-based opportunities happen regardless of your job, and depend more so on your skills. My Handy Sim, who can repair things and even upgrade them, was given the job of repairing a Sim’s TV. My Cooking Sim was told to cook a plate of Hamburgers and bring them to a specific Sim (still trying to figure out just how to do this, since I haven’t met that Sim yet…)

According to one of the menus I read while playing, Musician Sims can be given opportunities which, when performed, will award them with Sheet Music to hard to play songs. So you never know what opportunities will get you!

Houses
Okay, so I’m not one of those Sims players that only builds stuff. But I did get around to building one house, and it was a lot easier than I thought it’d be. My biggest fear in building is that I’ll make a room way too big. Then I have to fight the Bulldozer button to destroy a wall, then rebuild it again.

Sims 3 offers two solutions to this problem- you can click the bulldozer on something to delete, then drag it, and everything within the box is deleted. But a lifesaver tool is the hand tool. If there are no windows or the like on a wall, then the Hand Tool can grab that wall and easily resize and stretch it.

Another lifesaver is the option to paint all walls the same paint color. No more dragging the paintbrush, and missing wall planks! Well, you could if you wanted… the cool thing is this tool only follows the room’s contours, and is usually smart about knowing where to cut off. You can even do the same with foot tiles!

As I sad, I’m not overly experienced with building in the Sims, but I do think that it’s a lot easier to do so now, and the selection of tiles, textures, and wall paints is amazing!

Skills
Skills have already been mentioned multiple times so far. Skills help Sims in their every day lives, and even their jobs. Skills include Gardening, Fishing, Handiness, Cooking, Logic, Painting, Writing, and Guitar. There may be more.

By improving the Gardening Skill, a Sim can produce high quality vegetables and fruits, which also makes higher quality food when cooking. The same can be said from fishing. Cooking skill affects the quality of meals. Higher quality meals give moodlets to Sims, and increases mood for a few hours.

Handiness lowers the risk of electrocution, and makes a Sim quicker at fixing broken appliances and plumbing. Higher levels in Handiness gives a Sim the choice of upgrading appliances… for instance, it can make it so a toilet, sink, bathtub, shower, or dishwasher is self cleaning, or never breaks. A recent upgrade I experienced was to make a Stove Fire-proof.

Each job also has a few skills allocated to it. Musicians need Guitar and some Logic. Law Enforcement requires athletics and logic, and culinary requires cooking. Science, for whatever reason, requires Gardening at lower levels.

Traveling the Town
I’ve already talked about towns, but let me elaborate. Sims 3 commercials have bragged for ages about the open range of the Sims 3 world, and it’s true! You can buy a bike or car for your Sim, or they can simply jog, or hitch a taxi. There are many places in the neighborhood, including parks, neighbor’s houses, a library, bookstore, grocery store… the list goes on! Each community building has a job allocated to it, that also has a variety of reasons other Sims visit.

Each community lot offers a class in some skill that Sims can take. The school, where young Sims go to learn, offers a painting class. This costs a small fee, but promises that Sims increase a skill quickly. This is priceless for higher leveled Sims that can take days to reach level 10 of a skill.

Other lots offer other reasons to visit. The stadium, where Sims can start an Athletic career, sometimes houses concerts or games that Sims can go to for an increase in Fun. A hungry Sim can go to the restaurant where Culinary Sims work and get food. There’s a spa that Sims can visit for a massage, in order to get positive moodlets.

Whenever there’s an event going on in town, a little icon will appear on your screen, and by clicking it your Sim can see where this event is going on. These events include Concerts, Sales Specials at Stores, or even notifications for house parties other Sims are doing.

Using the map, Sims can travel to any house in the neighborhood and make friends. My Law Enforcement Sim, who had to increase her skill in Reports, actually crept around the neighborhood at night sifling through garbage cans for information for her reports!

Sometimes, Sims just want to get out of the house- and many times that’s to the park. At parks, Music-Sims can play guitar for tips, and just hang around town all day for some extra fun.

Sims Shop
Sims Shop… ah. Okay, honestly, I don’t like the idea of buying from the company just to get new things! I’m a mod fiend, I admit it. But the Sims Shop does offer you $10 to start. $10 will buy you a good deal on there- and the most expensive things are about $20, and they’re house sets! I’m not saying you should get into it and buy it, but it’s definitely worth it for a few hairstyles. There are some cool things, but it’s up to you to decide if you really want it.

The Exchange
I like the exchange! Pretty much FOR FREE, you can download the color designs that other users have put on their clothing, objects, and furniture. You can also download actual Sims too! But this goes both ways- you can upload lots, color designs, and sims you did yourself too!

Lifespan and other Options
One thing I REALLY liked about Sims 3 was the options menu. We all know that Sims will eventually die… or do they? Whenever you’re playing the Sims, at any time, you can open the Options menu, and switch the aging of Sims. You can make it so they never age at all… or, if you really want to skip past your infant babies, you can set aging to extremely short, where their entire life lasts 25 Sim days. On the off hand side, you can set their lifespan to a total of 980 days! The best part is this can be chosen at ANY TIME!! Woo!

Technical Issues
Okay, now here’s the part most people have problems with. Technical issues. It’s true, Sims 3 takes a heck of a lot to run. My own experience with technical issues hasn’t been good either… of the three houses in my household, none of them could run it without upgrading the hardware. One computer didn’t have enough RAM… another needed a new video card, and the last was a Mac and couldn’t run Sims 3 without having Leapord. However, thanks to personal matters, I decided to get more RAM and was able to play it.

A lot of people seem to worry about whether Sims 3 is worth the upgrades. The answer is… up to you. In my opinion, things ended up so that I lucked out, but for others it depends on how intent you are in playing it.