Sims 3 reviewed

[Wraith]

IGN (http://pc.ign.com/articles/988/988108p1.html): 8.9/10.0The Sims 3 may not sway non-Sims fans from changing their minds about the series, but there’s more than enough here to please the many legions of fans already out there. This is simply a better playing Sims experience, and once you experience the freedom to hit the town without hitting a load screen you’ll be hard-pressed to go back to any of the earlier games. Blowing up the size of the game was certainly a risk, but it was a sensible and overdue one, and kudos to EA for recognizing that the decade-old formula needed some growth. And while there’s still plenty of room for more innovation, we’ll settle for The Sims 3 for now. It delivers a solid foundation for what should be many more years of Sims sales dominance.Of course, what players of previous Sims games most want to hear:Your sims no longer have to constantly run to the bathroom like in the old games; now you can send them about once per day, and there are ways to reduce that even more.

On Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/sims3), PC Gamer is listed as giving it a 92.

[CappinCanuck]

Delicious! I would like to pick this up...but I know I'd only last about 1 week before it took a place on my mantle. Just the nature of the game for me doesn't sit well for longevity.

[Rune_74]

What do they mean bu blowing up the size of the game?

[shunoshi]

Delicious! I would like to pick this up...but I know I'd only last about 1 week before it took a place on my mantle. Just the nature of the game for me doesn't sit well for longevity.

This is exactly my problem. I'd play the hell out of this for about a week before it became boring. Oh well....

[SilentScreams]

What do they mean bu blowing up the size of the game?

I think they're referring to the fact that everything is now simulated simultaneously, and the game world itself is also bigger.

[Telefrog]

I'm amused that even though it's "simply a better playing Sims experience" from the last game, it still scored lower than the Sims 2 (9.4). I think it's indicative of the burnout many of us feel for this franchise.

[Savok]

This is exactly my problem. I'd play the hell out of this for about a week before it became boring. Oh well....
Obviously you aren't putting enough lesbians in the same room.

[Wraith]

What do they mean bu blowing up the size of the game?I think they're referring to the fact that everything is now simulated simultaneously, and the game world itself is also bigger.Yeah, it sounds like you're not really closed in by lots anymore. You go from location to location in-game. Your house doesn't exist in isolation from everything else in town.

[Ink Asylum]

I've played the Sims 3 so I can elaborate a bit. The entire neighborhood is active all the time. Even when you're in your home all the other Sims in the neighborhood are going about their lives. Aging, going to their jobs, entertaining themselves, meeting each other, socializing, etc. You can walk out your front door and cross the street to a neighbor's home in real time, and they might or might not be home depending on their schedule. You can get invited in and hang out. You can walk (or take a cab) to a community lot, go shopping, meet people, relax, etc all without a loading screen. You can even wander outside set lots and explore the landscape, the forests and hillsides, finding little secret places like a mine where you can collect rare rocks. It's impressive, considering how much the game is keeping track of at any one time.

[JayK47]

Sounds awesome. Gamespot liked it as well with a 9.0. I'm glad reviews are good. I hate getting excited for a game to then see a review state how buggy or poor it is. Not in this case. This sounds like a solid purchase. I'll be picking this up on the way home tomorrow. This is really the only game that I see as a worthy purchase until fall with the usual game overload.

[Wraith]

Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-sims-3-review): 8/10It's the raft of minor additions like that which mean, despite a few pulled punches, that The Sims 3 is a broad and ridiculously charming game that manages to significantly expand upon its critical formula without ever becoming overwhelming. It's that much closer to what a Sims player has always wanted from The Sims: to create themselves, and their friends, and then set them loose upon the world. It's both more of a role-playing game than it's ever been before, and more of a design game than it's ever been before. It may suffer a few glaring compromises, but it's an essential play for anyone with an interest in what videogames can achieve outside of a targeting reticule.

[Vigil80]

I must be one of the only people that actively avoids creating myself or people I know in The Sims. It's all fiction baby.

I'd like to pick this up, but I think one thing tempering the enthusiasm is the glut of expansions we all know are coming, some of which are probably close to finished already and are just waiting a couple months before getting stamped on a disc and served up.

EA could really stand to keep some of that content - like pets - in the initial release. But then I wouldn't have to pay $30 more for it.

[gvsudahc]

Would I be able to run this on a EEE PC 1000H. My wife likes the Sims and she only has a netbook. I could install it on my computer but then I would never be able to use it.

[gvsudahc]

What do you guys think of how the Sims talk? I always wanted them to talk in English but after hearing the same phrase over and over I can see why they would not want it to be in English.

[Camel]

I think I'll definitely get this at some point in the future. I completely skipped Sims 2, but the original game gave me some of the most hilarious gaming moments I can remember.

[ShivaX]

Would I be able to run this on a EEE PC 1000H. My wife likes the Sims and she only has a netbook. I could install it on my computer but then I would never be able to use it.

I doubt it. The Sims historically has actual required a fairly decent rig and this one doesn't look to be any different.

[icronic]

Would I be able to run this on a EEE PC 1000H. My wife likes the Sims and she only has a netbook. I could install it on my computer but then I would never be able to use it.

Possibly My GF is currently playing it behind me on her Gateway TC7306u, and I've no idea how that compares to your wifes computer, but it's a $600 laptop.

That said, from here it looks pretty choppy, but still playable, and actually it runs remarkably better than Sims 2 and 2 or 3 expansions. Although, the first thing she did was cheat herself a few hundred thousand bucks and made the biggest house I've ever seen. Hell I swear the bathroom alone is bigger than my real house. Proof that watching the Home and Garden channel does not make you a good designer.

I've played it a little bit, and there's actually a lot of really cool stuff to be seen. They've really hugely improved on the design aspects of the game.. So much so that I'd actually believe someone who told me that they only played the game to build houses. There are however a lot of items that really should be in the game, but have been left out for the sake of the future million expansions.

For the game play itself, there seems to be a lot more direction to take, and little tasks to do to break up the usual career building grind. Less of the you need this many friends and this many skill points to advance. You'll advance faster if you do the grind, but you'll advance as long as you're keeping the requirements at an average level.

Still it's the Sims. If you're the creative type who likes designing, or you love your soap operas and intentionally create weird and awkward situations for your Sims, then you'll probably love this game even more than the last two. But if the Sims is the kind of game that gave you about a weeks entertainment before becoming bored, then I'd say that you might get two weeks out of this one.

The only thing I really hate is that since the whole neighbourhood is simulated simultaneously you can only have one active household. Sure you can create a million sims to fill your neighbourhood with, but there's no easy way to play them.

[Ink Asylum]

The creative engine for items, buildings, and clothing is really impressive. Essentially, you can change any texture on any item in the game. Pretty much every item, whether it be a shirt, a wallpaper, or a couch has up to four textures applied to different parts of the item. You can choose the pattern for any of those from a wide variety then change the distinct colors that make up that texture, again from up to four colors. You can use a color picker or RGB values. You can then save this particular texture and drag and drop it right onto parts of the current item or onto any item visible on screen.

So you could take a plaid texture, pick colors for the background shade, small stripes and large stripes, and apply it to your shirt then your bedspread to coordinate them. You can have leather shower curtains, or cobblestone pants.

I imagine you can easily import textures as well.

[SilentScreams]

It's sounding promising. I've just pre-ordered on the EA Store, so hopefully they will let us pre-load it before it comes out here on Friday.

Edit: One question which I've seen the answer to hinted at multiple times, but never seen a concrete answer for.
Do your Sim's needs such as hunger etc allow you time and freedom to explore? One thing that always bugged me on Sims 2 was that going into town would pretty much mess up all your happiness bars and was generally more trouble than it was worth.
Same with partys. It was really hard to keep your Sim happy while also throwing a good party.

[Ink Asylum]

Edit: One question which I've seen the answer to hinted at multiple times, but never seen a concrete answer for.
Do your Sim's needs such as hunger etc allow you time and freedom to explore?

Yes. As they promised, you can do a lot more before your Sim is complaining about needing to shit or shower. They'll also take care of needs at work, particularly bladder and hunger. At full-time jobs you can choose how to spend your day, and some have options like "Chat with coworkers" or "Sleep on the prep table (food service)" that allow you to boost other stats at the cost of a job performance that day.

After or before a work shift I have plenty of time and mostly full stats for exploring, building skills, throwing parties, etc. You can also use lifetime achievement points to buy permanent buffs for your Sim that can make handling your needs even easier, like an Iron Bladder buff.

[Wraith]

So do you control your Sim at work?

Are you able to handle a Sim family easily, while one sim's at work, one sim's exploring the town, one sim's at home, etc?

[Ink Asylum]

So do you control your Sim at work?

You don't directly control them. They travel to their work place (you can even jog there to get exercise) and once they're in the building they're out of sight. You do, however, have a drop down box under the "At Work" action in the upper left corner that allows you to choose how they spend their time. Options for my journalist job include: Work hard, Take it easy, Suck up to boss, Meet/chat with coworkers, Practice writing.

Are you able to handle a Sim family easily, while one sim's at work, one sim's exploring the town, one sim's at home, etc?

Yes. Sims are a lot more autonomous. They do more than just avoid death if you leave them alone, but will do things that interest them and build up their stats. The family portraits of your household are all lined up on the left like before. You can click on one of them at any time to see what the Sim is up to, and right click to focus on them. If the Sim is in a different location the camera will zoom out then zoom back in to that Sim very quickly.

Essentially, you can scroll around and interact with the entire town as easily as you could with one lot before. A family of Sims can be spread all over the place doing their own things and you can switch between them very smoothly. Some of that might depend on your computer's processing power, but mine is fast enough that I have a household of five I have no problem juggling. One to three are typically at work, and the others are either at home or doing something in town and I don't worry about anyone I'm ignoring at the moment.

You can even zoom in or scroll to any house in the neighborhood and look in the windows to see the Sims there going about their lives. The entire neighborhood is living all the time.

[SilentScreams]

Thanks a lot, Ink. You've cleared up a lot of things for me there.

Hopefully I will get my 4870X2s RMA sorted by Friday, otherwise I'll have to hope this will run well with my borrowed 9600GT. :D

[Ink Asylum]

Happy to answer any more questions for anyone. I've put in a number of hours with the game, although there is still plenty I have not done! I need to take some time to explore the non-lot landscape, but I'm always very driven to build up skills, meet wishes, and excel at my job.

[Rune_74]

Actually you can do some things work related....my guy was a cop and had to go to a hotel to eaves drop on some smuggling ring. Was pretty cool.

[Ink Asylum]

True. You get opportunities for outside the workplace which can improve your job performance. As a reporter I can interview other Sims or go to restaurants and shows then write stories and reviews.

[icronic]

Essentially, you can scroll around and interact with the entire town as easily as you could with one lot before. A family of Sims can be spread all over the place doing their own things and you can switch between them very smoothly. Some of that might depend on your computer's processing power, but mine is fast enough that I have a household of five I have no problem juggling. One to three are typically at work, and the others are either at home or doing something in town and I don't worry about anyone I'm ignoring at the moment.

This is actually incredibly cool if you're playing with 3 or 4 sims in your household. You can have all four in completely different places doing completely separate things. I figured that doing this would mean you really had to rely upon their autonomy, but really it's actually incredibly easy to micromanage all of them at the same time regardless of where in town they are.

[Lint of Death]

I own the game in no form whatsoever but I will say that the USB thumb drive that comes with the Collector's Edition looks super cool. It comes with a keyring attachment and the whole thing (minus the keyring bit) fits inside a replica of the big green diamond that floats over Sims' heads.

[JayK47]

Picked it up. I am impressed. So many improvements. It is really an optimized game. Little load times to get into the city. None from that point on. I like how you can go where your sim goes. Things just move so much quicker. No more calling taxi and waiting 30 game minutes for it to come by. You hit the street, and your on your way. Looking at the overall setup, EA will take us all to the bank with this one. $1 per haircut! Damn. My "free" 1000 sims points won't last;)

[SilentScreams]

Damn. I should never have read this thread really.
We don't get it until Friday here. Even then I'll still have to download it before I can play, unless EA decides to let us pre-load it, but it's not up yet.
On the bright side, I have the next two weeks off work, so there's plenty of time to play.

[Vigil80]

I just picked it up today, and I've really been enjoying it. They have really learned from the previous games, and it shows. There were a bunch of little things that I was really impressed by.

Build mode and create-a-style are genius, but so far I'm most impressed by the sims themselves. They all have the potential to look and sound different. Body types are no longer limited to skinny or not skinny. But I'm most pleased about the new personality system. Gone is the point-scale system of the previous two games. Now a sim's personality is made up of a number of traits which you can hand pick if you're creating a new sim. If you want to make an outgoing, athletic genius who keeps his house spotless, there's nothing stopping you. On the other end of the spectrum, there's fun traits like kleptomaniac, neurotic, and evil.

It's worth mentioning that the copy I picked up at the local Wal-mart came with $10 of simpoints.

[Inspector Fowler]

So...

Last November I quit gaming and I wasn't planning on starting again until this November, with the release of the new CoD.

But with the knowledge that you can stop aging in this Sims without using a cheat, just a menu option, I don't know if I can resist Sims 3. Sims is always about the fantasy sandbox to me, and that just doesn't happen when your Sims die every 6 hours or so.

Must...resist...

[Wraith]

Speaking of aging, is there more variation between different age levels?

[Vigil80]

What do you mean by variation? I'm not too experienced with it yet, but the different age levels feel pretty similar to the ones from Sims 2.

Also, not only can you choose to stop aging without a cheat, you can use a slider to choose sims' lifespans. Short, normal, long, and epic, I believe. You can move the slider at any time, adding or removing days to sim lives on the fly.

I'm surprised this wasn't hyped more. It hit stores almost without me knowing about it.

[Wraith]

So it's the same infant > child > teen > adult > senior? (University threw in Young Adult, I think, but I never played that one.)

[LongStepMantis]

I must be one of the only people that actively avoids creating myself or people I know in The Sims. It's all fiction baby.


The greatest family I ever made was Freddy Krueger (dad), Bride of Frankenstein (mom) and Jason Voorhees (son). Obviously I was using custom skins, but it was somehow infinitely more entertaining. The Jason kid even had a machete in his hand at all times.

I don't ever create myself or people I know.

That being said, I too fall into the "it's great fun...for about a week" crowd. That could change with their toning down of some of the more tedious and annoying micromanaging aspects, like bathroom use.

[Wraith]

I can't recall how many times a Sim missed work because they take an hour to piss. Glad to hear they addressed that. Well, you could always cut their pee time short. But yeah, required more micromanagement than was necessary.

[Vigil80]

So it's the same infant > child > teen > adult > senior? (University threw in Young Adult, I think, but I never played that one.)

Young adult is in there for this one.

So far I've had some trouble telling the difference between teen, young adult, and adult for sims that I meet. I've had to look at the number of personality traits. (Teens have 4, adults get 5.)

Not only had bathroom time been reduced, meals feel much shorter, too. I suppose it's a good thing, but it's been disconcerting a time or two when I thought a couple sims would get some social time in while eating, but one finishes up about the time the other sits down.

[Deadend]

The addition of the cellphone is also great.
Throwing parties is easy, Sims are great at going off and making friends all over the place on their own.

The game really is much better at being a sandbox, as you can just sit back and watch and guide the sims when you want to, or you can take direct control and make it an RTS game.

I do wish the sims would do their own parties, without my input.

I feel like the game is a B+ to me, it's a pretty cool game, but not really my bag. I do wish it had more of the Spore procedurally generated content, and maybe if the game was free of the square grid for everything, as it's still tile based and it looks just as stiff as ever.

[Ink Asylum]

A note to those who like long Sim lives but don't want to turn off aging completely: You can set the lifespan of all Sims in the menu as well. An "Epic" lifespan is around 1000 Simdays from birth to death, while the default is MUCH shorter.

[Inspector Fowler]

I am weak, and bought it. It's downloading right now. Sigh.

[Vigil80]

The birthday cake item can be used to push a sim up to the next age category at any time, so says the in-game help text. I haven't tested it, but I suspect this means that even with aging off, you can advance your sims' lives.

This is easy mode of course when it comes to kids, since you'd apparently have an infinite amount of time to perfect their childhood before moving on.

[Ink Asylum]

I like that they give you the option. Some people might want to make a static family and play it as long as they want without having the kids grow up. Like The Simpsons.

[Wraith]

So if you really wanted to, you could have kids grow older than their parents. Or grandparents.

[Vigil80]

Think you might have that backwards, but yeah. I don't see any reason why you couldn't have a dozen generations of a family all running around together.

[Wraith]

Think you might have that backwardsYeah, fixed that.

[Karak]

Wow. Surprise of the year for me.
Great game. Just excellent.
I ended up playing it this weekend for over 9 hours. Just amazing. Runs well and performs well and is very fun.

[Lint of Death]

Hay guys, "Corin Tucker's Stalker" of SomethingAwful has his first impressions of a pirated copy of Sims 3 (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/sims-infamous-powers.php)! :eek:

[Vigil80]

Started a discussion thread (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=9177) so as to keep the news post tidy.

[SilentScreams]

Hay guys, "Corin Tucker's Stalker" of SomethingAwful has his first impressions of a pirated copy of Sims 3 (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/sims-infamous-powers.php)! :eek:

Made me laugh at least, which is more than Something Awful usually manages.
The Infamous bit afterwards was pretty funny too.

EA still don't have a pre-load available for Sims 3 despite it coming out here tomorrow. If they don't get it up soon, their servers are going to get absolutely hammered tomorrow I think.

[Wraith]

Gametrailers review (text) (http://www.gametrailers.com/gamereview.php?id=9210), (video (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/49828.html)): 9.0/10.0

[SilentScreams]

The pre-load is finally up for UK customers...2 hours before release.
As predicted, the servers are getting hammered and it's going to take about 6 hours to download.
Bravo, EA.

On the bright side, I'm getting my graphics card back tomorrow, so I don't have to play it on this crappy 9600GT.