I’ve been a fan of The Sims franchise since the beginning; purchased every expansion and collection pack I could get my hands on, including online downloads numbering in the thousands from some of the most talented artists out there. Whether you like The Sims or not, fact is, it’s hard to escape the world that Will Wright created. Perhaps because of its large female following, many find it easy to describe The Sims as a virtual dollhouse, but it is much more complicated than that. In an era where Video Games have truly allowed people the escapism they’ve desired, The Sims taps into a desire that we all have to play God in our own ideal utopian society. The Sims 3 does not disappoint here, and for anyone who has played The Sims or its sequel, you’ll find that The Sims 3 is a whole new ballgame.

Gameplay

The biggest change with Sims 3 is the how the gameplay revolves around an entire town instead of a single household. Probably one of my biggest complaints in the past has been the way your household would pause whenever your Sims went somewhere around town, throwing off your entire day. Now, Sims can move seamlessly between households and town locations without this problem. This new town gameplay frees you up to do so much more. There’s new feeling that a living, breathing world that surrounds you in Sims 3.


The new Traits feature lets you assign certain mental, physical, social, and lifestyle traits to newly created Sims and as other’s grow up. It’s through these traits that you will be able to watch other Sims around you lead their lives and as some Sims stop coming around (mostly through death), new Sims will appear and begin to live their lives around you. Each Sim can have up to five traits. Your Sims can be ambitious, artistic, childish, flirty, evil, lucky, neurotic, & slobs.

There’s a number of ways to combine traits and some traits cancel out others, such as a computer whiz cannot also be a technophobe, and someone who is family oriented cannot also dislike children. You’ll also find maid’s who are kleptomaniacs and firemen who are cowards. These traits help influence your lifetime wish, which is what you’re trying to achieve throughout their lifetime. Just about anything can be your Sims lifetime wish, from being a Professional Author, to a 5 star Chef. They can even be an Astronaut or the Leader of the Free World!

There’s a huge improvement to your Sims daily needs as well. With two dropped, comfort and environment, it’s easier to keep up with the six needs left behind, hunger, bladder, sleep, social, hygiene, and social. In the past, keeping up with a pregnant Sims needs was a chore, but now you can send them to the bathroom once or twice a day opposed to rushing them there are the last minute.


You can improve this by promising your Sims wants such as making a new friend, learning something new, or even snuggling a baby. Whenever your Sim completes a want that was promised them, points are awarded to their lifetime happiness. This number continually adds up as they age and at certain increments, you can purchase lifetime rewards. These include the ability to clean faster, to being a better friend or host without the trait. They can even be used to help their needs like steel bladders, and resistance to hygiene and hunger. These rewards increase the unique nature of each Sims.

The game still allows players to start fresh on a blank lot to create their dream home and make use of space they hadn’t before with the ability to angle objects. Counter space that was once unavailable is now usable and it’s truly made the game more open and less cluttered. Ultimately, the entire world is not open to all of your Sims, but rather opens up based on traits and skills acquired through exploration and reading books. Some objects I do miss, like the piano and I wish the playground gave kids their body skill.

However, The Sims 3 is not without problems. Pathing feels a little sticky at times. Often your Sims will take the long way around instead of simply walking up a flight of stairs. When I achieved my dream home, I created a back stairway that immediately turned the basement back entrance into the primary entrance. It was frustrating because I wanted that stairway there, and no matter how I moved it, the Sims were content to run the long way around the house, up two flight of stairs to go to the bathroom, when using the front entrance would have made for less problems.

Graphics

The Graphics in The Sims 3 is not much of an upgrade from The Sims 2; however, keep in mind that the graphics in Sims 2 didn’t really need an upgrade. The main difference I see here is the gorgeous rendering of objects in my house, despite the entire town behind me. I would have liked to be able to follow my Sims into the town buildings, which the option is available for buildings, like the Art Museum and the Library. Still, for many buildings we cannot peel back the walls like we can for our own household. I think this would have allowed us to truly make use of the town to its fullest extent.

Character creation allows for players to make a wider selection of character types using weight & muscle sliders. A nice change here is the ability to setup three changes of clothes for each category: everyday, formal, pajama’s, athletic and swimsuits. This makes it much easier to change clothes and more variety than just buying up entire shops worth of clothing.


User-generated content is becoming a big part of games. The Sims lacked this ability in previous games but made up for it with the ability to install new content from other players. The Sims 3 truly makes up for this as you can customize just about anything. Provided for you are a number of generic looking objects and clothing but with the enormous amount of fabrics, leather, rock, masonry and metallic patterns, not to mention the themed, artistic and geometric patterns, you can create whatever comes to mind. These can then be shared with the online crowd. What really struck me was that even the patterns can be created and shared.

Sound

The game’s characters still speak simlish, the fictional babble speak that all characters have spoken since The Sims. In the past, typically one male and one female would do all the voice acting and we would be left with little variety. Now, players can choose between three voices and adjust the pitch to get a voice they want. This is far more control than we’ve ever had over our character voices. Players can also choose a style of music that their character likes, but the musical choice for children seemed like it was randomly assigned, as opposed to genetics or rather constantly changing as they grew up.

The game’s familiar bouncy score was composed by Steve Jablonsky, the talent behind the movie Transformers, and the video game Gears of War 2. This is quite possibly the fullest and most vibrant soundtrack we had from any of The Sims games. The game’s theme is recognizable even though it’s not repurposed music from past games. It definitely stands apart as its own element and includes support for 5.1 surround sound.

Value

With online micro transactions, players can download more objects to stuff into their houses. Still, the online integration is greater than previous installments. While it’s not required, it is nice to have available, and it does allow you to download user-generated content. The only downside is to use it you must have Sims 2 installed because it uses a small but free expansion program called The Sims 2 Store. I also suggest taking a look at the actual game before the website, because I found most of the user-created content was just an extension of what I myself was already making. The online store is already swamped with user-generated content and getting through the muddled mess takes a lot of time. I found that it took less time and work to get into the game and easily start creating my own content.


Each game gives you a new and fun way to explore the various careers available. With the ability to extend the lives of your Sims, you’ll be able to increase how much they do and how much you explore.

Conclusion

All these new features give The Sims 3 a rewarding experience that feels complete and less constrained than ever before. Uncluttered and free of past restrictions, it takes pieces from its history and evolution by giving us what works and further integrating the world around it. The inclusion of the town, traits and lifetime wants feels like you are playing God to a world of people living their lives instead of attempting to negotiate rapidly depleting needs and random wishes. Fans of the series will not only appreciate the larger changes that came with Sims 3, but the smaller ones too. Quite possibly the best Sims game yet, this is a fantastic addition to the franchise and one that no fan should be without.