Review – The Sims 3 (PC)

Before I go any further, I feel I must explain that I don’t play The Sims like other people I know. Other people try to experiment and emulate a life style and treat their Sims like semi-real people, but not me. I play it like I would a linear RPG. I min-max, try to make the most money, and buy the most cost-effective objects with little concern for aesthetics. With the exception of character creation, which benefits from my wife’s dedication to recreating us in the game, real people would most definitely not live in the way I direct them. However, all these factors did not stop me from enjoying the first two games in the series.

The look and feel of the Sims remain very much the same, although technically it is more impressive as the game loads the entire town at once. But on a Sim by Sim basis, the game doesn’t look much better than The Sims 2. The music and voices are entirely familiar as well, so there’s not much to talk about either. For the three people who have never played the series: the game provides a nice classical soundtrack for most areas, and then has a mix of original tunes spanning different genres for the stereo.

The mechanics introduced in Sims 3 makes it easier to play for veterans, but harder to play for those (three) people who are new to the franchise. In order to teach the player all about the mechanics though, they have added in-game lessons that will tell you how things work, generally. Some of these new features include traits, a more comprehensive schooling system and matching career system, weight, wishes and lifetime achievement points. The Build Mode is also easier to work with, allowing you to drag entire walls out in order to expand your room.

It used to be that you could assign points to some categories in order to differentiate your Sims. Instead, they now allow you to assign up to five traits, depending on the age of the Sim, to the Sim. These traits can be positive, such as Genius, or negative, such as Technophobe. In either case, this system doesn’t lend itself to min-maxing as much, but it does do a nice job of making different Sims unique.

Back in my day, we just sent the kids off to school at the designated time and that was that. Nowadays, these young whippersnappers have the option of working hard at school, slacking off, or even chatting with friends.  Then they come home and they can do their homework in order to improve their school performance. Like they rule the place!

Joking aside, school performance being impacted by mood and homework means that managing your little tykes becomes much like managing your working adults. Your way to your next promotion or demotion in a job is now measured on a cumulative bar that you fill up as you go to work. In addition to the mood of your Sim, other occupation-related factors can help this bar fill up faster. For example, if you’re on the medical career track, you’ll eventually also be requested to do research. Each of these other factors are actually optional, so given enough time, your mood can be the only thing that matters. For a player like me, this system really took away from the game as I was no longer required to maintain relationships in order to advance in my career. That means I reached the highest level without making a single friend, except by accident while at work, and the social game was left as a useless hassle to my pursuit.

Aside from school, kids also have to balance their physical activities such as swimming in the neigbourhood pool or getting a cardio workout from the TV though, or they’re going to grow up fat. This only seemed to affect kids as they go through the age categories and stopped at young adult. Even if your Sims do grow up with some love handles, they can do some cardio workouts in order to take off some unwanted weight.

Out of all the new mechanics added to the game, the one that was most enjoyable for me were wishes. Every Sim, except for the really young, gets to pick a lifetime wish. An example lifetime wish would be becoming a world-renowned surgeon, which is getting to the highest level in the medical profession. In addition, throughout the course of the game your Sim will have random wishes pop up related to their traits, current skills, who they have talked to recently, and what they just finished doing. For example, a more immediate wish may be to buy something that’s worth over one hundred dollars. If a wish is something you think you can fulfill, you can promise it to your Sim by left-clicking it. A Sim can have up to four simultaneous promised wishes going at the same time, and they can range from short-term to long-term. You can also cancel the promise by right-clicking it, thus freeing up a slot for another wish. These wishes for me were like quests that came to me and I found myself playing to my Sims’ wishes.

All this hard work in wish fulfillment gets you lifetime achievement points, which can be exchanged for perks such as a Fast Metabolism or a Steel Bladder. The ultimate of these is Teleportation, which is within reach if you complete your lifetime wish but otherwise would take quite a while to save up for.

All these new mechanics are dressed up by the usual fluff and cute humour that one would expect to find in a Sims game, and I had a couple of laugh out loud moments as one of my Sims died trying to repair a stereo and then came back later to haunt the household (did you know that Sim ghosts sleep?). On top of the wacky moments, there are also seemingly arbitrary decisions that add a lot of flavour to the game. For example, if you’re pursuing life as a musician, you’re eventually asked if you would like to be a rocker or a classical musician.

Another subtle change with a big impact is that the rest of the town will progress while you play, and not just the ones that are on your lot. This means you can’t keep your neighbour Betty barefoot and pregnant forever!

The Sims 3 provides a very basic movie maker tool. Using clips you’ve filmed in your game or some stock clips included with the tool, you can drag and drop the clips into a movie in any order. For each clip, you can provide a maximum of one transition, special effect, and caption. The options are all very basic and browsing through the more popular movies in the community exchange is a good way of seeing what you can do with it. If you wanted to make movies though, I’d recommend The Movies.

The Sims Store provides a new wide variety of new content in exchange for Sims points, which you buy with money, and the return of the Sims Exchange lets you download and upload content from other Sims fans. In addition, your community page supports avatars and even your own personal blog.

Even though The Sims 3 changes many fundamental elements to the game, and even adds lots of new ones, it feels like the exact same game as Sims 2. If you’ve never had the pleasure of running your own virtual household, then I would highly recommend this game. However, if you’ve already spent countless hours on The Sims 2, then much like the annual sports titles, this entry is not worth the full price tag.