Recently I've been playing Simulation games, and the one that really stood put above them all was the Sims 3. If you've been living under a rock and you don't know what the Sims are, you suck. But the Sims is a Simulation game where you create your own family, tell them to do stuff and watch them realize their virtual dreams or crushing their pathetic little virtual lives.
The Sims 3 was a huge advance on the previous Sims games, mainly because of the neighborhood aspect. While your family lives in their own house, they can also go out of their house into the neighborhood to interact with other Sims at the park, at restaurants, at the local stadium, etc.
While this a great advance it's also a little annoying, once I told one of my Sims to go down to the grocery store to buy 30 tonnes to watermelon (it's possible people, I'll explain why watermelons later), and she accidentally took the baby with her, so, using the Sims freewill (which I can deactivate at my choosing), she decided to interact with a nearby Sim, making her put down the baby. Not even knowing that she took the baby with her in the first place, I told her to come home. The baby died... but I was gonna burn the entire family in a horrible cooking "accident" anyway, so meh.
Another great advance is the customization. While The Sims series has always had great customization for it's age, this is the best out of all them. Have you ever played Sims 1 or 2, put a shirt on your Sim and thought "I wish this came in red", well the Sims 3 has answered by making everything in your house from your toilet to your hi-definition plasma screen TV you stole from your neighbors is customizable. For example I built my own house, bought a nice car to get around in, and changed it's texture to stone. So I drove around in a stone car. My toilet is made out of marble and my oven is made out of wood. (Fail)
Another good thing about the Sims 3 is the work system. When you go to work, you can choose how hard your Sims work, with each one having pros and cons. There are usually: Normal Day (nothing good or bad), work hard (get paid more but be more stressed when you get home), meet people (payed less but meet new people), hang out with co-workers (paid less, make friends) and practice (increase skill, be more stressed). Also, if you don't want to work, you don't have to. You can earn money through... writing books at home, painting, repairing peoples stuff, making your sim a kleptomaniac (one who impusively steals things) and sell the loot. I like writing books because you get a weekly paycheck.
But of course like every other game there are downsides. First of all aging. In Sims 1 and 2 (on PS2) and Sims 1 (on computer, don't know about S2), you Sims didn't age and didn't die unless you did something like... oh i don't know... put them in a pool and remove the ladders? yeah that'll do, but in Sims 3 your Sims age and die rapidly, which makes it annoying because if you want to keep playing you need to actually get kids, and that makes it even HARDER and more ANNOYING because babies can't do anything but cry, crap, and take your food. You can turn aging off, but that defeats the purpose in my views. There are very few bugs but a few I've noticed are that sometime before that become "children" you need to teach your babies to talk, walk and housetrain them (yes, I use that word on purpose). And when your adult sits down to teach your baby to talk, sometimes they won't get back up, no matter how hungry they or the baby are, and then they die, which really isn't a bad thing.
Another great and fun bug to exploit is "toddlers talk to adults watching TV". Toddlers cannot climb up onto couches, so, they sit on the floor to watch, which they can only do when an adult is watching. This is where it gets funny. If your toddler knows how to talk, they will talk to the adult watching TV, and if this adult is sitting on a couch watching TV, when the baby replies to the adult, it's entire body will stretch and (if it were real) its bones would break in several places.
Overall I found this an okay game to play, a bit on the repetitive side but still something good to do on the weekend when you're tired of Soldiers and Demomen on TF2.
Like last time, if you want me to review a certain game or just want to give feedback that you don't want to post on the forum, e-mail me at [email protected]
The Sims 3 was a huge advance on the previous Sims games, mainly because of the neighborhood aspect. While your family lives in their own house, they can also go out of their house into the neighborhood to interact with other Sims at the park, at restaurants, at the local stadium, etc.
While this a great advance it's also a little annoying, once I told one of my Sims to go down to the grocery store to buy 30 tonnes to watermelon (it's possible people, I'll explain why watermelons later), and she accidentally took the baby with her, so, using the Sims freewill (which I can deactivate at my choosing), she decided to interact with a nearby Sim, making her put down the baby. Not even knowing that she took the baby with her in the first place, I told her to come home. The baby died... but I was gonna burn the entire family in a horrible cooking "accident" anyway, so meh.
Another great advance is the customization. While The Sims series has always had great customization for it's age, this is the best out of all them. Have you ever played Sims 1 or 2, put a shirt on your Sim and thought "I wish this came in red", well the Sims 3 has answered by making everything in your house from your toilet to your hi-definition plasma screen TV you stole from your neighbors is customizable. For example I built my own house, bought a nice car to get around in, and changed it's texture to stone. So I drove around in a stone car. My toilet is made out of marble and my oven is made out of wood. (Fail)
Another good thing about the Sims 3 is the work system. When you go to work, you can choose how hard your Sims work, with each one having pros and cons. There are usually: Normal Day (nothing good or bad), work hard (get paid more but be more stressed when you get home), meet people (payed less but meet new people), hang out with co-workers (paid less, make friends) and practice (increase skill, be more stressed). Also, if you don't want to work, you don't have to. You can earn money through... writing books at home, painting, repairing peoples stuff, making your sim a kleptomaniac (one who impusively steals things) and sell the loot. I like writing books because you get a weekly paycheck.
But of course like every other game there are downsides. First of all aging. In Sims 1 and 2 (on PS2) and Sims 1 (on computer, don't know about S2), you Sims didn't age and didn't die unless you did something like... oh i don't know... put them in a pool and remove the ladders? yeah that'll do, but in Sims 3 your Sims age and die rapidly, which makes it annoying because if you want to keep playing you need to actually get kids, and that makes it even HARDER and more ANNOYING because babies can't do anything but cry, crap, and take your food. You can turn aging off, but that defeats the purpose in my views. There are very few bugs but a few I've noticed are that sometime before that become "children" you need to teach your babies to talk, walk and housetrain them (yes, I use that word on purpose). And when your adult sits down to teach your baby to talk, sometimes they won't get back up, no matter how hungry they or the baby are, and then they die, which really isn't a bad thing.
Another great and fun bug to exploit is "toddlers talk to adults watching TV". Toddlers cannot climb up onto couches, so, they sit on the floor to watch, which they can only do when an adult is watching. This is where it gets funny. If your toddler knows how to talk, they will talk to the adult watching TV, and if this adult is sitting on a couch watching TV, when the baby replies to the adult, it's entire body will stretch and (if it were real) its bones would break in several places.
Overall I found this an okay game to play, a bit on the repetitive side but still something good to do on the weekend when you're tired of Soldiers and Demomen on TF2.
Like last time, if you want me to review a certain game or just want to give feedback that you don't want to post on the forum, e-mail me at [email protected]
