- Publisher: EA
- Developer: The Sims Studio
- ESRB Rating: “T" for Teen
- Genre: Virtual Life
- Pros: Gets very addictive when you get into it; lots to do; nice presentation
- Cons: Load times; not for everyone; having lots of Sims is unwieldy
The Sims, if you don't know, is a virtual life simulator where you create little characters and watch them go through their daily lives. Your Sims have dreams and ambitions that you can help them achieve. They can have kids. You can put new stuff in their house, or build them an entirely new house. And then you sit back and watch how they interact with each other and the toys you've given them. Sims have to eat, and sleep, and go to the bathroom, and work, and all of that stuff and you can watch that too. If you're into that sort of thing.
The Sims 3 also introduces Karma Powers that let you do things that have a big impact on the lives of your Sims. Some powers let your Sim win the lottery or get a promotion at work. Other powers let you haunt their house with ghosts, or trigger an earthquake. Either way, it is fun to watch how everyone reacts.
A nice feature in this game is that your Sims don't need nearly as much babysitting as they used to. They are smart enough that they'll eat and clean up and go to the bathroom on their own, so you don't have to control every tiny little detail like you had to in previous games. Instead, you get to focus on more fun things like buying new stuff and decorating their house.
Gameplay
EA
A cool feature in The Sims 3 is that you aren't limited to just one house or one neighborhood. Your Sims can travel all over a whole town and interact with a lot of other characters in a number of different locations and scenarios. Unfortunately, there are long load times when you switch to a new area, and if you have a lot of Sims in your family, it can be a pain in the butt (and boring because of the constant loading) trying to keep track of them and watch them all. With one or two Sims, it isn't bad, but with a whole family it all gets pretty unwieldy.
I also want to talk briefly about the controls. The Sims 3 is a mouse and keyboard game on PC, obviously, which offers a lot more controls and hotkeys and that sort of thing. On the Xbox 360, it has to use a controller, but the controls are surprisingly well thought out. Not intuitive or easy to start with, but once you go through the tutorial everything makes sense and the game is easy to play.
Graphics and Sound
The sound is also fairly good. The soundtrack is quite good in particular. I'm not a fan of Simlish (the gibberish language Sims speak), but there is a great variety of sounds in this game (compared to the recently released MySims SkyHeroes which repeated the same stuff over and over), so it isn't quite as grating here as it can be in other games. And, honestly, some of the reactions and Simlish tirades you hear are pretty funny.
Bottom Line
EA
