On Sunday Josh and I drove over to Easton to enjoy the weather, the food, and for him, the Apple Store. I was pleasantly surprised however to find that they offered a demo of The Sims 3, the newest rendition of The Sims franchise. Although it didn’t allow gameplay, I did get to experience exactly what making a Sim character would be like in the newest version of the number one selling PC game of all time.
The face and body features in The Sims 3 are still cartoon-like, but they’re much more human than any Sims game has produced before. You now have the ability to fine tune even more details of their faces and bodies so that your Sim can look exactly how you want him or her to appear. Although you could do this in The Sims 2, the faces are more strikingly human and you can adjust features with more intricacy. For instance, one of my biggest problems with The Sims and The Sims 2 was obesity and body shape: whenever you would make a Sim overweight in the previous two games it would look more like they were pregnant. Now body weight is evenly distributed and it doesn’t just make their waists a little rounder.
The ages are still the same (if you had the The Sims 2 University expansion): baby, toddler, child, teenager, young adult, adult, and elderly.
As far as appearance and fashion is concerned in The Sims 3, it knocks the other two games out of the park. You now have more choices of specific facial features including freckles, beauty marks, facial hair, hats, and hairstyles. I have freckles and a couple of beauty marks, so I found this feature especially useful! Another aspect that appealed to me (it must be the double-x chromosomes) was the choice of outfits and the ability to choose shoes. Before, the clothes (minus the outfits from the fashion-specific expansions) all looked a little monotonous and outdated, but there appear to be limitless possibilities just inside your Sim’s wardrobe.
Finally the personality development in The Sims 3 is phenomenal. You get to choose five traits for your Sim which will define their interests and life pursuits. Five traits do not seem like a lot to begin with, especially when you have nearly 80 different traits to choose from, but these can range from ‘lucky’ to ‘ambitious’ to ‘natural cook’ to ‘party animal’.
It will be interesting to see if the new developments are even more addicting or if the series has become too complicated. Personally I’ll always have a soft spot for The Sims Hot Date and The Sims Superstar, but watching the series evolve over the last decade has been breathtaking. Even with all of the new additions, there are some small but significant features from the other two games that still persist:
- When you click on objects or people, the interaction noise is still the same. A very minute detail indeed, but still very nostalgic.
- Sims still speak “Simlish.” The day they start speaking real, whole languages is the day I will die a little on the inside.
- Sims can still die in fires. This is ridiculous, I know, but this is also very memorable for me. Many of my Saturday mornings as a kid consisted of locking Sims in rooms with chairs and fireplaces.
- Sims can brush their teeth again. This hasn’t happened since The Sims 2 Apartment Life and the original Sims.
- Households can still only contain eight people. When you think about it though there really isn’t a need for more than that, anyway: eight Sims are pretty difficult to manage!
Despite the countless upgrades (playing your Sim while he or she is at work, “needs“ are regulated more efficiently, cell phones and laptops…), the developers of The Sims 3 have worked especially hard to make this game relatively small. I had many problems with The Sims 2 crashing on me when my neighborhood grew too large, but even on my laptop I should be able to run The Sims 3 smoothly.
More details about character development, game play, interior/exterior design and what exactly is in store for consumers come June 2 can be found at http://thesims3.ea.com/. Only seven days!
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