The Sims 3 – REVIEW

The Sims 3

A Review By Nutronic

Images added are hosted on imageshack and the full sized image can be seen by clicking on it.

So here we are then at Nutronic’s review! and what a great game to start with.

Now if your looking for a game where you play God and choose what someone wants to do or not to do, and have it brought to you on a silver platter of fantastic graphics then this is the game for you.

The Sims 3 controls are much the same as Sims 2. One of the most noticeable changes that EA have brought to the Sims 3 is reducing the loading screens to just 2 and that’s at the start of the game and one to load the neighbourhood but after that everything including all the homes are loaded, this for me enhances gameplay as this gives the imression that the game is continuous.

There is NO Body Shop unlike in Sims 2 you were previously allowed to create as many sims as you liked outside of the game.  I am disappointed that this is not a feature in Sims 3.  I have also noticed the distinct lack of animals which I find is unusual due to the success of Sims 2 Pets. So why did they miss this out? I also thought that the parks seemed rather empty because of the lack of wildlife, now I’m not saying that this game NEEDS pets but it would have been an interesting thing to have, even if it was just for cosmetic reasons only because a park isn’t a park without pigeons.

So what else is there about the Sims 3?
The graphics have been improved and also the way the game can be modded has been changed slightly. However, installing custom stuff has been eased slightly thanks to Install Helper Monkey by Delphy of ModTheSims.info (previously modthesims2.com).

The game is good fun and the fact you can zoom out from your sims home to anywhere in the neighbourhood is in fact brilliant for me. The careers also offer their own rewards such as a police car in Law Enforcement for example, when driving the car you can turn the siren and lights on. Its a shame that they skins are very American and I would like to have seen more diversity built into the game, but again that’s not really a problem. In the Sims 3 the carpool/lift to work still appears whether or not they have their own car and there is no way of stopping this. there is also no option to choose a car as their own and there is no drives like there was previously, there is a  car-spot parking space which is great because you can place this anywhere really at the front of your home or by the side and voilà, take your car out of your rucksack/inventory and place it there for keeps.

The create a sim or CAS, is a lot better now because you can change a lot more than you could before, this includes playing with your sims hair from its roots (which is also what the eyebrows are coloured from) to the highlights and tips. I have had some funky hair on my Sims by playing about with these, you also get to use a colour picker too which is great because your not stuck with using basic colours like brown and blonde or black you can use colours such as bright blue or pink! You can make your sims more realistic and that only adds to the depth of the game which is great. There is also a hack that can be downloaded from Modthesims.info called CAS slider hack and its made by 2 people called Delphy and Rick. The hack is quite a fantastic little piece of kit it allows you to make really skinny sims or really fat sims. This famous celebrity pictured on the left is an example what can be made using CAS and the hack above.

If you have time and are creative you can make almost any person in this CAS. I have yet to explore the game fully by making homes or businesses so I cannot comment fully on what the procedure is like compared to Sims 2, I can however say that the build and the buy modes menu system is a lot better, things are a lot easier to find and the icons are a good size for most things which makes it easier to find what your looking for. I enjoyed playing this game and have played it a lot more recently than I have done with any of my other games. My PS3 has even been neglected at the moment because of the Sims. I sit silently in hope that the animals will come soon, it seems to be a feature that people are crying for on the OFFICIAL EA EU forums for Sims.

For me personally the game gets a high score of 9/10, would be 10 with animals.

To end my first review I would like to say thanks to Electronic Arts for giving me the opportunity to review Sims 3 and also thank you for reading this review. If you do have any questions then please feel free to ask.