The Sims 3 Review

[drfroob]

THE SIMS 3

Introduction:

In the Sims 3, you control a sim or family of sims, and make them do whatever the hell you want. From scrubbing toilets to finding giant chunks of raw silver in your neighbor's trashcan, the possibilities are virtually endless. However, this is not to say that the game is anywhere near perfect. The question that I am here to answer is whether the good makes up for the bad.

Minimum Requirements:

FOR WINDOWS XP
* 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
* 1 GB RAM
* A 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
* The latest version of DirectX 9.0c
* Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2
* At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of
additional space for custom content and saved games

FOR WINDOWS VISTA
* 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
* 1.5 GB RAM
* A 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
* Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1
* At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of
additional space for custom content and saved games

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets under Windows,
the game requires at least:
* Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA 3-Series or above
* 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
* 0.5 GB additional RAM

FOR MAC OS X
* Mac OS X 10.5.7 Leopard or higher
* Intel Core Duo Processor
* 2 GB RAM
* ATI X1600 or Nvidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or
Intel Integrated GMA X3100.
* At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space, with at least 1 GB
additional space for custom content and saved games
* This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac
systems, or the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards.

Gameplay:

First thing's first, you design you sim(s). The possibilities are pretty staggering here, as they are throughout the game. If you have played Sims 2, the controls for creating a new sim is fairly similar. You can make your sim green, or give them the worst nose job in the history on mankind, or actually make them look normal, which for some reason is never quite as fun. For example, which would be more entertaining to watch, A: a middle age man of an average build and complexion walk down his lawn to get the mail, or B: an anorexic bald woman with purple irises and a yellow and green polka-dotted miniskirt do the same thing?

yes, you CAN make douche bags...
[img width=700 height=560]http://tiltedscreen.com/wp-content/gallery/sims-3-vampires/femalevampire.jpg[/img]

As a Sim, you can be in one of three modes: Live Mode, where you peacefully (or not) live out you synthetic life as a sim, Buy Mode, where you buy things to furnish your house (like leopard print refrigerators,) and last but certainly not least, Build Mode, which allows you to create houses of virtually any shape or size you can imagine. It also gives you a place to put the stuff you get in Buy Mode, which helps you avoid having your house look like a yard sale.

In Life Mode, your sims calmly play out the remaining days in their allotted lifespan, until the game engine decides that they have lived long enough and terminates them. Hopefully by this time your sims have pumped out enough kids to keep you entertained, otherwise, you will learn quickly that a house full of spontaneously appearing urns is not that fun. One of the coolest parts of the game is seeing the next generation crop up, knowing that soon, the game will choose them for death, but not until after they have kids of their own. If you raise a family before you die, you get to watch (and of course control) them as they grow up and eventually form families of their own,which then grow up and create more families, and soon, yours are the only families left in town, due to over breeding. This is easily the most entertaining Mode in the sims, the Buy and Build Modes being there mainly for support. The main problem is that you tend to fall into a routine, and routines get boring rather fast.

In Buy Mode, surprisingly, you buy things. Things that your sims might need like showers and beds. Things that are useless but cool, like giant stacks of hay bales, And of course, things that are pointless, look lame, and burn a hole right through your sims' wallets, like life-sized sponge-shaped lamps (you don't even want to know...)

In Build Mode, you make houses for your sims. Not a lot else to say about this, other than the fact that you may at first have to spend a lot of time in this mode, because making houses takes forever. 78/100

Graphics:

Compared to Sims 2, there is very little change in graphical quality. If you are expecting the same "ooh" and "ahh" that came about with the switch from Sims 1 to Sims 2, you will be greatly disappointed. The one change, which in retrospect is reasonably large, is that now in Sims 3, you can see and explore your entire neighborhood, i.e. Your house does not appear to be the only one on the street when you are playing, as it was in Sims 2. 50/100

A shot of the neighborhood, "I can see my house from here!"
[img width=700 height=437]http://www.ngohq.com/attachments/screenshots/1979d1246807435-the-sims-3-screenshots-the-sims-3-screenshot-1.jpg[/img]

Sound:

I find it rather difficult to review the acting of this game when all of the sims speak in gibberish phrases. It is impressive that you can still understand what the sims want based on tone of voice and desperation of cries, but this may be more to do with the thought bubbles constantly appearing over their heads. 95/100

Teamplay:

Seeing as this game has absolutely NO MULTIPLAYER, there isn't really anything to say about Teamplay. I do not really blame EA about this, as I can not think of a way to create a good multiplayer with this game, it just isn't that type of game. 0/100

Conclusion:

Overall I would give this game a C. There were some cool features like the almost limitless freedom the game gives you. But with drawbacks like highly repetitive gameplay, and the spamming of booster pack after booster pack which EA has become famous for, It almost isn't worth it. My theory is that if you are a fan of previous Sims games, odds are you will like this one too. At this point, I am honestly unsure whether I will purchase the Sims 4, when it comes out. And believe me, it WILL come out eventually, but thats another review... OVERALL SCORE: 75/100

[DancingCorpse]

Wow, nice first post :9

Bold the titles to the the different sections (keep it consistent too, you have a page break between the Gameplay title and it's body but not for the other sections).

In the system specs area, add in your own system specs that you played the game on as well.

And finally at the end we want to see a rating system on a scale of 1 to 100 similar to the following, but you can change the categories in it, and the final Total is a average of all the ratings for each category:

Categories
Multi-player Gameplay:
Single-player Gameplay:
Graphics Quality:
Sound Quality:
Stability:
Concept:

Total:
Ratings
92
40
60
33
90
80

66

[Adsartha]

Very nice first post. We also need your images to fall under the category of fair use (this is best done if you took screenshots yourself) and no hotlinking to other people's sites, or to photobucket/imageshack/etc.

All images must be here.

[DancingCorpse]

Very nice first post. We also need your images to fall under the category of fair use (this is best done if you took screenshots yourself) and no hotlinking to other people's sites, or to photobucket/imageshack/etc.

All images must be here.

Ahh, hadn't remembered to check those last night. Those pics are not under fair use, take your own or find some that are free to use.