PC

My review is written. It’s not, I don’t think, the best review ever, but I really wanted to get across the point that the game now works the way I’ve always thought it should and is therefore the best Sims game by a long, long way.

The Sims 3 Review

Sims now properly autonomous – except for fact they won’t come home from trips out unless you tell them to, as far as I can see. Left to their own devices, they will do what needs doing, including peeing, showering, sleeping and cleaning. This is a major step. My wife likes to micro-manage her sims, I prefer to watch them and then prod them gently or get them doing things they wouldn’t normally do.

Making friends seems to take ages. Acquaintances are easy to get, but building up relationships seems hard.

La’Quisha grew up to school age. Once she’s going off to school each day, I’m going to have Steve explore the town a bit during the days before he gets a job.

Used build mode to extend the house, as it was far too small. Very easy to do, doesn’t cost the earth. Good. Restrictions, though, like not being able to move walls with counters attached to them. Reasonable, understandable, annoying.

I’m reviewing this – I have an actual free copy from EA and everything – so this post will just be some notes of things I need to remember when I write up the review.

Install takes ages. How much disk space did it take up? I’ll have to check.

Runs like a dog on default settings on my PC, but so did The Sims 2. Taking everything down to low means it runs fine and doesn’t really seem to look any different to my eyes. No different from medium settings, no different from The Sims 2.

Set up a family – Steve and Sasha Beato and their baby daughter, whose name is something like De’Quesha. I let my wife name her and she watches far too much Maury. Steve is evil, Sasha is reasonably good, but not overly so.

Moved them into a small house in town. It’s not a trailer… it just looks like one. I’ve fulfilled a few small wishes for them – a new sofa, a crib for the baby, etc. Steve, though evil, loves his little daughter very much and most of his wishes involve taking care of her.

While he was doing that, Sasha went out to the grocery store – fancy new feature alert! – and bought some food. And a duck. For the bath. The bath they don’t have. Then she came home and got a job on the journalism career track, as she wished. Steve wants to have a criminal career, but I’m keeping him home to look after the baby for now. Global domination can wait.

I experimented with letting my sims get on with their lives themselves and they went to the toilet, ate food, went to bed and went to work without me having to tell them to. That’s an improvement from The Sims 2 right there. I think they were meant to do it in the last game, but they never seemed to actually do it.

When I left, Sasha was still at work – her first day – and Steve was looking after the baby. I think I might get Sasha to invite her co-workers over for a party soon, see some interation.

Steve and Sasha love each other very much and when they can they spend a lot of time talking and canoodling. Sasha wants another baby – they’ve not tried that yet.