The Sims 3

The scale and size of The Sims 3 is far beyond anything I imagined - my sim (a fitter, handsomer, friendlier version of myself) played out his life like normal until one day he got it in his head he wanted to write a fantasy novel. Not just a novel, a fantasy novel. After a lot of complaining and reading and generally not having any idea what to do I found out that you have to have already written 3 sci-fi novels to write a fantasy novel.

This blew me away, and this was just one facet of the game on the whole. Learning the guitar no longer just makes you a good guitar player, you can now learn up to 20 different compositions depending on your guitar skills. There are over 15 different fruits and vegetables you can plant and maintain if you want to do some gardening. Your paintings are now unique to your sim, an evil thrill-seeking cook will paint a completely different picture to an unlucky, clumsy and absent minded sim, who will probably destroy the canvas.

Back in 2000, The Sims pushed the envelope. It was a different experience to other mainstream games, seeming more like a social experiment than anything else. The Sims 2 expanded on that idea, adding in more interactions, more locations and refining the graphics and AI to seem even more lifelike than before. The Sims 3 continues the trend and extends it, adding in neighbourhood-level gameplay, and extending your sim's vision beyond the confines of his/her house.

The game can now seamlessly transfer from your house to the neighbourhood, where your sim can now interact with any other sim or house. While on an afternoon jog you might see a neighbour has a new television - you can now jog up and ring the doorbell and invite yourself in. Or you may see an annoying neighbour approaching from the opposite direction, looking to talk to you - run straight past them, devastating them with a world class blank.

You don't need to micro-manage your sims as much any more either, the AI has been advanced substantially, meaning the days of shouting at your computer while your sim stands around crying and pissing itself are (mostly) in the past. Your sim will now act according to its 5 traits - a good cook will have a good time cooking, an evil sim will have a bad time giving candy to babies. These will then affect what are known as moodlets - the replacements for the mood bar.

Moodlets vary in range depending on the scope of the activity that created them - getting married would have a long lasting positive moodlet, while hearing a bad joke would only have a negative effect for a short period of time. These moodlets can then give you bonuses or minuses to learning speed - an excellent motivation for ensuring your sim's happiness.



Happiness has repercussions beyond simply keeping the game going now as well - Lifetime Happiness goals and rewards can give your sim perks like "Fast Learner", "Steel Bladder" and "Bloody Mess" (ok, so the last one is from the Fallout series, not The Sims... But how cool would that be). You earn points towards your perks by achieving your goals - things like "Paint a picture" or "Get a promotion" increase your lifetime happiness by small amounts, while fulfilling Lifetime Wishes like "Become an International Super Spy" gives you the mother load (or motherlode *wink*) of points.

Unfortunately this complexity is not always a good thing. The target demographic for the sims games has always been the casual market, the original game was applauded for having a female demographic and not assuming they couldn't cope with anything more complicated than solitaire. The Sims 3 might be taking this complexity too far though, as ensuring even two sims make enough money, eat enough food, clean up enough, meet enough people as well as write novels, paint works of art, go jogging, visit the bookstore and sleep - all outside of work hours can take a lot of micro-managing.

Add in making sure you get it all done before you are too old, and finding a suitable partner for each of them to continue the family line and it can all be much too frustrating for those who just want to have a bit of fun. It actually seems more directed at hardcore gamers (ironically a large part of its charm for me, a hardcore gamer). Fortunately, a lot of options (like aging) can be turned off, but the game doesn't make them particularly easy to find - I know people who have almost given up the game entirely until I showed them the options. The other major problem with the game is one that faces a lot of games (these days) on release - crashing.

I've had numerous crashes since I first started playing, and for whatever reason (probably because of the length of time it takes to save) The Sims 3 still does not have an Auto-Save function. For a period of time the game literally would not load up at all - just hanging on start-up until I killed the process, an action I wonder whether the Sims 3 target demographic would actually manage. When you truly begin to understand the scale of the game it's almost forgivable though... Almost. Just remember to save constantly and it shouldn't be a huge issue - as long as you can get back into the game.

The Sims 3 is an excellent sequel to a series that has either innovated or destroyed PC Gaming since its first iteration, depending on who you ask. The developers said they would listen to the players while building this one and it shows. The massive jump in scale, increase in options and improvements in overall quality make The Sims 3 a worthwhile addition to any games library, and while it may be frustrating at first for a beginner, it won't take long for most to get the hang of it. It is well worth the effort - we're now taking bets on how many expansion packs this one will get.