The best way I can sum up Sims 3 is to admit that I’ve put off writing this review for weeks. It’s not because the game is bad. A review of a bad game is a breeze to write. It’s taken me this long because I’m not entirely certain how I feel about the game. It’s fair to say that a whole load of people like the basic concept of The Sims franchise. It’s been around for years and has managed to sell an ungodly number of (really) marginally useful expansion packs. I’m even forced to admit that I once bought a Sims Pet expansion in lieu of the Sony Aibo I couldn’t afford.
So the Sims formula works, and Sims 3 definitely takes an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-try-to-fix-it-and-inadvertently-fuck-up-the-money-press approach. What it successfully does is tweak, layer, and evolve the holy hell out of this formula. If you’re the sort of gamer who loved any of the previous Sims games then you’ll assuredly be at home. You’ll burst with fruit flavor when you realize you can finally place things at an angle or on half of a tile, and that you can now simply create diagonal walls. You may cackle with joy the first time you walk from your house to insult the mayor across town without a single load screen to slow you down. It will probably tickle you to see the trait system that’s been implemented, allowing delightful combinations such as an Evil Sim with a Green Thumb or a Great Kisser who’s also Insane.
On the other hand, if the idea of escaping from real-life minutia to the minutia of a Sim’s world seems a bit odd, you can skip this game and perhaps even my review. But that could hurt my feelings.
Playing Sims 3 is at first like fresh love: filled with newness and joy, mixed with the occasional awkward moment. There’s so much to discover that it can easily seem overwhelming. From the start you’re faced with a character creation engine that’s as much a time-suck hole as the actual gameplay. I spent 20 minutes deciding on what sort of facial hair my Sim, Simon Chase, would have. I even asked my girlfriend twice for input. I lost another 20 minutes creating the perfect daughter for my ruggedly handsome, single dad, who, I decided, would run for the Presidency. I set him up with a good mix of genius, luck, and charisma to further our mutual quest. His daughter, on the other hand, I made into a promising musical prodigy since I was angling her toward rock-stardom.
Then came the part of The Sims I have always enjoyed though it usually has me hunting for cash: architecture. Since my starting money didn’t quite suit the biography I had envisioned for my independently wealthy future Pres, I typed COMMAND+SHIFT+C, followed with “motherload” and ENTER, and I scored my Chase clan a quick and questionable 50 G’s. Later I decided that the Chase House needed a backyard deck and swimming pool, so I punched the code again and added a few hundred thousand more dollars. I spent an hour designing a massive, single floor loft-style house with a master suite, bath, and enough plasmas to adorn the set of a sci-fi spaceship. So, yes, I cheated and I hadn’t even really started the game. In hindsight this was bad since money, as I soon discovered, is the main perk of the game.
Two real hours later I moved the Chase family into the home I had lovingly crafted from ill-gotten means, and then I went about putting Simon Chase into a Political track. The gameplay, despite changes here and there, is pretty standard Sims fare. You take your Sim through his day, make sure his needs are met so his mood is happy when he goes to work, and that allows him to climb the ranks of your chosen profession. What’s changed is that you no longer need to spend the ridiculous amount of time cultivating friendships a la Sims 2. Having friends of course helps speed along promotions, but they’re not essential. In Sims 3 I can be a loner and the Leader of the Free World, as long as I level my skills appropriately, which is something we’ll talk about later. In addition, the developers have also wisely toned down how often your Sim needs replenishing. But while you won’t have to spend half the game sending your Sim to the bathroom, I still found it annoying.
Lucky for me, the game also has a new system to fulfil your Sim’s wishes, be they buying something expensive or learning to fish. The system rewards you with points which you can spend toward special perks. One of these perks is a steel bladder so that you can almost entirely avoid trips to the bathroom. In fact, most of these perks feel like sanctioned cheats. More expensive perks let you teleport, find treasures, instantly modify your body (in case you change your mind about the size of your Sim’s nose), and even get a food replicator. The two nods to Star Trek made me really quite happy. Perks represent one of two main rewards in the game. The other? Well, my friends, that is cold, hard simoleans.
And money is one of my long-term issues with the game since most gameplay hinges on cash. I advanced two Sims to level 10 of their career tracks. At the start of each work day, both my Leader of the Free World (a level 10 Politician) and my International Super Spy (a level 10 Law Enforcement Special Agent) change into their “work” outfits and then head to the same building they’ve been going to since they were a Podium Pusher (level 1 Politician) and Snitch (level 1 Law Enforcer), respectively. It’s incredibly anticlimactic to work your way to the top of one’s career track only to learn that the biggest perk of being Leader of the Free World is that you wear a suit that looks stolen from a blind pimp, get a white limo that could’ve been owned by this aforementioned pimp, and receive a slightly higher pay bracket. My Super Spy fared slightly better by netting me a special warrant to raid the criminal warehouse, which results in extra cash. Some careers have slightly more interesting perks. The culinary track, for example, rewards you with a special fridge so that food never goes bad. Being a rock star will cause Sims to freak out around you (and you can also make good money by signing autographs to boot). But none of this changes the basic mechanics of your work. If you’re a rock star you still play concerts, if you’re a cop then you visit the same building whether you’re a detective or a super-duper forensic specialist. And while your Sim works the only things you can do is stare at the outside of the building and chose from a drop-down menu on how your Sim will approach that work day. It all begins to feel quite shallow.
The part of the game that feels more like work than this work is in levelling your skills, since skills are crucial to getting one promoted and then opening up the slew of delightful and odd features of the game. Some skills directly affect your job performance, such as charisma or athleticism, and others such as cooking allow you to keep your Sim well fed. When levelled all the way, most skills also give you the odd little perk. A master repair skill will allow you to fix appliances so they never break nor need cleaning. A master cooking skill allows you to buy the recipe for Ambrosia, which among other things can resurrect the dead. Perks given by skill tracks are in my opinion far more interesting than those of a profession. And since levelling creativity can help one earn a nice living (by painting or writing novels, say), I’d be more inclined to level my skill rather than my career track proper. And you almost need to do that if focusing on a handful of useful, interesting skills for your Sim.
The Sims is a game with an incredible quantity of activities, though most lack the depth to hold my interest very long. You can have relationships (gay and hetero), raise kids, get married, divorce, but despite the much broader types of social interactions things also grow stale after a while, which brings me back to money. Advancing your Sim enough to make decent money without resorting to cheats is really pretty easy. What’s harder is finding things to spend it on since the game gives a weak selection of objects. Building on the success of all the extra content available for Sims 2, EA has created a robust online environment where players can share user-created stuff, although it’s apparent that EA would much rather have you spend real money on new, sanctioned objects for the game. So even though my Chase family has hundreds of thousands of simoleans, I am a poor game reviewer. Thus, I’d rather spend my extracurricular cash on XBox Live Points or iTunes credits, not some simulation goods so I can buy a new couch for my Sim to spend his hard-earned simoleans on (see the irony?).
This is the part of the game where after 1582 words I sum it all up for you, but this is a game that defies summation. The game isn’t merely a sum of its parts. The game is its parts. It’s like having a super-duper fish tank to fiddle and toy with. Whether it provides hours of entertainment or seems like a silly way to pass time is really a question of temperament. When I first got the game I played for hours and hours. A week later I stopped playing and didn’t play again until I sat to write this review. Once I picked it up again I quickly lost three hours making additions to my Sims house and then redecorating it. I’m not really sure if that says something about me or the game. The good thing: if you’ve read through this review then you’ve probably already played some version of the Sims. Like I said, if you like the franchise then you’ll like this, too. It’s more of the same, only more seamless and perhaps better?
