Product Description

The Sims 3 lets you immerse truly unique Sims in an open, living neighborhood just outside their door! The freedom of The Sims 3 will inspire you with endless possibilities and amuse you with unexpected moments of surprise and mischief. Your Sims can roam throughout their neighborhood, visit neighbors’ homes, and explore the surroundings. They can stroll downtown to hang out with friends, meet someone new at the park, or run into colleagues on the street. If your Sims are in the right place at the right time, who knows what might happen?! New easy-to-use design tools allow for unlimited customization to make truly individual Sims. Determine your Sims’ shape and size, from thin to full-figured to muscular—and everything in between! Choose your Sims’ facial features, their exact skin tone, hair eye shape and color and select their clothing and accessories. Create realistic Sims with distinctive personalities. Select from dozens of personality traits and combine them in fun ways. The combination of traits you choose—brave, artistic, loner, perfectionist, klepto, romantic, clumsy, paranoid, and much, much more—help shape the behavior of your Sims and how they interact with other Sims. Your Sims can now rise above their basic set of every day needs. They are complex individuals with unique personalities. Build your dream house or design the ultimate home. Customize everything from floors to flowers, shirts to sofas, wallpaper to window shades. It’s fun and easy to change colors and patterns giving you endless personalization options. Or you can populate your Sims’ neighborhood with pre-designed buildings and furnishings. Which of your Sims will live in high-end mansions, cool bachelor pads, ultimate dream homes or low-cost cottages?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #89 in Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Model: 15390
• Released on: 2009-06-02
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .40 pounds

Features

• New Seamless, Open NeighborhoodExplore the neighborhood freely.
• New Create A Sim Create any Sim you can imagine.
• New Realistic PersonalitiesEvery Sim is a unique person, with a distinct personality.
• New Unlimited CustomizationEveryone can customize everything!
• The freedom of The Sims 3 will inspire you with endless possibilities and amuse you with unexpected moments of surprise and mischief.

Amazon.com Product Description
The freedom of The Sims 3 will inspire you with endless creative possibilities and amuse you with unexpected moments of surprise and mischief. Create millions of unique Sims and control their lives. Customize their appearances and personalities. Build their homes - design everything from exquisitely furnished dream homes to quaint cottages. Then, send your Sims out to explore their ever-changing neighborhood and to meet other Sims in the town center. With all-new quick challenges and rewarding game play, The Sims 3 gives you the freedom to choose whether (or not) to fulfill your Sims' destinies and make their wishes come true.

Create like never before.

New seamless neighborhoods. View larger.

New create a Sim and personalities. View larger.

Extreme home customization. View larger.

Key Game Features:

• New Seamless, Living Neighborhood
• Explore the ever-changing neighborhood—and take your Sims to meet friends in the park, go on a date at the bistro, visit neighbors’ homes, converse with less-than-savory characters in the graveyard and more. Who knows what might happen?
• Admire the natural beauty of the beach, the mountains, and more.
• New Create a Sim Functionality
• Create any Sim you can imagine with easy-to-use design tools that allow for unlimited customization of facial features, hair color, eye color, and more.
• Fine tune your Sims’ body shape from thin to curvy to muscular.
• New Personality Traits
• Create over a million different personalities with traits such as evil, insane, kleptomaniac, romantic, and more.
• Influence the behaviors of your Sims with the traits you’ve chosen. Will you create a neurotic romantic with a heart of gold, or a geeky super-genius with an evil streak?
• New Unlimited Customization
• Everyone can customize everything—design and build your dream house and decorate it to fit your Sims’ personalities.
• Customize everything from floors to décor, shirts to sofas, wallpaper to window shades.
• New Gameplay That’s Rewarding and Quick
• Face short and long-term challenges and reap the rewards.
• Your Sims can pursue random opportunities to get fast cash, get ahead, get even, and more.
• Choose whether, or not, to fulfill your Sims’ destinies by making their wishes come true. Will your Sims be thieves, rock stars, world leaders? The choice is yours.
• Get Connected and Share Your Creations with The Sims 3 Online Community
• Get free bonus content—download Sims, outfits, furnishings, houses and more.
• Create and Share Sims, houses, movies and more with anyone.
• Join The Sims 3 community to share ideas with fans of The Sims from around the world.

System Requirements:

Customer Reviews

Fun for some, diappointing for others.
There are many different Sims players out there buying this game from years of playing The Sims 2, and I think some of them will be impressed with The Sims 3, while others disappointed.
Note: This review is for the base game only, and does not include any of the expansion packs.

Create-A-Sim Players: 4/5
If you have an juiced up computer, the graphics are amazing. The customization you can give a sim is also very rewarding; you can now color customize the different parts of a sim's outfit with virtually any color, and the pattern system they've created only increases the amount of customization you can give a sim's clothing. A sim's hair coloration is now broken up into four parts, all of which can be set to any color you wish. The only disadvantage I found is that there doesn't seem to be as many ways to customize the face as there had been in Sims 2; there are some new, different ways though.

House Building Players: 5/5
Because of the new pattern system in the game, building houses now has a new level of customization, making it easier to customize a house's color and texture to your liking. Another nice thing is that furniture can now be placed at angles, so you no longer have to worry about awkward placement of objects near angled walls. Just keep in mind that since this is the first game, with no expansions made yet, there is a limited amount of furniture you can use. Also, if you're only interested in building houses, its not as easy as simply clicking on the lot you wish to build, once the game starts; you actually need to be playing your saved household and then exit your household for "Edit Town," where you can then select a lot to build on.

Neighborhood Building Players: 1/5
If you were big on building neighborhoods in Sims 2, you're going to very, very disappointed. You can no longer make your own neighborhoods; you are stuck with customizing Sunset Valley (the only neighborhood that comes with the game) or downloading another neighborhood from The Sims 3 website. There are no pre-made empty neighborhoods you can create and then customize and populate. Needless to say, there is no compatibility with SimCity 4 neighborhoods either. You're stuck with Sunset Valley, and that's that.

Movie/Story Players: 5/5
If you're into making movies or stories there doesn't seem to be big difference between Sims 2. Photo capture now seems to be similar to what the "Print Screen" button does on your keyboard. The quality is exactly what you see on the screen, and the size of the image is as big as your resolution for the game. Video capture options seem almost identical to Sims 2. And like Sims 2, the controls are still difficult to deal with if you're trying to make smooth transitions. Also, there is no in-game Storytelling option anymore, storytelling is mostly focused online at The Sims 3 website, where there are some neat tools you can use for editing.

Single Family Players: 4/5
If you liked only playing one household in Sims 2 (like if you were into the Legacy Challenge) Sims 3 makes it even more interesting and more realistic with the fact that the entire neighborhood ages around your sim; no more childhood friends always being children, even when your sims have become adults; no more grandchildren out-aging their grandparents because they happen to be on different lots. And not only that, but you can now explore the rest of the world, expanding the possibilities for your sims.

Multi-Family/God Players: 2/5
If you liked jumping between many different houses and creating a complex story between many different households, you may be in for a big disappointment with Sims 3. You've ultimately been demoted from being god. You can no longer save individual households for later. Once you leave a household the sims there become NPCs (characters for the computer to control) and continue on their own lives and own story without your help. This may sound odd but Sims 3 is more of a game, and less of a device to tell a huge complex story.

The Sims 2 Console Players: 5/5
For people who loved The Sims 2 for PlayStation 2, X-Box, and GameCube, The Sims 3 plays very similar to those. In fact, The Sims 3 seems like a souped up version of the console Sims 2. For people who hated The Sims 2 console games, well . . . you may not like how The Sims 3 plays.


You're liking of The Sims 3 is really going to depend on what you did and enjoyed in The Sims 2. And sadly, I have to say this game isn't for everyone who loved The Sims 2.


New Players: 3/5 - 5/5
For players who haven't played the Sims games before, from my experience, Sims has either been a hit or miss deal. You either like it or you don't. And it's hard to say whether or not you'll like it until you give it a try. Sims can be a very repetitive game, yet a very addicting game. It all depends on what entertains you. As I've said above, Sims is a very creative game, and that alone can be entertaining for hours. The customization in the game is probably one of the game's greatest assets. As far as game-play is concerned, part of the game is about making your own story, but there are also objectives ("opportunities" and "wishes") that help make the game challenging and entertaining if you're more goal-oriented. But keep in mind, if you're looking for a game with a solid plot and an ending, this isn't the game for you. Sims is a game that never ends. It's a simulation game of life, and The Sims is never short on life; even if you kill off everyone in your neighborhood, you can simply create more.
[This part wasn't originally in the review, but I figured since I was focusing on people who were familiar with The Sims 2, I decided to add this.]

A Sims Type Game
If you are going into Sims 3 thinking of it as an improved Sims 2 you will be disappointed.

The Sims 3 is a "Sims Type Game". It's like the previous Sim games but not quite. Sims 2 was about creating your own storyline. Sims 3 is about rolling with the punches. The game will change things in the neighborhood at random. People will die, move out, have children...the neighborhood is constantly changing. Like someone else said, the game is rather like an RPG. If you liked having complete control like in Sims 2 then you may not like this game.

Also, if you did not know. With Story Progression mode on Sims will leave town. Meaning they will disappear. Not only townies, your custom made Sims can be randomly deleted. It is not a glitch. It is an actual feature of the game. It's difficult to understand why EA thought having Sims randomly deleted was a good idea, but it's there.

There is an option to turn off Story Progression which is supposed to stop life changing events. Unfortunately this button does not work. Story Progression being such an important part of Sims 3, you have to wonder how this got by EA quality control. To me this is unexcusable. Fans have every right to be angry about this. Even before the game released this was a widely known problem. Everybody expects bugs, but for an important feature of the game to outright not work is ridiculous.

Next, the controls. Sims 3 controls: Clumsy. In Sims 2 the controls are simple, friendly, and easy to use. Sims 3 controls are strangely clunky and makes you jump through alot of hoops for something as simple as switching families. Get ready to learn the new and sometimes confusing interface.

Onto the Sims looks. Even after watching all of the promotional videos I did not realize the Sims 3 Sims were quite so chubby. There are ways to slim down the face in CAS but once you actually start playing them they look chubby again. After many hours of playing I have actually grown accustomed to their looks so it doesn't bother me as much now. If looks are very important to you this maybe a dealbreaker.

The Camera. Camera movement is not as smooth as in TS2. It's very touchy and jumpy. After getting used to the controls I'm getting better at using it but at the same time it lacks the smoothness of Sims 2. This is not because of my computer. My computer way exceeds the minimum requirements for Sims 3. The game itself is just plain laggy. Some advice for those frustrated with the right click screen drag, go into options and enable edge scrolling this will alleviate some of your frustration.

Onto the Pros!
The seamless neighborhood is gorgeous. This is one thing EA got right. I almost never left home in TS2. In TS3 going into town is one of my favorite things about the game. The scenery is beautiful. Go to the beach and lookout onto the water, it's moving, glimmering, and looks so alive.
I built my Sim home right next to a waterfall. Beautiful!

Traits system. I really enjoy the traits system. You can now make truly unique personalities. The little personality quirks of my Sims make me smile. Like if you have a neurotic Sim, they will want to check the sink constantly to make sure it's not dirty. A loner Sim will become upset at being around other Sims. An insane Sim will talk to himself.

Color Options. I love being able to give my Sims crazy colored hair and eyes. You can also recolor almost anything.

Improved AI. It's not obvious, but I do think the Sims are more intelligent in Sims 3. They are better at doing things by themselves. Frustratingly they still do the footstomp when their route is blocked.

Overall it's an entertaining game similar to The Sims games. But I am disappointed by the number of technical issues the game has. My advice to Sim fans is DO NOT uninstall Sims 2. I'm very glad I did not uninstall TS2. There are things TS2 still does better. It's much simpler and easier to play. I will be going back and forth between TS2 and TS3, enjoying the similarities and the differences.

EDIT: Hi I just wanted stress one thing. What EA did with The Sims 3 was take away creative control from the player. This is what made so many fans angry. I'm sure the anger will simmer down over time but the overall disappointment and missed potential will remain. The Sims 2 was about playing GOD. It is an integral part of what made The Sims so successful and loved. For EA to have taken that away from the player is a blow to a large group of The Sims fanbase. Now, it's still possible they will add more controls in future expansion packs so I'm not giving up on this game yet. It has a lot of potential and I would like EA to use it to it's fullest.

A daring installment, but hits as many misses as it does hits.
I am a huge sims fan, and have been since the first game hit the shelves. Since then, I have bought every new expansion pack, and moved on to the next installment when it came.

I wish I could say I was as impressed by The Sims 3 as I was with its predecessor. However, while there are wonderful new additions, they are slightly hampered down by some poor choices on EA's part.

A few of the pro's in this game are of course the seamless neighborhood, which is more immersive, and makes for a interesting change from the constant loading screens.

The personality traits add a whole new level of richness to sim's personalities.

The improved create a sim make personalization so much easier and intuitive than before.

The doll house aspects of making your sim eat, pee, shower, and sleep has been replaced by more intelligent sims.

However, even with all this improvements, there are flaws.

You are only given four save slots, which means you can only follow a maximum of four families. While this is nice as it allows you to have multiple versions of a nhood, it is extremely limiting, and it doesnt seem like maxis has plans right now to add more.

You no longer get to place lots, for you are stuck with the lots included, which can not be expanded or deleted.

The revamped build/buy mode looks pretty, but its counter intuitive. its pictoral version often clumps catagories closely together, meaning you want to go to windows, but accidently click walls or roofs, and have to navigate back to click on the window again.

The graphics in general are not a major overhaul of the previous installment. though the nhood is more complicated and visual, you are usually more focused on your houses and sims to be bothered with it. sims are more detailed, but they now seem out of place as the objects and houses themselves are not dramatically different looking.

coupled with the massive cpu drain that is the game even on good computers *after promising the game would run well on older computers*, the sims 3 has its faults, but shines in other areas.

EA however has alot they need to rethink in the coming expanison to make the game truly shine.