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The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack
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| List Price: | $39.99 |
| Price: | $36.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
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Average customer review:
Product Description
Sims 3 World Expansion Pack PC
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #156 in Video Games
- Brand: Electronic Arts
- Model: 15393
- Released on: 2009-11-17
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platforms: Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista
- Format: DVD-ROM
- Dimensions: .20 pounds
Features
- Enjoy a unique all-star soundtrack of songs, especially recorded in Simlish for the expansion.
- Accept challenges, find treasures, discover the dangers lurking in hidden caves and more as you and your sims explore famous landmarks in China, Egypt, and France.
- Learn new skills like photography, martial arts and nectar making (a favorite sim beverage) as your sim pursues new opportunities.
- Meet new Sims from exotic locations and share their cultures.
- Get $10 worth of free SimPoints for use at The Sims 3 Store.
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Product Description
The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack* is the first expansion pack for the The Sims 3. Playable both on PCs and Macs, it focuses on a range of travel opportunities available to your sims, which allow for everything from pleasant family vacations, all the way to an adventure-filled, possibly even dangerous Indiana Jones like adventures. Along the way your sims can accumulate unique skills and abilities, learn about new cultures, enjoy a unique soundtrack of real songs recorded in Simlish and get $10 worth of free SimPoints for use at The Sims 3 Store.
Like every The Sims game, the story behind the World Adventures Expansion is whatever you want to make of it, but in this case within the realm of international travel. And why not, since what sim doesn't need a vacation. Players choose from environments set Egypt, France or China, with the possibility of others via download. Similarly, gameplay follows the same well-worn path familiar to veteranThe Sims players, and easy to pick up for those coming to the franchise for the first time. Players create their sims as they like, customizing everything from physical characteristics, all the way down to personality traits, habits, etc. They can mix with other sims, build relationships, start families and even die. Because this expansion is based around travel, your sims can also discover rich, new cultures, develop brand-new skills and abilities and explore and adventure through realistic environments. New skills related to these destinations include photography, martial arts, and nectar making (a sim beverage) among others. As part of of the exotic locales available, sims can get adventurous and explore the caves and tombs of Egypt and China. Here they will put their new adventure related abilities to work as they participate in Indiana Jones like adventures full of excitement and even danger, including some not-so friendly mummies and the Grim Reaper. Unique Simlish Soundtrack Just as with travel, every sim has his/her particular musical tastes. With that in mind the World Adventures Expansion Pack features an all-star soundtrack of real songs, recorded by the original artists in the sims native tongue of Simlish. These tracks include:
System Requirements:
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Customer Reviews
Not 100% what I had hoped for; but pretty dang close.
I own every single Sims game, and had owned all of the Sim City series as well. With that said, let's move on to the review of EA's latest product, The Sims 3: World Adventures. I had high anticipation because I am used to the massive amounts of new things we got with the Sims 1 & Sims 2 expansions, which were offered at much lower costs. However, do not let this deter you. While you may not get a ton of new items, you do get adventure as promised. The pros:
1. You do get to travel, and there are goals when you do so. I didn't care for the way the Sims 2: Bon Voyage, didn't really give you a goal. It was go to a new place, relax, stay for a huge amount of time and leave. World Adventures gives you goals, while allowing you to visit various places if you would like. And in time you can buy a vacation home and spend more time there. You have to build up your "visa" to have stays longer than 3 days in each location, and you do this by completing adventures. I had a great time wandering around the maze like tombs, and avoiding torching myself.
2. There are indeed a few more items, and they have country themes. In the past few games we have really only had Asian oriented items; I love decorating the house with flaming chandeliers like the ones seen in the tombs.
3. I have not found all of the new social interactions, but so far there have been about three.
4. Basements! Yes you heard right, you can actually have basements to your house now; not only that but you can build "tombs" under your home.
5. A few new traits and music tastes.
6. Your sim, when they learn a new song, may come home singing- which I find very cute.
Cons:
1. As with any EA game that just came out, there are glitches. The first time I started up, my sim was no where to be found. The plumbob was deformed and I couldn't preform any actions. I uninstalled it, the problem still remained. So I uninstalled the base game; that fixed that problem. Then I couldn't get skills or buy skill books. This was apparently a conflict between the new patch (that is required it seems.) and game mods and some custom content. I removed by mods and custom content; now the game runs like a charm.
2. The loading time is much longer than with The Sims 3 base game. I have plenty of memory, a new graphics card and plenty of RAM. I am above the required specs with everything, but only slightly. If you are working with the bare minimums or just a little above, it may run a little slower.
3. I have noticed (it may be my computer) that some of the graphics are not as clear, such as a blurry pixelation of my sims eye sockets.
4. Still no memories.
5. Some of the new features have been hard for me to find, such as the collection for photographs (which is a nice new bonus).
6. Toddlers & pregnant women cannot travel. I assume this is because it would be unsafe for them to be caught on fire, but it still stinks leaving them home.
7. Some people have been having a lot more problems, such as the game not loading, codes not working and games not saving. I have personally not had any of these problems.
I will update this as I continue to play; but so far the adventures have made getting the game worth it. I really enjoy having the goals and feeling like I'm achieving something for my sim.
And now the Sims franchise falls to EAs iron fist!
Like many others with The Sims Series... I have been a fan of The Sims since they first came out with "The Sims" and "The Sims 2" And I would expect that with such a money making franchise as The Sims, that EA would NOT do what they have been doing... But they did...
DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!!!! It will destroy anything you have done in The Sims 3 so far and is buggy beyond belief!
If you want to know how I truly feel... Then think about a time you got that feeling in the pit of your stomach, that made you feel sick because you had just been blatantly ripped off or betrayed... That's how I feel!
It is not a VACATION expansion... It is an ADVENTURES "add on" taking a fun non-linear game and making it into a console game where you actually have to go from point a to point b.
It is just downright inhuman what EA does with employees, and how it impacts the finished product.
They constantly lay off hard workers because they are afraid that if anyone works on a game for too long that they may try to leave and start their own company... So EA moves development teams in 6 week to 6 month shifts... Rotating them from project to project... This means that every time they "rotate" the new team has to somehow pick up where the old team left off, relearning and trying to figure out what was going on before the "rotation"... And this creates MAJOR ISSUES. EA also rushes things to release dates even against the development teams wishes to hold off release so they can make a more polished product... EA does not care! They are all about the almighty bottom dollar! So what you get is a half finished, problem causing game, that otherwise would have been wonderful.
Now, onto the MICRO-TRANSACTIONS!!! Not only do you pay for this overpriced, half finished game.... But you will also have to pay to "unlock" items and features that were otherwise already in the game, but hidden, because selling millions of The Sims 3 wasn't enough for EA, they now want to charge you $20 a pop of REAL WORLD MONEY to get 1000 "SIM POINTS" so you can have the matched sets and items and features that should have been in the game in the first place. You can see forum postings and reviews about the REAL COST of The Sims 3 here on amazon.com
This is the FIRST expansion... If you can even call it that, as I see it more as a step backwards. All The Sims games have had expansions that do, in fact, make the base game better and better... Like adding PETS, and a NIGHTLIFE, and actual SEASONS with rain and snow and so on and so forth... The base games also had a great deal of content to begin with, from tons of matched furniture to pools with slides and diving boards, hot tubs, and musical items that you could make your own Sim garage band with... Then enter the Sims 3 with NONE OF THAT STUFF!!!
Then enter The Sims 3 World Adventures, Still not adding anything other than a ONE TIME adventure for your chosen Sims... Yes ONE TIME! Still no vacation... Still no hot tubs... Still no diving boards... Still no pets... No seasons. I can say it was quite fun playing through the new expansion with one of my Sims... But here is one of the many problems... My old towns and Sims have been destroyed with the addition of this expansion... Where my huge town with tons of custom houses and Sims once stood are now blue property sized holes. If that wasn't bad enough... I create a new town and a new Sim household to go on ADVENTURES... I am having some fun exploring and collecting goodies, and enjoying the new themes and whatnot... Until I get bored and decide to try ADVENTURES with a different Sim... This part makes me very angry... Well more angry after losing my Sim town... I CANNOT DO ADVENTURES AGAIN! Yes that is right! Once you go through the tombs and discover everything with one Sim, any other Sims you try to do it with will not get the same bonuses and benefits as the first one! All the paths remain open and revealed, all the doors stay open, all the traps found and disabled, all the ONE TIME ITEMS do not return, including a required item called "Pengu's Axe"... On top of this is a disappearing inventory glitch where every now and then, items in your Sims "backpack" up and delete themselves!
Also, get used to seeing "Error Code 13" and "Error Code 16" when trying to save your games... When this happens, the save game is corrupted and everything you have done has just been destroyed, and you now have to go into the game save directory and HOPE that there is still a working backup copy you can restore with some less that user friendly editing.
I could go on and on about other glitches and bugs, and the fact they have Day One micro transactions on or before the release date of this expansion showing that they are intentionally leaving things out of the game just to make more cash off the people dumb enough to pony forth said cash.
So that means that only ONE SIM HOUSEHOLD and one Sim household ONLY can get the full experience of the adventures... Any others after that just walk through the already explored tombs with nothing to do and nothing that would be considered an actual "Adventure." So unless you want to constantly create whole new towns and start over again just to reset the Adventures... I say leave this game off your holiday gift list... At least until EA pulls their heads out of their donkeys and fixes the glaring issues with this game.
I am 27 years old, I build high end gaming computers, and I have only had to call tech support 7 times in my life... Once 10 years ago for Windows ME, and six times in the last six months! Each of those six times for separate EA games that either didn't work because of something in the game itself, or that relies on some sort of stable connection with ea servers, or was so flawed and buggy that it annoyed me to the point I actually broke down and called them.
As a video game fan, I would rather wait a longer time and PAY MORE for a better, fully polished and finished product, than to have some half done turd that needs a year worth of patches and editing to make even barely playable.
I cannot play The Sims 3 anymore because of this expansion and it's massive glitches and errors, and I am having serious thoughts about Buying ANYTHING from EA ever again!
Don't get it until it works
Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT buy this until they have the bugs worked out and it works. It might be a fun game if it would work properly but it doesn't.
I can not just save my game anymore, I have to "Save As" each time and then the game will still sometimes crash while saving. It also randomly crashes just during gameplay. I read on the official forum that this could be due to high FPS so I used my nifty Nvidia V-sync as suggested and nope, it still crashes away many, many times.
There are also reports of TONS of other bugs which I have been lucky enough to not have happen to me yet. Some people report their Sims completely vanishing or of an "evil twin" that shows up when they come back from visiting one of the 3 countries. They also have random spouses and children they never had before. The list goes on and on. Bad, stupid bugs here.
On the positive side, the destinations themselves are gorgeous. However, the adventuring you do there gets so repetitve and boring. I've only had this one day and am already thinking, "How many times do I have to explore tombs to look for stupid loot?"
