| The Sims 3 (PC/Mac DVD) |  | From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: £39.99
Buy Used: £14.99
as of 5/9/2010 02:43 CDT details
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Seller: zoverstocks
Rating:  378 reviews
Sales Rank: 51
Platforms: Windows XP, Mac OS X
Genre: life-simulation-games
Media: CD-ROM
Discs: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Operating System: Mac OS X
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: SIMS3PC
EAN: 5030930060879
ASIN: B0015YDH6O
Release Date: June 5, 2009
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Step into the world of the Sims with the Sims 3 and take a look around this latest version of the hit game! With so many more customisable and controllable features, the Sims 3 offers total freedom! |
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Product Description
The game that first opened up the world of video games to a wider audience is back, going beyond being just a virtual dollhouse to a complete interactive neighbourhood. The basic concept is still the same though, as you create your own computerised family and help (or hinder) them in achieving their lifetime dreams.
Instead of just dealing with one house at a time though, your whole sims town is part of one continuous map, with neighbours going about their business independently. Likewise your own family can explore at will and interact with any and all buildings and people.
Once fully grown a sim can have up to 60 personality traits - from loner to flirt - all of which you can influence via their environment and the people they interact with. However you want to play and whatever you want to do it's easier than ever to create your own virtual soap opera. - New Seamless, Open Neighbourhood - Explore the Neighbourhood Freely: See the sights with your Sims! The new seamless neighbourhood architecture allows your Sims to roam freely around the neighbourhood and visit their loved one and friends or foes. Discovering other Sims homes and families, traveling around to new locations like City Hall or the local park will create a whole new way of life for your Sims.
- New Create A Sim - Create Any Sim You Can Imagine: In addition to the open, living neighbourhood, the all-new Create-a-Sim interface will feature easy-to-use design tools that allow you to make truly detailed Sims that are more realistic than ever. Create-a-Sim gives you the incredible freedom to customise just about any Sim you can imagine.
- New Realistic Personalities - Every Sim Is A Unique Person, With A Distinct Personality: With the innovative and proprietary Realistic Personality System in The Sims 3, you can attribute each character with five distinct personality traits, helping shape yo
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 378
 The Sims 3 is a huge step up from The Sims 2 June 14, 2009
Olivia Stanley (UK)
254 out of 265 found this review helpful
I have played on the Sims 2 for many years and own all the expansion packs and most of the stuff packs. However, a few months before The Sims 3 came out, I began to feel bored of the Sims 2 as I eagerly awaited the Sims 3. I constantly read information about the upcoming game, so much that my expectations were extremely high! I was concerned as my computer did not meet the minimum requirements, but there was no need for me to worry.
The game works perfectly and is giving me hours of enjoyment. The game automatically chose low graphics settings, although if I had not checked the options tab, I would have assumed they were on high. The graphics are incredible and 100 times better than they were on The Sims 2.
The features are also amazing. The create-a-style tool means that you can literally create any colour on any design for any object. If you wanted, you could have a pink heart bath tub and matching toilet. You can literally make any object look exactly how you want it and make any other object match it percectly.
Create-a-sim has also been improved. You can use create-a-style on clothes which means you could make your sims slippers match their pyjamas! You now choose the shoes separately for each outfit and you can easily adjust each body feature to create a really lifelike self sim.
You can also now select traits for your sim. These have replaced personality points and have a big effect on the life on your sim. If you choose to make your sim a 'kleptomaniac' for example, your sim would 'accidently' take another sims objects.
Another great improvement is the fact that your sim can now have their baby at the hospital. This is a great addition to the game and makes pregnancy much more exciting.
Overall, this is an amazing game and I would recommend it to anyone, even if you haven't enjoyed the sims in the past.
Outstanding Upgrade from The Sims 2 June 11, 2009
Dismal Angel (Scotland)
165 out of 180 found this review helpful
It was years in the making, and finally, here it is. Some fans may be disappointed by the lack of objects, the lack of clothing, hairstyles, and limitations of career paths, but they are those who are finding themselves jumping into the new version of The Sims after having been exposed to the previous version and it's immense amount of Expansion Packs.
CREATE-A-SIM
Creating a sim gives you the option to not only tweak skintones (from six different samples, you can use a slider to select from different tones rather than the four tones from the previous game) and facial features far more advanced than the previous version (adding in beauty marks, or freckles), but body type, skinny, fat, lean or muscular (unfortunately though you can't tweak the hip, thigh, waist and bust size of your sims though I would have liked to have seen that implemented).
Hairstyles are limited, however, you have an advanced system that lets you alter the colours of hair from root to tip, so your sim can have hair colour as crazy as vivid postbox red with electric blue tips, lime green highlights, and white roots (I wouldn't recommend it, but you catch my drift). You can even save your own hair colour creations for future use so you don't have to re-pick each colour for another sim.
The Sims clothing, again is limited, but you can mix and match outfits, and add your own patterns and colour the patterns much like with the hair - you can make a colour darker, or lighter, you can change the texture of the fabrics. More importantly, much to fans delight, the Sims have SHOES! No longer do Sims have to wear flipflops with every decent pair of jeans, or have to wear ugly pumps with dresses. You get to choose the shoes, and get to alter the colour and pattern of those too! And incredibly, with the accessory system, you can even impliment socks, stockings and tights to the overall look!
Your sim can be more unique looking than ever with several make-up styles which just like hair and clothing, you can change the colours of by sliders, and palettes rather than just being able to choose from a few set styles.
BUILD MODE:
Build mode is just as advanced as Create-A-Sim. The interface is far more user-friendly than the previous versions, making it easier to find exactly what you're looking for. There aren't very many window/door styles to choose from, however they are ALL recolourable, making it very easy to mix and match them in a pinch with a little work. You can even save the colours and textures for future use. Wallpapers and floors are JUST as designable as almost everything else in the game, you can change the textures of paint, wallpapers, siding, and bricks, carpets, tiles; this tool is even so powerful it will let you change the colours of each individual board in your hardwood floor!
The stairs we were limited to (modular and base) are now an intertwined setting that come with the option of no railing and a deletable/recolourable wall. You can actually have floating stairs now on every stair type regardless, you can also add on any of the available rails to any stairtype regardless if they match or not. With the base game itself, the stairs were NOT redesignable (nor were the railings and fences), however, a patch that is free from the site (that is an absolute must) does upgrade your game to allowing for recolourable foundations, fences and stairs.
With the game patch from the official site, you will also find that now you can implement basements into the game (this patch is essential for the "World Adventures" expansion pack). Previously, basements were only achievable by cheating and digging into a foundation but now you can have basements of any size and angle on your lot, and even have multi-level basements - perfect for adding gamerooms, an office for your author sims, or perhaps an extra bedroom for the broody teenager who likes drab and dull walls with no light!
BUY MODE:
Buy mode comes with a very limited amount of items to choose from, with there being something like perhaps only five types of kitchen counter to choose from, six different sofa/chair types, and a few dining tables, etc. However, the fact that you can actually change all of these items with the re-colouring tool, and change the patterns, colours, textures, fabrics, gives you a large canvis to play with in terms of interior design. One thing that used to bug the hell out of me about both previous games (Sims and Sims 2) was being limited to furniture that just did SIMPLY not match anything - this is no longer the case, as you can force nearly every object (except the paintings, the plants and a few decoration items), into matching anything you want it to match.
Although the base game offers very little in the way of variety, you can buy points to use in the Sims Store at Electronic Art's official site to purchase additional items for the game (this can be costly though, so be warned). The site also offers occasional free items (usually around the holidays), which is nice for us more thrifty Simmers.
GAMEPLAY:
EA have worked ridiculously long and hard hours and taken into account every fans individual opinion into what would make the game more enjoyable and playable. They've tweaked the game so precisely that Sims are much more independent to the point where regardless of how much of a bad mood your sims are in, they will still go to work and not miss their carpool, and that Teenage sims will come home and eventually during the point of the day, take out their homework (kept in their inventory at all times), and begin to work on it at the nearest surface they can find - kitchen table, bedroom desk; they will even do it on community lots.
The game is so seamless now that your sim can go wandering across the town without waiting on ridiculous loading times. The game only loads the objects, textures and colours of whatever the game screen is focusing on so it allows for fast loading times and gives you the freedom to take your sims to a community lot whenever the mood takes you. You can let your sim go jogging and watch them pass by beautifully lit scenery - they can go visit their friends on different lots, and interact with their furniture (don't go into your neighbours fridges though, it's inappropriate and they don't like it!).
Rather than having the old skills to work on, your sims have a few new ones to work on, painting, guitar, writing, handiness, athleticism, gardening, and a few more I don't think I've even stumbled on yet!
Unlike in The Sims 2, you'll have the option of having a young adult this time around making your game a little longer than you'd be previously used to if you played the old game...unlike The Sims 2 though, you have an additional option in your game settings (under your options menu) to change the length of your sims lifespan from anything to short, to average to unbelievably epic. I personally keep mine set on epic as this gives your sim much more time to work on careers and friendships before needing to be concerned with family and settling down. It also gives you alot more time to play about with each and every family member than rushing through a sim's short life trying to have them complete all their goals before they snuff it, making room for their offspring. With making the game epic, you can also force your sims to have a birthday when ever it suits you rather than waiting for them to age (just buy them a cake), although some just prefer to wait until the sim's natural preset birthday comes along.
Every now and then you'll recieve an opportunity prompt (you can decline this) offering you the chance to participate in competitions within the community that will give you a chance to make some extra cash, increase your skills, or your friendships with neighbouring skills. These are really optional but an interesting feature to the game.
TRAITS:
Your sims don't have a choice of five personality types to choose from anymore. No longer are you stuck with a wealth obsessed sim, or a sim who is ultimately aspiring to woohoo with 25 different sims. Now your sims have traits, and each sim can have upto five of them (if you've done a successful enough job of keeping your Sim relatively happy, you'll get to pick the traits they have when an age transition occurs). They range from anything such as naturally artistic, to slobby, to neat and green-thumbed (yes, you can grow veggies in TS3, but you need to find the seeds first!) and with sixty different traits to choose from, you can really make a unique sim with a very special personality.
What I found interesting is that personality traits can affect the way your sims will behave autonominously; neurotic sims will wander around checking the stove frequently and will have unprompted freak outs while the neat sims will suffer mood points if a bed in the room they're standing is unmade and won't even consider using a toilet if it's dirty.
An interesting feature of Traits is that the traits actually affect your Sim's artistic work (painting or writing). You'll find that your computer wiz sims will often be more successful writing writing sci fi novels, and their paintings will be in a pixelated style while your Family-Orientated Sims might make more success of a children's book and paint more 'cartoonish' paintings. You can never quite predict what the outcome will be with the mixed traits so you always find something new and interesting.
There's also a couple of "surprise" traits that are mixed into the lot you can't pick - but they can only be achieved by certain means that I'll leave a surprise.
CAREERS:
Careers are much easier and yet more challenging to cope with in this game. While sims are at work, a small panel will appear in the top let hand side of the screen showing a list of activities they can participate in at work, working hard, business as usual? Suck up to the boss? If your sim is starting to stress out at work, you can select "take it easy" so that their fun motive begins to slowly refill and they begin to de-stress again. Or you can select them to talk with their colleagues, increasing relationships with them will help promotions. Opportunities arise every now and then which also give them a chance to progress up the career ladder a little by performing tasks. A surprising addition to the Sims 3 is that your Sim can also take on a part time career instead of working full time!
Apart from the pre-set careers, you can also chose to have your sim become a farmer, an artist, a musician (busking in the streets), or even a highly successful author. In particular, any sim can make a brilliant go of being a novelist with some work and the setup for being a novelist is quite genius as not only are there something like twelve different genres to dabble in, ranging from sci-fi, humour, drama, trashy, non-fiction, fiction and history, but there's also the added bonus of history, fantasy and masterpiece. The more skill you gain, the more genres your sim will unlock giving you the option to write more epic and engaging novels that will bring in a ton of money. Writing is especially profitable as after your novel has been completed you will recieve six royalty cheques on a weekly basis (on a Sunday) for the novels written (which can mount up if you have a few novels written within a week span). Another brilliant feature of being an author is that your Sim can write anywhere - a laptop has been introduced into the game that your sim can carry at all times and can take out anywhere and write (good for the sim who gets stir crazy, but still has to finish that novel to bring some cash in quick!).
Painting isn't as adaptable as the writing skill is, however, even with no artistic skill whatsoever, your sim can still choose from three sizes of canvas to work with (as mentioned way above, the sim's traits will affect their artwork), and the brilliance of this is that all three sizes can be removed from the easel and placed upon the walls (you can even click it and give it a frame and name the work!). The artwork you click and sell you'll be surprised to know sometimes miraculously ends up on the walls at the art gallery complete with your Sim's name on it and the name of the painting (if you gave it one!). The easel, much like the laptop mentioned, can be taken anywhere and placed down anywhere - but if you don't want to go around carrying that you can also have your sims memorise a scene which can come in handy if you see some scenery you think would be worth putting on canvas.
Farming can be profitable, but also incredibly hard work and very long and tedious for your sim. If you have a large farm you'll find your sim can be out in the garden from 5am til 10pm and still be only half done. Your sim can find seeds scattered everywhere in Sunset Valley and Riverview, but failing this, buying veggies from the supermarket and planting them is also an effective way of starting your own crop. The more gardening skill your sim gains, the more you can plant and the more money you can make. There are many crops to choose from including: Tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, lettuce, garlic, potatoes, watermelon, grapes, apples and limes. There's also a few 'special' seeds that let you grow surprising fruits and trees that can give extraordinary results from consumption of it's harvest.
Being an independent musician isn't always fully steady money, but it can be a pretty interesting way of bringing some extra cash in (especially if your Sim is in part-time employment. The music skill allows you to learn several pieces of music (and there are more to collect from the book store), that you can play for tips on the street or in the park. Often the tips aren't all that generous, but this is a great way for your teenaged sims to bring in some pocket money.
Another thing worth mentioning here is that your sims can actually become a partner of any business in the town by investing a good amount of simoleons into it. There are so many ways for your sim to make money that you'll find them swimming in cash far more easily than in it's predecessor
TOWN:
One of the things that used to bother people the most about the previous two games was that whenever your sim wanted to go somewhere, there was a lengthy loading time to and from the area and you were limited to that area only. With The Sims 3, this is no longer the case as the whole world is absolutely accessable at any time no matter where your sim may be. You can literally follow your sim on a walk from point A to point B from one end of the town to the other without needing loading screens or anything else. You can go into your Sims' neighbours homes (you do have to be invited first though!), and you can go into various community lots such as the public swimming pools and gym, the gallery, and the park.
The town itself is in storymode, and while your sims are living their lives, the neighbouring sims are ALSO living theirs seperately and behind the scenes and behind closed doors, couples are getting together, weddings are taking place, babies are being born and people are dying. This means that the town is evolving with you so that the same townies aren't going to be the same townies your Sim's grandkid's will be friends with; it'll be their descendents instead.
Apart from storymode, you'll find that the town almost ALWAYS has something going on; there's hotdog cooking competitions at the beach and the park, football games at the stadium, chessmatches at the park, movies every saturday, olympics occasionally make an appearance at the stadium, and randomly you might find protests occuring outside of city hall (no joke!). Additionally if you still find there isn't enough to do, you can pay for your sim to take classes at various venues (cooking classes at the restaurant, art classes at the high school).
OVERALL:
Some people expected a brand new game, but what we have here is a re-imagining of the old game, and it's much more complex and well thought out, and alot of those niggling stupid problems that got on your nerves in the previous one is no longer the case. [] for this [price] right now is WELL worth the money, you will definately get more gameplay out of this than you ever did with the old one; and to make it even better you can extend the life of your sims to short to ridiculously epic so you can finally get everything done and have your sim be the millionaires in their lifetime that you always aspired they would be.
Don't believe this will never live up to the Sims 2, it already has far surpassed it.
Addictive August 11, 2009
Miss Six (Scotland)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Be aware - if you buy this, be prepared to re-schedule every social appointment, warn your friends and family that you won't be interested in speaking to them for several weeks and never leave the house again when you could be playing Sims.
Yes, there's no expansion packs for it (yet), but it doesn't need any - there's so much to do in the basic game that you'll have plenty to get used to before you could even think of adding in anything else - I've been playing for a month solid and have yet to even raise a teenager as I've been too busy making my sims go fishing, do their gardening, become authors, painters, find rocks, bugs, seeds, learn recipes, fix their objects, go to work, go shopping, read books - it took several weeks of playing with just one sim before I got bored of that - on sims 2 I got bored of one sim after about three hours because after getting a job and trying to constantly keep their social need up, there wasn't much to do with just one... Now it's several weeks later and I'm getting to grips with the wonders of trying to raise and support a family (with no jobs - it proved to be too much of a challenge for now to raise kids AND for even one parent to work!) I'm looking forward to everything to come and the new challenges of teenagers and part-time jobs and mummy and daddy having to go back to work at some point.. - and I haven't even started on trying to get to grips with building houses or decorating, or customising the sims.. my only gripe is I don't have enough time to play!!
Instructions on how to get more clothes! June 8, 2009
Hannah Morgan (Swansea UK)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
I was a little unsure about buying it at first, but I'd have to say overall I am very pleased with it. I particularly like the design features and how busy the sims seem to get - there are a lot more situations and places to go available than there were in the Sims 2. It seems to run fine on my laptop, sometimes I have brief pauses but they are quickly dealt with and it takes a lot less time to load than the previous version.
Anyway, I noticed a couple of reviewers were unsure how to get more clothes for their Sims, so I thought I'd write a short tutorial about it in the hope that people find it useful.
Unlike the Sims 2, extra outfits are free and you can't buy them from the shops. To get more outfits you need to buy a cupboard or wardrobe, then click on it and select 'plan new outfit'. This will take you to a clothing design screen where you can play to your heart's content. To make extra outfits, select the type of outfit you want (e.g. everyday, formal etc.), then on the clothing panel click on the plus sign (on the left hand side) to make a new outfit, which will be given the name 'outfit 2'. I recommend making full use of the wonderful paint pallet tool to edit the fabric/pattern/colour of your creations. Once you've finished, return to the game then click on the Sim and select 'change outfit', you should see a list of their lovely new clothes.
Hope that helps.
Fantastic Game June 7, 2009
J. L. Palmer
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
I bought the game on Friday and have been really impressed since. It took about 30 minutes to install which is a lot less than sims 2 did. I was a bit worried about whether it would play but it loaded up without any trouble and has worked since!
It is very different to 1 and 2 and It does take a bit to get used to. I really enjoyed making the sims though and there are endless jobs and houses to choose from. I loved the idea of no loading screens. It feels more real life than sims 2 with more realistic jobs and pregnancy and marriage is much more realistic.
I think it's a shame its getting bad reviews as people were warned about the minimum requirements. Dont buy this game if you cant use it on your computer.
Love this game- not a let down.
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