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Sims 3 Impressions
As some of you may know, I am a bit of a Sims fanaddict (I will trademark that phrase, one day). So when I had the opportunity to play the Sims 3 early, I pounced on it. What follows are my thoughts.
The Sims 3 is a beautiful game. No ifs, ands, or buts about it--it is simply gorgeous. You can really tell the amount of spit and polish that Maxis put into their codebase this time around as the Sims 3 can render the entire game neighborhood (ocean, forests, and all) and the game is snappier than the Sims 2 was rendering a single lot. Given that other households are all running at the same time, and that sims are moving about in taxis, riding bicycles, and getting into barfights--that is quite impressive.
The depth of the simulation comes at a cost, however. Gone are the days of building a car in your sim's garage, chroming it out (and adding pimp spinners) and blasting the stereo in front of that coffee shop you hate. Sims simply fade from view and appear in their cars this time around. While this is somewhat disappointing, it is certainly understandable, given that potentially dozens of sims are on the road simultaneously, and rendering door-opening animations for all those vehicles would be cost-prohibitive in regards to system resources.
As for the Sims themselves, I imagine you will be quite pleased with the character creator. The Sims look a little bit less plastic, and the ability to add muscle tone (which is a separate slider from body weight) in a realistic fashion was a nice touch. The creator has also been tweaked to the point to allow you to specify hair color in great detail, allowing separate dye jobs for roots, highlights, and tips (as well as base hair color). Once you see this in action, as well as the new "pattern" system in action, there is a definite moment of awe. The sims in the picture above, for instance, have wood textures on their clothing (the chair fabric was culled from the wallpaper in the background)--you can make socks out of bathroom tile, if you want.
While the new pattern system is impressive (and allows for a ridiculous amount of customization--matching your sim's shirt collar with one panel on the wallpaper is now entirely possible, as well as easy), it comes at a cost. The "Body Shop" tool from the Sims 2, that wonderful application that allowed for limitless additions to the Sims world is gone. The Sims 3 is a closed game, meaning no mod tools and Maxis will not support any such activities.
This is disappointing, given that there just isn't a lot of "stuff" in the Sims 3. The furniture selection is severely limited and, for some unidentifiable reason, there are no stained glass windows! How ever shall I build my imposing netherchurch with five dimensional octagulon spires without stained glass windows? The dearth of game assets also applies to hair. There is a blatantly miniscule range of hair-do's for men, though Maxis will sell you more in the newly established Sims Store. Cash-cow is apparently the Sims 3's official designation.
Given that modding was an important part of the previous Sims games, Maxis has attempted to replace the void it leaves through the use of minigames within Sims3, specifically, in the workplace. Your sims, now, do not simply go off to work and disappear for eight hours. Instead, you have a nifty little pull-down tab with which to direct their actions. Want the sim to work hard, goof off, or chat up their coworkers (which helps build relationships tremendously)? It is now entirely possible. "Opportunities" now replace the cards from the Sims 2. Your boss might ask you to read a book to get ahead or, more amusingly, your police officer sim might be asked to drop by the local middle school on his off day to threaten the children into lawful behavior. Sadly, this addition is probably the only thing that kept me playing for any length of time, given the scarcity of in-game objects.
The final nail in the coffin for me was the police--they are omni-goddamn-present. Police are everywhere. In the above image, yes that is a policeman responding to a burglar alarm before said burglar has the opportunity to even freak the hell out.
I wanted to try my hand at a household of less than reputable sims. I built a nice victorian style two-storey on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Rather pretty scenery. The family chats, enthuses about the new house, and then retires to bed. They are asleep for half an hour when the burglar breaks in through the front door.
After he is carted away by the police, my sims were understandably chatty, though also tired. So they decided to go to bed again, but the outbreak of a sudden fire prevented this.
To add insult to injury, one of my criminal sims reported to her first day of work the next morning and was promptly ARRESTED. I was willing to chalk this up as an exceedingly random event, until her brother-in-law was arrested the very next day. When the house caught fire, upon his release from jail, I promptly quit the game.
While the core game mechanics of the Sims 3 are solid, the game has an unfinished quality to it. It feels as though much of the standard game content was pulled from the game only to have it sold right back to us in increments. That sad fact, coupled with the lack of customization (gone are the days of being able to paint in Reno's tattoos for my FF7 household) means this is an iteration of the Sims franchise that I shall have no qualms about skipping. It is a shame, really, as there are some great ideas here--the bad ones just seem to overpower them, preventing this title from truly shining.
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