Sims 3 Review
GRAPHICS: Very nice! The faces are real, expressive, and less cartoony. I made my bock heroine Zoe Haust as a young adult, and I'm very pleased with how she looks like the woman I imagined. Water is freaking awesome to look at, waves are realistic, and when the sun rises and sets you see shadows MOVE like in real life. Also, trees sway in the breeze, fire is complex looking, and lightbulbs give off either bright, dim, or as is light sources.
SOUND: Same as usual. Preset music channels could be a bit more diverse, but that is a problem for the game as a whole. Voices, on the other hand, are now customizable. You choose three main voices, then slide a bar from low frequency to high. It's nice to see a wide range of voice types. Good on Maxis for that
GAMEPLAY: New things to gameplay are keeping me interested. Open neighborhoods was a wonderful idea. So was the moodlet idea, which narrows down your needs (there is no more environment tab, for instance). It lets me focus more on achieving goals (or wishes as they are now). HUGE problem though? the open neighborhoods has an issue....you can only play from one family in one neighborhood. You can play another family in one "save game", but it requires you to change the head family. If you do this, any saved wishes are deleted from this 4-square box for the head family. It's annoying. REALLY poorly thought out by the development team. It's the reason I will not be buying any expansions. The game is heavily flawed in the planning, even as moving freely and quickly is a blessing.
Lists:
Good!
- expressions of sims
- voices
- freedom of movement from home to work and other places
- color range for clothes--including fabrics and patterns
- social interactions unique to types of sims ie friendly, flirty, etc, all have their own unique interactions for that sim only.
- create a style!--easy decorating. So very fun to play with
- Hair customization...cool colors. And a lot of realism to it.
- Sims 3 store--EA this makes me hate you all. On day one, even before, there were things to BUY EXTRA.. Why weren't they in the game? To make more money off of us. This game was FIFTY DOLLARS USD. Fifty. And you want us to buy virtual items.....no, I'm sorry, that's greedy of them. I feel cheated that a lot of content looks like it will come at a price. This isn't WoW, EA, you do not provide anything other than a game. There are no in game mods or huge support services. NO. What is worse is that there is no bodyshop..how will anyone create content without the built in method to edit....so apparently we're having thw best bit of the game removed out of greed. I'm considering asking Lala for her extra base game of Sims 2....
- Lack of content sent with the game than even Sims 1. That is sad. I had to make my Jack O'Neill (yes, I have a SG-1 family...I even added Skaara Sha're from my fic Multiplicity. Minus her being orphaned O_o) wear a hat like in the few eps he's in civvies so he'd look like Jack. His hair is crappy otherwise.