Hank Kingsley
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Get the game walkthrough guide for : The Sims 3 for PC. Absolutely all online walkthrough strategy guides are right here!
Californian file-sharing research company BigChampagne reckons The Sims 3 was pirated more than 180,000 times between 18th and 21st May. For all the changes, it's definitely The Sims. You'd never mistake it for anything else - the way the characters move, talk, wet themselves, their crazed pinging between joy and despair... You'll spend your time trying to increase their skills, their income and their relationships - tiny numbers slowly growing. This is no break with tradition, and yet some of the tiniest changes prove the most profound. Crucially, adjustment of the various happiness factors means your sims aren't trapped in quite so rapid a plunge towards misery and discomfort. They now have the time to make much more of the day than working, eating, sleeping and ablution. And even if cooking pancakes does still mysteriously take an hour, at least you can grab a taxi to work and turn up late.
Four hotdogs does not a successful party make. Which brings up the major change to the game - that it's now set in an open world, rather than every location being an isolated cell you teleport between. Wherever you go, you'll find other sims bimbling along, ready for a chat, scrap or impromptu game of chess. It's all a little too neat to feel truly like a living world - those sims remain very much simulations - but it allows for so much more anecdote-fuelling randomness. I also found it a useful way to indulge more sociopathic tendencies - a grumpy itch could be scratched by harassing some poor pensioner in the park, rather than upsetting an existing sim-relationship.
Of course, depending on how high you've set the autonomy option (on a scale of stand-around-usefully to repeatedly-order-pizza-even-though-the-fridge-is-fully-stocked), your sims might fall out anyway. Personality traits rather than arbitrary likes/dislikes define their behaviour - so a sim with the Mean-Spirited trait will be prone to insulting people for no reason, or writing poisonous invective on the internet to pass the time. Interestingly, picking a slew of negative traits doesn't trap a sim in the emotional cul-de-sac you might expect. It's always possible to charm another sim, or keep a lid on their public freak-outs - this is a forgiving game, the many options for mischief or cruelty there as optional entertainment rather than crippling handicaps. They're also there to better parody your friends and loved-ones, of course - tag a chum as insane or a kleptomaniac, wind 'em up and watch 'em go.
It is an incredibly hard game to become bored by. There's always some new torture to inflict, some new place to visit, someone new to pester or romance. And yet, it is still very much The Sims, only now heaving with extra optional toys. For all the improvements - primarily the relaxation of the pressures upon your sims, so you don't have to plan every day around bathroom breaks anymore - it isn't going to convince anyone with a dislike of the previous games to relax their contempt. Even those that have embraced the series will find a few aspects unsatisfying, like all these places you can send your sims to, yet for the most part their actions there are hidden.
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Posted by on September 27, 2009
