Christopher Thurman

I finally got a chance to play my girls favorite game, The Sims 3. She has been addicted to playing The Sims since the first one and I was able to to play the third iteration of the series. Granted I was little surprised about how much they put in there or did not put in there because they plan to release expansion packs. I also can see how the company continues to make money buy having people buy the expansion packs in order to get the full experience. There are alot of people angry on different forums because of this reason. They have to be use to the fact that they could see what is going on when their sim is dating, working, attending school, having a vacation and having different hobbies.

Talking about just the game, I thought I would like to mention that this is the first sim that I have ever played. My reason for saying is that I can not comment on the differences between this game and the other sim games. What I will say is that the character customization is very detailed. They give you several different options to choose from based on looks, clothes and personality. When it comes to the personality the choice is not as simple as choose one and that is what your character will act like. There are about five different personality traits that will define your characters actions and there is a list of about 30 to choose from. Even then Maxis gave people what choice out of 5 will be their main motivation. A ultimate dream  so to speak for that sim.

The UI is very easy and simple to understand. I was able to find everything except one thing. The family inventory, for some reason these set of items is not with the regular inventory it is only available in buy mode. Each category has a common picture for the items that it represents. The buttons are also large enough so that they can be easy read from a distance just in case you are playing it on a television screen and not your computer monitor in front of you. I did not even have to use the keyboard at all. I was able to do all that I needed with just the mouse.

The point of the game is not only just to live, but live the way that you want to live. There are so many different choices to make each day is different from the one before it in the sims world. I know that testing for this game must have been some type of nightmare with all this customization.

The game soundtrack is classical with some sim gibberish. The music of the game went along with it nicely. For the most part it was upbeat, however if something bad happened like a burglary, repo or fire the music would change to a sad tone.

The game was fun and I did enjoy playing it. I can’t wait until playing it with some of those expansion, because without them there is a  feeling as something is missing.