Customer Reviews
Very good game, but not great on iMacs.. - By: K. Jobes, 06 Mar 2010 
I originallly brought 'The Sims 3' to run on my Apple iMac (2.4GHz, 2GB RAM) & although I could play the game, it was slow even with the settings not on max. It was playable, but not great. I have now built my own Windows PC (3.2GHz quad core, 4GB RAM, 1GB of ATI Radeon graphics) & it runs beautifully. It may run better on a Mac Pro or a newer higher spec iMac.
The game is much bigger than The Sims 2, you can view your sims down town, visit neighbours, send your sims to hospital.. the possibilities are endless. When they go to work, they actuallly go to their place of work, unlike in The Sims 2. There are lots more interactions between the sims & more flexibility with the way they live.
They come across 'Opportunities' during their lives which set them a challlenge to earn extra money or rewards. They also have 'Lifetime Reward' points that they can spend on things like an iron bladder, fertility treatment, or other bits to make their lives easier. The sims settings are different too, you can now set their attributes such as 'excitable, good, evil, neat, clumsy, loves the outdoors, friendly, slob' etc. You also get to choose their favourite food, colour, music.. And in the create a sim you get to customize their clothes down to the colour of the stripes on their jumper or the colour of their socks. It's alll a lot more detailed, so you're not forced to choose a set outfit with horrid shoes.
The graphics are amazing, very realistic & good quality. The only problem I find is that you can only control one family in a neighbourhood.. This is quite limiting, because you then need to build a whole new neighbourhood to play as another family. I find this annoying as in the old sims, you could have several families living alongside each other alll in your control. Apart from this slight niggle, its a great game & I'm reallly looking forward to expanding the game with expansion packs!
Frustrating - By: J. P. Lowe, 04 Mar 2010 
There are positive elements to this game: you can place furniture at an angle, & you can give everything a pattern & a colour & make it match other things. You Sim now has little 'moodlets', that tell you what s/he is particularly responding to (to what end I am not ever entirely sure, as they never seem to influence anything, but they are sort of cool & bring you in to the charcater a little bit).
BUT - it has been said before, & it must be said again. The game is sold on a the premise of a living, seamless neighbourhood, your Sim able to interact with the world outside his or her cutaway floorplan & explore. Then several things hit you: 1) They have almost no time to do anything properly; 2) They have to get into taxis to go anywhere worthwhile, which is *just like* Sims 2; & 3)you can't follow them into buildings. It's so STUPID, insulting & immersion-breaking it's breathtaking. What game would you put up with that, straight out of the box, would not alllow you to interact with key world elements? As though in Falllout 3 you could stick to the roads & the wasteland, but once your character moved inside a building s/he would disappear & a little timer bar would come on in the top of your screen & another meter would tell you how much fun they were having. This would be spectacularly awful enough in any game, but ths iteration of the Sims is *premised* on the immersiveness of the world. That is - should be - unacceptable.
I hate it. Utterly hate it. My Sim stays in his house, because there is no fun to be had sending him out only to watch his little taxi blob float across a map to disgorge him at the other end so that he can partake of some sort of putative, faceless 'entertainment'. He went on a date once. To the theatre. He meets his friend outside the theatre, they chat a bit, then it's time to go in. Only his date doesn't follow him. No. she stays outside, sitting at a bus stop, chatting to strangers in that weird Sim way as though everyone is always up for a flirt & a good joke. Eventuallly the little timer bar fills up & my Sim reappears, resuming the 'date' on the pavement until it's late enough to go home.
How immersive is that?
And the 'seamless world' nonsense is not the only false claim. They sell the game on the premise that you can create anybody in your imagination, then ship the game with about six outfits & ten hairstyles. Oh yes, we have to wait for 'fan-created content' or spend yet more money at the EA store. But why should we? Customisability is meant to be a core feature of the game. Does Falllout 3 ship with one gun? Why should we have to pay extra & wait longer to get the basic game working properly? I tried to make David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust era, to test the claims. I ended up with a hopeless-looking twit with a hideous mullet & a tank top. It was, quite honestly, the nearest I could get.
Then there are the timining issues. The timer is actuallly worse in this game than in either of the other two editions. You seem to spend half your time watching your Sim sleep. They still can't managed to get washed, dressed & fed before work. The day is still gone too quickly, partly because there is so much more to do. The frustrating thing is that the new options for activities are actuallly great - you can write a novel, paint, play music. But where Sims 2 encouraged you to go out. Sims 3 makes it more rewarding to stay in. Most damning of alll, from my perspective, is that your Sim ages too quickly - I am by no means an addict (as you might imagine), but I seemed to be celebrating my Sims transition to 'elder'-hood incredibly quickly.
Why haven't they sorted these timer issues out? Why is there so little time to handle alll the new options for your Sims, & why do you spend so much time watching them sleep? It's no fun. It's tedious. You never feel as though your are getting anywhere. You are frustratedly forcing your Sims through the endless rigmarole of feeding, bathing & sleeping, like shepherding children through the daily grind. I liked Sims 2, & this seems like a step back from that. Despite the innovations, it makes the whole experience clunkier & less memorable.
You can angle the sofa, though.
Wow... - By: Adele Pringle, 01 Mar 2010 
After reading the negative reviews about this game I wasn't sure whether to buy it for not. But I went ahead & I'm reallly glad I did. First off I got free super saver delivery which is supposed to take 3-5 days. It was shipped saturday the 27th of Feb & arrived Monday 1st of March.
Secondly the game comes with an auto updater so any bugs people have complained about were patched before I even opened the game. So I have had no faults with the game. I love the new create a sim mode. The controls are a bit strange after playing the sims2 for years, but it's nothing I can't adjust to.
The only thing is that the loding & saving take a tiny bit longer than the sims2. But it's nothing major.
Overalll it is an excellent game & well worth buying!
Brilliant - By: H. Webster, 26 Feb 2010 Sims 3 was very easy to installl, installlation took a long time but was definately worth waiting for. The game is more realistic such as moving around the town. I would definately recommend this to a friend.
Good Game - By: Mr. A. T. Lynch, 22 Feb 2010 I've always loved playing the Sims. The Sims 3 has many features to it which makes it a better alll round gameplay. It's reallly an update on the Sims 2, alllowing for a more realistic experience. However it's missing that special thing that only the Sims 1 had. I can't figure what it is, but the Sims 1 was an addictive game. The Sims 3 is good, but it's a game where I play it, forget about it for a few months, then play again.
