Review of the Sims 3

Sims 3 has a lot of potential. At first play, especially if you're used to playing Sims 2, with its gazillion expansion packs, it seems limited, and you'd be right. The future possibilities with this game are great, but it is still at a very rudimentary stage.

The first thing I noticed about this game is, interestingly enough, the load time. I literally ate an entire meal from a Mexican takeout place in the time it took it to load.

One of the biggest improvements is the changes to Create-A-Sim. In Sims 3, the skin color is now on a slide, and the hair and eye colors can be adjusted using a color wheel. The best part is you can save those custom shades for use on your future Sims.

You still can't make your Sim shorter or taller, but the weight also works on a slide making much more realistic looking Sims. The faces are hard to get natural looking, but with a little tweaking it's not impossible.

While on the creation of Sims 3, you can also create clothes. The new options literally allow you to make 18 different varieties on the same shirt. It lets you change patterns, and materials, as well as colors. For those of you who have played "Bustin' Out" on PS2, it's really similar to that,

The new custom options can also be applied to the furniture, floors, and walls, which you will want to utilize, especially with the floors. The carpet options that are premade in this game are absolutely awful and go against all natural laws of interior design.

Speaking of design, those of you that are like me, and like to build neighborhoods from scratch with several dozen families, this game has a major drawback. At the time of this writing, it's only one family per neighborhood, and the only neighborhood available is Sunset Valley.

Getting around the neighborhood is a new innovation as well. To get from one place to another, you click on a map and click the property you want to go to. One of the properties that have been added by the way is a brand new theater. Don't get too excited about seeing the inside though. None of the properties can be seen on the inside. Essentially you wait outside while your Sim shops, dines, or tours. It's kind of boring but your Sim seems to enjoy it. If you don't like to micromanage your Sims, it might be a refreshing change to just let them go into the restaurant, and do everything by themselves.

There's also a beach for your Sim to enjoy, but right now the only option on that beach is fishing.

Another marked difference in this game from Sims 2 is navigation. To navigate a property in Sims 2, you would just wave your mouse around. On Sims 3, you have to use the arrows, along with the mouse, which makes it a bit more cumbersome.

All in all, this is a game worth buying if you're a Legacy player. Otherwise, you probably want to wait until they start the expansion pack parade.