The Sims 3 review: It Sucks 65

I couldn't agree more.

And what's this crap about giving you barely anything in the game you buy and you have to pay for more stuff for your game!?! It's just a load of garbage!

Im with You this game sucks A**! I went out and bought a DVD drive and two gigs of RAM and i dont feel like paying any money for a new video card, so in all of this what i did notice is, with the 2 gigs of RAm my sims 2 game started loading faster so Hey i started back playing my sims 2 again and the flame got re- kindled!

I agree! I eman the game cuts off like at a certain amount of period in the game and its not fair becuause I have to star over and the hair is so crappy

I disagree complelty
It sounds to me like your computer is not good enough to play it. Its not just viruses. You need a good graphics card, RAM, Proccessors. What the hell, do you think it will run on the same specs as sims 1 and 2. It runs absolutley flawless on my computer it is the best game ever made. SO YOU CAN KISS MY SIMS 3 LOVIN' A**!

I hate how you cant change families because their wishes will b deleted, like wtf?

MAN i was sooo excited about playing this game for the longest time and im soo dissapointed! maybe its my computer or graphics card or whatever but its not working for ###! And its soo slow! I havnt given up yet though being the fan that i am.. ill wait till i have a new computer and see what happens but until then The Sims 2 is looking pretty good

GRRRRRRRRR I know I'm so pissed off I could have bought something else cause I'd rather play sims 2 than this crap al least with two u can go inside restaurants and interact I want a refund fugg this now watch how many expansion pack come out so you will be able to see inside the hospital and other spots I hate when companies are greedy and short change consumers i was so excited I could have downloaded the torrent of this crap like my co workers did but nooooooooooooo I had to make an *** out myself trying to play this crap while others downloaded it

agreed, i'm really disappointed with this game. I'm also really disappointed with EA, because as an earlier poster said, they probably are already planning expansions so we can see the inside of buildings when they could had just added that in the first place. I mean, this is the Sims 3, and it feels like a gigantic step backwords from the Sims 2. There are barely any items in the game compared to the earlier versions, and now if I want more, I have to go buy them? It's unbelievable.. If I didn't know anything about either of the games, I would think the Sims 2 is the latest version..

lol I do agree, is this game litrally stupid? you cant change family or stuff will be gone, the grahpic is worse, you cant see interactions in community buildings etc lol... i got all the legitimate expansions and the game on the sims 2 while many others torrent the game, i should have done that huh?

The global aging.. OK.. so everyone in the city will age as you do so its GLOBAL, but the jobs that you do is not global! i changed families to play and i saw a Rockstar of mine was working as an mechanic and zapped himself to death.. lol wheres the global in that?

The fashion, hairstyle is disaster lol they seriously need a body shop for ppl to create or alter their lowly fashion sense.

Overall, i enjoyed Sims 1, Sims 2 (the best) and Sims 3 is just a big FAIL.
Regret getting collectors edition for $115 if i knew the game was so stuffed up, if not get it at all. Replaying sims 2 would prob make me feel better until they fix this stupid sims 3. And what the hell is it about paying real money for more contents, instead they could have release a body shop?

I always thought EA was good, changed my persepctive here.

Well my Sims3 don't freeze, but don't like the camera action to where you have the mouse in your right hand and using the up and down, arrows with your left. The graphics are great, but has I follow my Sims to the bistro, I could not go into the building, was not excited about that. So I play my Sims2 more than ever now. The ladies hair dos are awful. Coloring the hair don't help either.

I agree 150%. No matter how hard I try to design my sims to look beautiful, they are always stuck with this kind-of-double chin & fat neck. The sims look like wax models. I hate them! Sims 2 FTW! EA GAMES, maxis, you had 6 years to make a better sims game and you give us this ###? Stuck with one family per neighborhood WTF?
Like after the sims 1 came out I was ecstatic about the sims 2 and then when sims 2 did come out I totally freaked out, it was SOO friggin awesome but now that the sims 3 came out, I'd really wished that I hadn't wasted my money.

I FREAKIN AGREE, MAN THIS IS CRAP, YOU CANT SEE THE INSIDE OF PLACES, AND YOU CANT BUILD LOTS, THE GRAPHICS AINT ALL THAT BUT THEY OKAY, I MEAN, I WANT MY FREAKIN MONEY BACK

I totally agree, feed your minds this, Sims 1 was the s*** we could control people actual little computer people. I played it one time and was hooked, so I eagerly awaited each new expansion pack and Bam! I knew EA would be getting a lot more of my money. Then something amazing happened EA blasted me out of my comfort and back into my excitement mode with Sim (way) 2 (awesome) so I began collecting those as well. I'm a very advanced Sims player been at this since 01! So when I heard all the "hype" on Sims 3 my heart fluttered! Then I finally get my hands on a copy after reading the Sims 3 site for days and damnnn, What a let down! My first complaint is why do my sims look like hobbits, and why was the hair so much more awesome on Sims 2? Also those loading screens did start to Peeve me off but playing with an entire town is flat out ridiculous, I dont tackle the whole town I create and dictate. I play with families one by one but with one then some random old man whose on my lawn which the lots suck so much now because I'm stuck with this suck a d*** camera mode. Not to mention the clock that runs in real time with no way of speeding it up. I guess the good thing is I can now leave my house and return several hours later to hopefully find my sim awake and energized. Plus Cheats don't work as well and its soo hard to navigate this game. &&& Can someone tell me wtf TILT is for? In conclusion EA needs to take this back to the drawing broad because this is the worst installment in the series and I'm sure its leaving millions of devoted Sims fans to think twice about dropping another dime on EA in the future.

-A concerned player

Grrrrr! I was so excited to play this game, when I installed it it said I needed to update my video card so I went to the store and got a new video card, installed it, played the game and guess what? It stinks. The graphics are horrible, it is very slow, all the sims are chubby no matter what you do, the choices of hair styles are really bad and not that many at all, the new way to move with the mouse is really stupid, you can't use a bunch of families, there are so many things i hate about this game I can't even describe it. I went to yahoo.com and read what people were saying about it and they all have the same complaints as I do about the graphics and pretty much everything else, one thing that somebody said though was not true about you being able to return it to the store as long as you had your receipt, actually you have to return it un-opened, if it's opened, they will not refund your money, trust me, I tried about 5 walmarts and even got it receiled and they still didn't take it back. What a waste of money! Seriously! I wish I hand't bought this game! It is such a step back to the sims 2. They should have incorporated the cools things they had on the sims 3 into the sims 2 like the different voices, the personality traits, the buy mode, the new jobs and the new clothes, that's it because everything else blows. I'm not looking forward to a Sims 4 and I hope these guys make a better game next time.

IT EFFING BLOWS! i want my Sims 2

I spent $50 and I am mad now. You can only play one family in a neighborhood. The people look fake as ever and the graphics will suck unless you have a brand new computer. I think they need to combine the sims 2 characters and how you can play mutliple families in a neighborhood and keep the sims 3 way of no loading, just go to wherever you want to go.

i was gonna buy this but then i read all these comments... oh well, i'll just wait for the sims 4 if theres even gonna be one...

they added customization of objects/wallpaper/floors, open neighborhoods, 45 degree angled furniture without cheats, the ability to crowd more objects on tables, and the ability to move objects half a square.
those would all be real nice if they didnt take out 5 things for each thing they added and improved the graphics much more. add those things to the sims 2 and its the perfect sims game. play the sims 3 and its a major step BACKWARDS. they are so incredibly greedy, they just make an incomplete game to force you to buy expansions and too many random objects online. $3.50 for six pieces of virtual furniture? whoever designed the sims 3 store deserves a punch in the balls.
do not buy this game, stick with the sims 2.
it is 6 years older and much, much better.

The sims in Sims 3 look like freakin chubby habbo creations! Sims 2 had more realistic and engaging looking sims...why would EA want to take it down a notch?! I have spent hours manipulating the facial characteristics of my sims in Sims 3 but they always end up looking bloated in the face. Im gonna need a lot of custom content from modthesims to fix this hot mess...

I licke the game, hate the bugs, the rabit hole effect and the sims 3 store .

PS. I HATE TE STORE

I agree wit evry one ...this ###ing game took 10 steps back instead of forward...the sims in the sims 3 look worse than ever... sims 2 had more realistic looking sims than this ###! i thought they would look like they do on the website... much more realistic. dont know if its my computer but they look worse than the sims 2..how da ### can that be..i think ill go back to playing sims 2..this game is garbage!

I haven't even gotten around to playing the stupid game yet. First it was the stupid SP2 thing, and I get that, It was on the box saying that you need it. two weeks later I get the stupid lap top I have hooked up the internet, and download the Sp2. And then I try to play it again, and it says I'm missing Shafer Model 2. I'm like WTF. The box said nothing about it. it never said that we would need a new card for the computer. I mean this is a new laptop. there should be nothing wrong with it. it should work. NEW LAPTOP! I'm so pissed, I think I might just pawn it and go get the Sims 2 it was the same price, I just decided that the newer version might be better. But NO, I just had to get the Sims 3. What type of idiot doesn't mention that something is needed on the box, that way we can get the whole thing at once, instead of waiting a couple months till I get home to see if it works there. If not, I just wasted half of my pay-check!

I absolutely cannot believe I wasted money on this piece of crap game.
I am so disappointed. I think I will uninstall it and sell it on eBay. I'd rather play The Sims 2.

This game is awful compared to other versions of The Sims. It is a big waste of money.
I can't even have fun with it. The older versions would keep me entertained for hours. This one bores and frustrates me. I can't tolerate more than 30 minutes before I want to scream!

I was hooked on The Sims 1 and loved it. The Sims 2 was better than I could have anticipated. I loved it and have every expansion. When I first played the Sims 2, I was on it for hours and played it every day for quite some time. I was hooked. I was so excited for The Sims 3 and so far the only thing I like is the unique character traits. That's it. They don't look good. They all look puffy in the face. The game play is not that easy or interesting. I have to wait outside a building for my Sim while they go inside and do stuff in real time? Really? I can only play one family -- that's ridiculous. It's so boring and also dealing with the camera is difficult. I played it for one hour the first day I got it and was bored. I tried to play it a few more times and was not having a good time. Instead of improving upon The Sims 2, it's like they went back to a level 1 game. Why make a Sims 3 where you can do less than the previous game? With The Sims 2 you could do so much more! Now it's like we're back to square one. I uninstalled it and just play The Sims 2 now. Game sites rave about The Sims 3 and I don't get it. Bores me to tears.

Oh, first time i got hooked on Sims was after a friend of mine decided to make us in Sims and create our college in it etc, basicly make "us" in sims, after that i downloaded on torrents all Sims 2, and i loved it soo MUCH! And then i heard Sims 3 coming out, and i decided to get a proper copy, thinking "WOOO THIS WILL BE AWESOME GAME" and i play...and i get sad...very very sad...I have custom build pc...4gb ram, 1gb Ati Video card, 1tb hard, well one VERY fast pc...Graphics are okay, i could get nice femaly faces, but males would always have weird chin and face ewwww!

Hate the glitches, hate it freezing and exiting to desktop, hate the hair, the clothes, furniture- it sucks
Dislike the small premade lots, when building house, the roof sometimes disappears on its own.
Constantly shows errors, sometimes doesnt save and makes it impossible to continue from last save point, cause upon saving it just exits and corrupts the save files.

Jeez, EA, for the money you're asking for this game and its future, you've lost majority of your SIMS fans, they will not buy the next game releases, and i wont either, i'll just consult my frindly lovely web pages where i'll download all games and expansions that i want.

In 6 years, you could have made something more incredible, something that would need full 2gb ram, and at least 516mb Graphics speed etc, but no, you stick to cheap money making!

I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

EA -- YOU SUCK CAUSE THIS ### RELEASE NEARLY MADE ME CRY! I THINK I'LL STICK TO RPG'S LIKE WARCRAFT AND OLD SPELLFORCE, THEY MADE ME HAPPY WITH THEIR GRAPHICS

I don't like the sims 3 at all and it's not my computer it's the fact that the variety of doing things have been taken away so it just feel boring especially when you can't see into places, shop, and the mood thing is suck a fck'n pain I hate that thing. No one comes over to greet the neighbors like they did in the sims 2. It takes WAY to long to make a friend, too much customizing it's overwhelming. The places you can go are not interactive so what's the point. I don't want no expansion pack I want EA to reimburse me for even giving this game a shot. There's no way the Sims 2 should be better than one that's supposed to me more improved. The sims 3 is more work and a hassle than it is enjoyable.

Agree. In addition to paying a whopping $50 for a game that did not work, EA customer service was a joke! The website is a joke- how do you find anything on that site? If you ask a question through the website as opposed to using the customer service number (it's so obscure, I don't even remember how I stumbled upon it...), good luck...who knows when a rep will respond...and when they DO respond, the response is worthless...
SAVE your money- do not buy this game and ESPECIALLY do not download this game from the EA games site. You will be given the run-around and your money will NOT be refunded.

I'm so disappointed in this game, the whole idea of it was cool but the graphics on the sims 2 were much better than these on 3, I cant believe they screw it all up!

I was really upset when I bought the sims3 there was sooo much hype sorrounding it and I thought ya know what since sims 2 is a pretty good I'll go ahead and spend £40 (that's $63.62) to buy sims3. And you know what? It's such a [censored] game! Granted you can see your neighbourhood from your house *oh which btw with the Sims 2 there's an expansion pack that allows you to have this very feature.*

Sims 3 you can walk to town, walk to school, work, your friends etc and not be confined to lots but that's about it! And while we're on the subject since the people at EA Games are a smart creative bunch of tech savvy game developers, you would have thought they could have brought this very feature out on an expansion pack for sims 2. Even if the whole CD was dedicated to this one feature alone, I'm pretty sure it would have been MORE than possible, considering they've bought us pets, bon voyage, university and apartment life.

I'm pretty disappointed with the character too! They are absolutely naff -they all have that same round podgy face no matter how much you tweak their faces. They all look the bloody same.

Sims 2 had the added bonus of custom content that can make your characters so believable and life like it's truly amazing. Have you tried using Sims 3 custom content ? Rubbish absolute Rubbish!

demon9675 was absolutely right play the sims 3 and it is a major step BACKWARDS.

In all I'm very disappointed I've paid £40 for crap and what hurts even more is that with that money I would have gladly buy all the expansion packs for sims 2! Frankly I'm so pissed I don't give a shi* about there expansion packs for sims 3! Frankly they should discontinue or do some serious changes to sims 3 - and we buyers who have already bought this naff game should not have to PAY for that upgrade.. But that's a completely new rant.. For a new day...

The game has alot of good qualities, but I thuoght that they were going to make this game better than the sims 2 and 1 and all that. The only thing they fixed was basically the Create-A-Sim, which is very cool, but I don't like the fact that when you're giving the child boys a sports otfit, they get one but the girls don't... I mean, wtf? Girls can be just as athletic as boys. We can't see inside the buildings, can only have one school where both preschoolers and highschoolers have to mingle(I tried to make a school but the only thing I could do was make the kids have art classes!) What happened to a limo and fancy dress for prom? The birthdays and weddings suck, because there is no wedding shower(presents and nervous breakdowns), no birthday presents, no baby shower(I mean common...those could be fun!...especially if right in the middle there was something dramatic happening) and you can't even see the gender of the baby at the hospital! That sucks. And what about animals? Farms and horses? More job opertunities! And certainly more recipes. I can't stand cheese steak or whatever all the time. Can't EA have, like, had kids test this F#@$ thing before releasing it? What about winter and spring? Throwing snowballs and messing up your parents leaf piles, throwing paper airplanes at the teacher in class. They'd better have a darned good sims 4 or i'm so quitting buying any form of EA game and will teach my children and their children how these ppl f*&^ up bad. Give me your opinion, and email me emilie.lada@hotmail.com tks!

I also feel like the game was a setback from the sims 2. there are just so many dumb little details, the sims 2 had that the sims 3 lacks; and the sims 3 is a ###ing sequel! not a prequel. It should have everything the sims 2 had AND THEN SOME. Thats why when the sims 2 came out it was so great. You were getting all new features, and virtually nothing from the sims 1 was left out of the new game. And the new features have the ### programing I think I've ever seen. Story progression? Are you ###ing kidding me. Basicly you have to stick with one freakin family and when you move a kid out expecting him to go on and live a life, (which story progression entitles) think again. You'll just get a freakin phone call later on saying he died, jobless and loveless. Story progression was like the only major feature that sold me the game, and it sucks. Plus they hardly give us any ###in items- they want us to PAY MORE MONEY for items. the ###ING GREEDY ###. the game is fifty plus, expanison packs thirty- there getting enough money. God, and I thought the stuff packs on the sims 2 pissed me off, this ### really takes the take. I mean, the game was designed great in some aspects, but in most HORRIBLE. YOU CAN'T EVEN STOP THE CARPOOL FROM COMING WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR OWN CAR FOR WORK/SCHOOL. WHAT THE ### IS THAT?!? Just an example of a small detail even a three year old would have thought to program into the game. And do they fix it in patches? Nope.

Hey what up?I'm new to sims 3 and i was soooooooooooo excited about it cause sims 2 delux was awsome so i thought it would be 10 times beter!Come on one school?omg thats f***ing crazy!WTF you cant even see if you go in a nother building u cant see what if there cheeting?Its crazy!It freezes 24/7 so if you do something important and it will freeze and u lose everything!No stores, no mall, no pet shop no nothuing i mean come on this is saposed to resembel life! life without a mall or eny store if like and ocean with no water!If u agree with me please email me and well all talk aboiut all the crapy stuff in sims 3 and well make a list and send it to them and tell them this is what you got a change for sims 4 or else well go on world wide strick and theyll go bankruped so if u agree send me an e-mail @ petlover_love@hotmail.comor e-mail mmy friend @ emilie.lada@hot mail.com. we can make a diffrence! so come and help!;)

I too was a true Sims fan until this mess of a game came out. I would take off from work everytime an expansion pack came out. I'm soo pissed because you can't even go in some places especially the hospital how cool would that have been in a delivery room man I'm pissed you can't even go into work and see yourself at work. I thought expansion or new releases were supposed to be better than the orignal or at least more advanced I want a freaggin refund!

The Sims 3, EA's Biggest Let-Down
As many people anticipated the Sims 3's original release date, they were let down and enraged by this sudden change. EA claimed they delayed the release SUPPOSEDLY in order to fix bugs within the program. So, people waited until the game was finally released. Game reviews continued raving of how this was an amazing game in the SIMS trilogy. EA reps showed videos of how easy and grand the new SIMS 3 tools would be. Overall it was portrayed as an amazing game. When it finally came out people rushed into the stores to buy normal game or the COLLECTOR'S EDITION; spending $50 - $100. Patrons rushed home to install the new game on their computers and finally let the game begin. What did they think? To put it frankly...
IT SUCKED!

The let down was tremendous and spontaneous. People could not believe what had just happened. The many supporting statements toward THE SIMS 3 were doubted and many game informers’ reliability came into question.

Granted, the installation process was quick and simple; using one disc instead of 4, however, the game was slow to load up and built up frustration within the player. As people finally reached the neighborhood menu, they saw that the options were very similar to the less popular SIMS. The SIMS 3 patrons soon learned the basic options of the neighborhood and created their characters so they proceeded onto CREATE A SIM.

The sims looked terrible, as though they were plump, very round, and fleshy. The eyes looked yellow and as unattractive as the pre- installed clothes. The face changing options are far more superior to those of its predecessor’s but that could not account for these hideous things. At this, some people would have wanted to return the so called “amazing detail of the sims” but others bravely ventured on to explore this game. Finally, as players completed their sims, they uploaded them into the neighborhood. At this point, if I were to save a custom hair or eye color, my computer would have crashed.

The ability to choose which house your sim could live in was relatively similar to that of the SIMS 2. With a couple of clicks and mouse scrolls, the house of your new sim was entered after the long wait for it to load. As the screen changed to that of your sim and its house, there were only plain green floors, your extremely pixilated sim, and those disgusting yellow eyes in the monitor of your computer. Slowly but surely, more features of this new world became apparent. Unfortunately, everything from the grass to the wall paint was very untextured and bland. The sims still looked as horrible as ever accompanied by a boring house. So what would any avid house designer do, give their new home a remodel.

As the BUILD/BUY mode loaded, wannabe architects anticipated what they would be in store for. The many options appeared and it was apparent that there was almost no change compared to the adored SIMS 2 and the terrible SIMS 3 except the hideous counterpart was more confusing. The wall textures were boring and extremely similar to each other with very little variation. The carpet, likewise, looked like whicker furniture spray painted various colors. As the camera angled closer to the floor, only a certain area showed the horrendous detail of the carpet while it abruptly cut to a blurry background. No matter what, nothing could be done to make their house look at least decent.

Frustrated and confused, many players persisted on to further explore this game’s features and were greeted with disappointment.

It took forever for the neighborhood to load its schools and offices to the blurry detail of the rest of the game. Say you were to enter the government building. Your sim would disappear into its doors while you were left waiting outside for a menu to pop up. You could not enter into the building but could zoom your camera inside of it and then see only the building’s foundation as if the rest of it were invisible. If a patient player would dare to think, “Oh well, I couldn’t enter this kind of building before but at least I can see the interior of a bookstore”, they would be wrong. Any community lot with a building could not be entered and was basically just for show.

If a person were to dig deep into themselves to find the patients to play this game, they would try to bear through the deep hole that was called the SIMS 3. Say they wanted to create a new sim in a new family for their original sim to interact with, they would discover they could not. To make it simple, it was basically just a crappy upgrade to the SIMS. Each new family was basically only a new game completely separate of others.

Finally, if some odd person were to have bought this game solely for the purpose of creating magnificent homes, they would immediately shoot themselves in the face. Only the pre- existing lots could be change and no new lots could be added. You were basically confined to your home, opposite of this game’s previous claim to fame, a “seamless neighborhood”. It would be too much work having to delete the previous house in order to make your new one. On top of that, the tools were boring and just as hard to use. The graphics sucked which is very odd to me because of how many people’s computers crashed due to “overload”.

I however must admit that the color chooser function and the few customizing tools were very fun but it could nowhere near as make up for the rest of this terrible game. I have left out many things in this report and apologize for doing so. I have a life that I would rather spend elsewhere but I feel it would be better if I just kept one person from ruining their money on this “game”.

This game not only tarnished but melted the reputation that was held by the SIMS. Thank you for bearing through this depressing report and arming yourselves with knowledge of the SIMS 3 hoax. Sorry for making some hard to understand statements but I hope you found this helpful. If you agree with my claims, post this somewhere in a public place in order to ward people away from the SIMS 3. I have given enough of my life to “give it a chance”. Ultimately...

EA, WHAT HAPPENED?
-Geoffboyardee

i totally f**kin agree with you! im soo dispointed! i deleted sims 2 off my computer, with most of the expansion packs & loads of downloads to install the sims 3 cos i fort it was goin to be great, what a f**kin let down! as soon as i start to play it, its total f**kin bollocks! so slow and the characters are just atrocious, sims 2 characters are sooooo much better. & my computer is new with up to date graphic cards & ###, its still aload of horse ###!

Spent all this money, got the $60 game, got the book, was all set to be amazed and wow'ed, but when I booted it up and saw how bleepin' UGLY the Sims are, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. Where are all the hairstyles? and the clothes look like modeling clay. Nothing has any natural movement to it, at all. My Sims2 characters look soooooooooooooo much better! Here my husband is reading all this hype, telling me how I won't need cc anymore because these Sims will be all hyper-gorgeous, welllllll... BUGLY~! Everything is so drab... it looks like really bad Pixar. Plus, I was hearing how we wouldn't need to micro-manage them as much, but seems to me it's worse now. Still have to direct them to use the bathroom, and it takes them what, two-three times to flush the toilet? and a half hour to take a flippin' bath. And no Seasons! what's up w/that?! No aliens or witches or any of the stuff that made it so much fun. I've got real life here at home, I don't need it in my games. Thank goodness I saved all my Sims 2 stuff, 'cuz it's going back on the computer.

Good Things in Sims 3:

- Personality traits. I like these. They add a flare to the individual sims which the sims 2 never quite managed in terms of social interactions, behavior, etc. and are really the reason I was interested in buying the game to begin with.

- Being able to zoom out from your sim's lot and click on other houses or destinations to send them to is more fun than having to load individual lots every time they go somewhere.

- The design tool is a fun idea - a bit like the Bodyshop, only in-game.

- Sim faces are less likely to look like the Swamp Thing than they are in the Sims 2 as a result of radically different-looking parents.

- There actually are buildings like the school, hospital, work locations, etc. now, so you know where your sim is going every day.

- You can put most objects on diagonal angles now. I was actually quite pleased about that. Also, I like the new ghosts, although I am somewhat bummed that the sims finally figured out how to climb out of a pool without a ladder now. :(

Downsides:

- The new 'wants' system no longer has any 'fears', and while the moodlets (environmental or circumstantial factors which effect a sim's mood, like being in a nice room or smelling something awful) are interesting, I do miss the fear-factor.

- Despite the whole 'seamless' neighbourhood claims of the game, the customization options and general playability is waaay down. In Sims 2 you could essentially make your own neighbourhood from scratch if you wanted to. In Sims 3 you can't design, say, community lots, and empty lots are fixed locations of a set size, so you can't choose if you'd like to have a row of smaller houses or a big mansion on any given road. On top of that, the game punishes you for playing with different families in the same neighbourhood - so you essentially need to have a neighbourhood per family, which kills a lot of the fun. While the global aging/growing/living feature is cool in its own way, too, I think it needs to involve the player a little more. Like getting messages saying when someone in the neighbourhood had gotten married, had a kid, or had a birthday, or choosing to have *some* families grow on their own while others stay just as you left them would be nice.

- Pumpkin head. Every sim in the Sims 3 has a round pumpkin head, which is probably part of the reason why the various faces mesh together better, but it's not a very diverse look, either. I feel like I'm playing with really bizarre Cabbage Patch Dolls.

- The genetics. Sims 2 had an amazing system for sims to pass on their genes to their offspring, with kids getting things like their granparent's hair and their mother's eyes and their father's nose. Now the new system for generations is very limiting and boring, taking away a lot of the excitement of letting your sims reproduce.

- The design tool is fun, but combined with the Sims online store it seems to have conspired to ensure that the game comes with very little actual content, like furniture, wallpaper, carpets, etc. You can make your own, but the process takes quite a while and can be exhausting.

- Saves. Since the game doesn't load individual lots in the way of its predecessors what with it's seamless neighbourhood and all, auto-saving almost never happens, which means that if the game crashes or freezes or glitches you can lose alllll of your work. And believe me, it *does* feel like 'work', not 'crazy fun times'.

- Despite introducing such new and interesting buildings as City Hall, the hospital, the school, and such, don't expect to actually go inside of these places. Even buildings that would *normally* let you in, at least by the standards of previous games (like stores and restaurants) won't, with the exceptions being gyms and libraries. Your sim can visit another sim's house, though - which is kind of fun, but also kind of dull, since there isn't much to do once you're in there.

- Did anyone feel less like they were playing the sequel to the Sims 2 than a 'My Sims' game without a storyline?

- Sims 1&2 definitely had a sense of humor. Guys could get impregnated via alien abduction, little old ladies would beat you over the head for kissing in public, the little career-blurbs were actually *funny* - Sims 3 tries, but it feels like the jokes are either stale, or whoever is telling them never understood what made them funny to begin with. The sense of whimsy is dead, replaced by a pale imitation of itself.

- One of the reasons why the Sims 2 was so utterly amazing was because it took what the Sims 1 had and it made it better. It had everything from the first game, and then more. Instead of having to choose a pre-made face, you could make your own face! Instead of just randomly getting any old kid from the options available, now your sims actually had genetics that determined what their offspring looked like! I think one of the reasons why the Sims 3 feels like a step backwards is that whereas the Sims 2 offered *more* control and customization, Sims 3 offers *less*. Yes, you can design your sims' face, but all the faces look the same now anyway. Yes, you can choose what color of bricks to paint on the walls, but half of the time it all looks like blurry nonsense no matter what. Yes, you can go anywhere in the neighbourhood at any time, but it's a premade neighbourhood designed by someone else, not a hand-made suburbia personally tailored to suit your own whims. Sure, you can play with multiple families in the same neighbourhood, but good luck getting it to work out. In the Sims 2 (and I don't mean this in an offensive way) you're the god of your sims' world - you can play with the pre-designed stuff if you want, but you can also take a completely empty neighbourhood and build the whole thing, from restaurants to houses to residents to electronics boutiques and nature parks, from the ground up. In Sims 3 that isn't an option. So while I imagine that's alright for the people who prefer to play in a go-with-the-flow style, for the control-freaks (and let's face it, that would be most sims fans) it's a tremendous let-down.

I don't think EA realizes what's *fun* about the Sims. That's the only way I can explain the Sims 3. Playing it is kind of like a gigantic chore, and for all that it does have a few moments of fun, they're short-lived and don't lead up into the kind of endless playability of its predecessor. A lot of the ideas are good in concept, but they either aren't enough to make up for the downsides or else they're very poorly realized. I *do* get the impression that the entire game is meant to be a base, a platform from which EA can sell more online content and expansion packs, and god isn't that just the most irritating thing ever? As if people haven't proved that they're willing to spend money on the sims! No alterations to the marketing format need be made to turn it into a cash-cow, it already was one! But if people feel gipped, they're not going to spend more money so they can feel *more* gipped. They'll just uninstall Sims 3, wash their hands of it, and go back to playing Sims 2. The Sims 2 in its base-form (without any EPs at all) is fairly simple, but when I first played it looked forward to any new content that came out for it, because the game itself was already lots of fun. So I wasn't looking for expansion packs to 'fix' things so much as add on to the experience. With the Sims 3, it's like they purposefully left stuff out and did a half-assed job so that people would feel obligated to buy the EPs and online content in order to get an actual, completed game.

It's like someone looked at a supermodel and went 'hmm, skinny - long legs - designer clothes - really tall... I know what people like!' and then came back with a giraffe in a dress.

TOTAL DISAGREE! i love my sims game! and i think that you hate is so much is because your computer is not good enough for this freaking awsome game... my computer is not the best but hey i can play flawlessly and high settings...

and about the bugs...their is something called patches that you can download FREE and it will fix everything and your game experience will be awsoome...

PS: i only spent $70 dollars with the game

had a coupon for the game total for game $37

and a new graphics card that rocks the hell out of a game

I totally AGREE ! Thank the lord that i didn't but the game and simply waited for my friend to torrent the game. what a f**ckn DISASTER of a game. like WTF !? Couldn't EA at least warn us that this would be a huge letdown. OH NO they wouldn't because they only care about the money and not the hardcore fans ! I was sooo excited to play the game but as soon as i got to the neighborhood page i had problems. the graphics were ghastly but dismissing the terrible graphics the characters were even more horrific. Come on? Seriously!? I thought the sims characters would look much better than the sims 2. WOW i was soooo wrong. They look like 100 times worse. What's up with that? Also what the f**k is the point in having hospitals and schools and buildings IF YOU CAN'T EVEN INTERACT OR SEE THEM ! Absolutely pointless!
Me and my friend decided not wasting our time exploring the rest of this piss hole f**ked up game
Im deeply devoted in playing sims 2 but sims 3 is wasted ### and a load of BS

Bye Bye EA...
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