"Dear Slide to Play, I never thought it would happen to me. My next door neighbor Nina has been eying me ever since she caught me planting corn in the back garden in my summer shorts. She's tall, has dark hair and brown eyes, and I'm a gorgeous blonde with a great figure. The other day, I had her over to show off my brand new Eastern-style bathtub, and next thing I know, we're making sweet WooHoo. That's when we called over our other neighbor Maggie, whose husband John was out of town…"
Meet interesting new people and hit on them.
iPhone games have never been quite this scandalous. The potential for making mischief in Sims 3 is something we haven't seen before, and whether you play as a skanky homewrecker or a goodie two-shoes, you'll definitely have a unique opportunity to explore boundaries in this social simulation. Managing friends and lovers is a major part of the gameplay, and next to the other activities in the game like cooking, fishing and gardening, it's the most fun you'll have.
By comparison, the rest of daily Sims life is pretty mundane. You'll wake up, go to your job (which is represented in the game as little more than a daily paycheck), and spend the rest of your hours managing your needs and wants. You'll have to click on the toilet and shower to freshen up, and make yourself meals or visit a restaurant to stay fed.
Sims 3 has no storyline. Instead, a series of goals will randomly occur to your Sim like, "Hey, I've always wanted to kick over the trash can on the corner." These random tasks are the only concrete direction the game gives you. Otherwise, you're on your own.
This is a dirty, dirty game.
Two of the goals are unique to your personality; for example, a sleazy Sim will want to make WooHoo eight times a day and juggle three relationships at once. While the 73 general goals provide a bit of outside motivation, you can't manage the order in which they're received. You also can't delete a goal once you commit to it, and the only way to clear it off your list is to achieve it. You can save up to four goals at once, even though some of them can be difficult to achieve early on in the game.
Some of the goals are achieved by maintaining relationships, while others come from outside activities. Fishing, repairs, and cooking have their own minigames, and these fit very well into the overall feel of the game. Fishing and cooking specifically use the iPhone's motion controls, so you can yank a fish out of the lake or shake your pots to cool them down on the stove. However, these activities can be maxed out pretty quickly, and we would have liked to see more advanced degrees of difficulty.
The game's detailed graphics, with its deep character customization, are some of the best yet on the system. What keeps Sims from being a must-have for everyone is the scatterbrained goal system, which is too random and unmanageable to make progress clear for your Sim. If you're willing to use your imagination to create complicated social scenarios, Sims 3 can be a lengthy and interesting investment. At its best, Sims 3 is daring fun.
1 Comment
Perhaps it's apples and oranges, but this seems to bring a bit more longevity than Spore did. The positives appear a great deal of fun. Too bad the demo (Sims Sampler) has little to do with the actual game.
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