You know, I had these grand plans of actually posting and updating this on a regular basis throughout the month of June; I even typed out a few post drafts. But then The Sims 3 came out (as well as several other things) and I started semi-obsessively playing it. As such, I feel obligated to post about it.
The Sims 3 in a way feels fundamentally different than The Sims 2, though at heart, the same. For one, sims aren't trapped on their lots anymore. The entire neighborhood is one seamless area, allowing sims to visit neighbors and go into town without having to load areas. Time also progresses universally throughout the neighborhood, so no more going out for a full day, only to return to a lot that hasn't changed since you left.
You now live in a persistent world. It's fluid and growing; the new Story Progression feature keeps it as such. Sims outside of your active household will also grow up, fall in love, have children, live their lives and die. Gone is the need to micromanage every single household in order to avoid the awkwardness of being the same age as your great great great uncle (accidental incest is bad).
Story progression though does have strange moments: Computer spawned babies apparently need only one parent. For example, I created a small family consisting of a father and son, moved them into their own house and then left them to their own NPC devices (I wanted interesting neighbors). Several days later, a baby popped out of nowhere. I guess this is the way that the game balances itself, which is alright though someone artificial feeling.
The game feels geared towards a single family play. You can swap households, but doing so feels a bit cumbersome in that it requires quite a few mouse clicks (go to the edit neighborhood screen, click change active household, choose the household, etc). When you swap households, short term wishes are reset and you run the risk of story progression doing something negative to that family unless you toggle it off. If you were one of those Sims 2 players who insisted on having absolute control over every household, this change mightfrustrate you somewhat.
Daily life feels like much less of a grind, much of the sim needs and daily micromanagement has either been streamlined or reduced, leaving more time for storytelling and antics. Yours sims don't need to pee or shower as often and you are able to throw out trash and put items away yourself, rather than having to wait for your sim to do it.
Your Sim's current 'state' is based off of a new moodlets system. Certain activities and conditions will give a buff or debuff to your mood. Each moodlet lasts for a certain duration; Being in a good mood positively influences work performance and social interactions.
You can also change the color and texture of virtually every surface and clothing item in the game. Even so, there is a distinct feeling that EA is holding back on items for the sake of eitherre-releasing them in an expansion pack or on their online store. Where's the piano and hot tub?
The Sims 3 also runs notably smoother than The Sims 2, even on very large lots with a surplus of items. Keep in mind though, that this is the base game, minus any expansion packs. We will see if this performance improvement holds up in a year or two...
Anyway, there are dozens of fun changes and game mechanics that I skipped over (the traits system, collectibles, body shapes, etc). In short, it's fun. So fun that it has ate up my urge to do much of anything else during the period of free time that I set aside for gaming and stuff like that. If you enjoyed the other Sims games, you will most definitely enjoy The Sims 3.
Comments (43)
my active household consisted of 1 person from the start since then, my woman grew up, had triplet, grew to an elderly and then lived to see all 3 sons grow into mature adults....by this tim she was 127 days old!!! her bar which show how old you are was FULL!!! and she just wouldnnt die of old age? i got quite annoyed with this as i had to take care of 4 sims lives and if she'd just die! it would be much easyer but i didnt want to kill her. So it it possibe for sims on your active household to die?! was it a glitch? i dunno but i got fed up so i moved her to another house and a day later she 'passed away'?
please help me im confussed!!! :D
Nah it's not a glitch, you just have a really healthy sim lol o_O. I know that a lot excercise will increase your sim's lifespan, but other than that (and stuff like the ambrosia), a sim's lifespan after their age bar is 'full' is somewhat random.
One of my save files has the same problem. I've hit the 8 person cap and can't have that one last child until grandpa moves out or moves on to another life lol.
yea im about to have that problem ive got 6 people and theres still more to come.
and yea... my person was EXTREAMLY athletic... she completed all the challenges in the sports skill so.. yea i hope its not a glitch, i just got to stop haveing such healthy sims then lol
thanks so much :D
There is always of course, the tragically mysterious pool accident option when you really need to prune the bad leaves from the family tree lol.
haa lol yea i get ur drift ;)
another thing that i was just wondering is, my sims keeps glowing red every now and then? would that be because he is at the to of the criminal career (Leader of an Evil Empire...) ? soo does the whole randomly glowing red tihng signefy evil or something? i got a lil worried and thought he mightbe dieing!? but he's a perfectly healthy sims :D and yea i thought he was going to die cuz in the sims 2, i read somewhere that when a sims dies of starvation their ghost comes back as a red haze.. i never experienced it and tohught that my sims was going to die of tarvation so im a lil confsed. what do you think then?
thanks :D
Yeah, the red is an evil glow from reaching the top of the criminal career. I think other sims will respond negatively to it (well good sims I guess).
You will only see the ghosts if you place the tombstone/urn on the lot. White gosts for normal deaths, yellow ghosts for electocution, red for fire and blue for drowning. Hmm, I think that's all of the confirmed ways a sim can die. Not sure if there are more hidden.
oh right, thats alright then. :D thank youuuu
I have 6 sims living in my household right now, but two of them are pregnant. When they give birth will the game allowe me to have the babies move in, or do I need to just move some people out?
You should be fine, the sim cap per household is 8 playable sims. When the two babies are born, you will be at the cap.
Is it practically impossible to have control over many households in the same saved game? For example, I made a guy sim and then he married a townie, but now I want this townie to move out so I can play the game with her while also not losing the ability to play with the guy I originally made. It was completely do-able in the Sims 2, but can this happen in the Sims 3?
You can change households in TS3, it's just a little different. In order to do so:
After that, select whatever household that you want to play. It's worth nothing that, your previous household will continue to age and progress with their lives so long as aging and story progression are on. You can only control one household at a time.
I have two twin children girls. Everything was going fine when one night I tried to have them both go to sleep. One of them slept fine but the other kept waking up. No matter how many times I told the sim to sleep she just kept getting up. They sleep in the same room so I know it is not a tv or radio and all the phones a re silenced. Now her energy is completely red, she is starving, but will not eat for more than a minute. The only thing that was different between the two girls was one finished their homework while my sick one didnt. Should I load the game and see if it was just a glitch or is there really nothing I can do??
That Sim doesn't by chance have the Light Sleeper trait, does she? Light Sleepers will wake up at the drop of a hat (snoring, toddlers playing with toys, anything). If it's a bug you could try using the reset sim cheat:
The resetsim cheat resets them back to a neutral state at home. Never encountered this problem, so I don't know if it will work.
hey, does anyone know the sims 3 cheat where you can have up to 16 sims per household?!?!?
pls help..i have an opportunity that says i have to bring some urn to the science laboratory to run some tests to bring my child back to life but i cant seem to find that urn..it says that it is in the inventory but its not..i may have deleted it..can i bring back things that are deleted from the inventory?..tnx..
@15 Hmm not entirely sure, but try doing this: Go to the cemetary, click on the mausoleum, then click "manage the dead." If I recall correctly, doing that should give you a list of everyone who has died in the neighborhood as well as an option to grab an urn/grave.
I've had problems finding urns of people who had died off lot while I wasn't paying attention or who's urns were lost somewhere in a gigantic houes >_<.
hi, i need some help about the grim reaper... on youtube I found this video about thsi person who had 'death's child' and it was the grim reapers baby. I heard about someone alse doing it too. (Btw this is on Sims 3) I tried to make this girl try to have some kind of relasionship with him but he only stayed for a few seconds- I used the 'Force NPC' cheat and he came but he wouldn't do anything becuase he only stayed for a few seconds.
What should I do???
Plz help :)
I don't think there is a cheat for 16 sims in one household. I know alot of the cheats, (pretty much all of them) and I don't think there is one. Sorry. :)
you can't do it anymore cause of patch.but you can findit on the excange
back way up to the question about how sims can die, there are heaps of ways. starve them to death, drown them- (although this is difficult in sims three becuase you have to put a wall around the pool so they cant climb out) once i got a girl who wasnt handy at all to work on a tv- she died of electrocution. you can always burn them to death, too. there's always a 'mysterious' fire while they are locked in a room with it. you can let them die out. there has been a rumor of letting the flies eat them. you lock him in a really tight space and put filthy dishes around them til the flies come. i dont think it's true but it's worth a try. but by all means- if your a nice person let them die of old age! oh and if you are a nice person but cant be bothered to wait that long- using the 'trigger age transformation' cheat will kill them if you use it enough. bye! XXX
i need some help again! i had an amazing idea, it turned out not so amazing tho :( . i had all the cheats i needed, got heaps of money and had a huge family! ) so i wanted them all to be ghosts. but i cant have them all ghosts i had to leave one of them. i killed them in i dont know how many ways- it was pretty fun actually. then waited and did the whole resurrect thing. but the poor girl who had to be the one still not a ghost... after her entire seven other family members died..... you had no idea how sad she was. so i wanted to make a ghost baby. but i cant becuase there are too many people- how do you kill the 'already killed'? - and she isnt happy enough- is there a cheat to make her happy? becuase i cant find one that works.- i really want a ghost baby!!! maybe even twins if i can! i know my sister did it- but i cant be bothered to make anoth family. plz someone help me!!!!!
xoxo Geh! MWA!
I deleted a SIM with a cheat because he froze while holding one of my toddlers, now when I try to adopt or add another family member (I have 7 in the family) it says household full. When I log on to my file the deleted Sim shows up on the picture but in the game he's not there? how do I change this? I want another Sim, I also want to know whether elders can get children? Thankyou.
i changed active households for a little while and then when i switched back to my old one which was just one person, she all of a sudden had a baby?? i have no idea where it came from, it doesnt even say who the father iss??? wtf. lol. its so weirdd. anyone know what happened?
@23: If you left story progression on while you were playing the other household, that's probably why. As for the no father thing... It's just some weird thing that the AI does
Well, pixieLOL, that is the sad thing about cheats. sometimes they mess things up. becuase unlike the ordinary things (taking a shower- etc.) they can't fix a problem if something goes wrong, like if the shower breaks, the sim will stop taking a shower. but if you use a cheat, the sim wont do anything becuase it is not programmed to. eg. once i used the move objects cheat to move the shower when my sim was taking a shower, it moved the shower, but the sim was still there! the water was coming from mid air. and i tried to get him to stop, but he wouldn't. becuase he wasn't programmed to. you see what i mean? oh and btw elderly can't have babies. they are too old. im not so sure if elderly ghosts can have babies though. you might have to start all over with that file. it saved the people onto the game doesn't it? anyway i hoped that helped. later, you might want to try not using cheats in tricky situations. most of the time it makes it worse. but always save you game on a regular basis. it helps if you do something terribly wrong and puit :)
hope that helps- XOXOXOXOXO Geh
hey- that sound REALLY strange. even with all the free will enabled, i would never have thought she would have a baby. are you sure she doesn't have a boyfriend or even husband that she loves in another household? maybe she got pregnant before you played on another file. but if there is only one person in that house, is it such a big deal anyway?
XOXO Geh
So I made myself and my boyfriend have 6 kids. when the oldest moved out, i made a guy and moved them into together and got them married. then my second oldest son moved out, i made a girl to live with him, i got her pregnant, then went to check on my original family. when my original family heard the gossip that one of their sons had a baby, i went to go check on him BUT for some reason i can't make his house active anymore... i jsut want to know WHY NOT!
@27: what version of the game are you running and with what xpacs? What happens when you try to switch households?
i have original sims 3 and world adventures. it doesn't seem like a glitch. but when i go to switch households the icon over their house isn't there so i can't select them anymore. pissed me off, i like to have control over my whole family, miss that about the sims2. i think they withheld more stuff from us then the piano and hottub, and they barely attempted to improve building options, like why are the squares split into 4 if you can't always use those lines? (this is the anonoyms person from before)
There was a glitch a while back that prevented people from swapping active households. I remember having that problem; Was super annoying :/. At some point it was fixed, but I don't remember which patch. I wish the townies AI was a little more robust in regards to pairing up and having children.
Just make sure that you are swapping households from: Edit Town -> Change Active Household (will be a button on the lower left hand corner of the UI).
I have a family and the oldest son is an adult. he has a girlfriend and i was wondering if i can have him get married while his parents are still living? i can't seem to get the girlfriend to move in although she is pregnant with his baby! can they get married or can she at least move in with the family?
Well, there is a cheat. if you do the 'testingcheatsenabled on' cheat at the main menu, then right click on the girl, it should come up with 'add sim to active family' and 'trigger age transmission' - its a bit obvious you click the first one. she will be a part of the family. but make sure you have less than eight people (including possible babies) before doing this, as it will not work. but you have to build her up to liking the guy enough to marry them. they don't have to move in to be married you know. :)
yes thankyou it really did.
in the end I 'moved' the sim from my household and he now has a family of his own, he aged up though. weird, haha. thanks for all your help. (:
if abybody knows a cheat for more people in one house, speak up!
xoxo Geh
ok so the game was taking ages for the grim reaper to leave after everybody in my household died so i -object-deleted it and then i went somewhere else my member in there died as well but obviously the grim reaper didnt come so now i cant edit town because my sim is in the middle of dying ... is there anyway i can get the grim reaper back? x
yes, there is! you can use the 'force NPC' cheat using your mailbox. Once you use the 'testingcheatsenabled on' code at the menu, right-click the mailbox. Press force NPC. then somewhere will be the grim reaper. I am not so sure he will kill the person though. But it's worth a try!
I hope that helps Meg!!
Edit: The ability to add more than 8 sims to 1 household was patched out. So the instructions below no longer work in the current version of the game client :/
BTW: There's a glitchy roundabout way of raising the per-household sim cap (unsure if it still works).
There's probably either a mod or a better way of doing this somewhere...
OMG!
Why didn't I think of that?!
Thanks!
Test
i have a family of 6 and one of my girl twins won't show up anywhere no matter how many times i press view my sim .it's like she's invisible coz it just shows me the back garden and she won't do anything she wont move or at least i cant see her. is there anything i can do? or is this a glitch? plz help me she starving + exhausted
(Sorry about that. I was testing out a new antispam module which was blocking valid submissions) @40: Have you tried this cheat? resetSim [first name] [last name] (without the brackets) It should reset your sim to a neutral state. Don't know if it would fix the invisibility bug though...
Bah another blocked comment. They aren't being tagged as spam, they just aren't being published for some reason. Need to tinker with the spam block module. But anyways my apologies and here is the comment:
Sometimes the build tool is a bit daft, you may have to temporarily move any doors or objects on that wall. Hmm regarding the ghost opportunity: I'm not really sure as I don't resurrect too often. The Sims wiki page has a couple of tips listed on the bottom, hopefully they help: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Resurrecting_tips
no, you don't have to decline every other opportunity. i have resurrected before and this doesn't need to happen. The time it takes can vary.
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