The game lacks any soul or humour. Oh, and content.
I have loved the sims for a long time. I played the first game when it came out on my very first PC, now Im a 20 year old male gamer, a core gamer, who has always enjoyed sims games. To me they are not "casual". They can be played casually but one thing that you could never level at the sims games is that they were not vastly complex. Even without expansion packs, there was a fair bit to be getting on with.
However the Sims 3, despite "pro" games journalists throwing phrases at me like "INFINATLY COMPLEX" and "TONS TO EXPLORE!", I just cant see it.
The jobs yes have different branching paths, and yes the job thing has improved, you no longer need 65535 friends to get to rank 7. But there are fewer jobs and the improvements just add for another level of "stuff to do to make you struggle to do anything exciting". Infact everything is not harder, that would suggest challenge, no, instead everything is longer. Want a relationship with that sim over there? Good luck, 1-2 hours of selecting speech trees, getting slapped, time passing you by. And for what? I dont know, I dont even know a funny thing to say here, the game is just vacuous.
The art style is horrific. The noses look fuckin deformed, especially where the top of the nose meets the brow. The lips seem either too thin or too thick and the chins and jaw seem... off? The jaw is not defined enough on males yet equally not slight enough on females. Its just a lump of flesh. And the chin always seems to be razor sharp, like a marble or like a small brick under the skin. Leaving you with a soft jaw with a rediculous chin.
Also there isnt enough "stuff". Each room looks bare despite your best efforts. Put a couch, a TV, a light and a table with a phone on it in the sims 2 and you had a respectable looking small family room. Yet in the sims 3 this is not the case. Even with all that stuff it dosnt look "human" enough. It looks sterile and dare I say it... gamey.
I think the real issue here with all these asthetic issues that I have, is that the Sims 2 LOOKED like The Sims 2. It had its own art style. Much like WoW has its own art style or a comic book has an art style. That may look "aged" after a while but never "old". Art styles dont age, they just go out of fashion. But the Sims 3? It looks too much like a game. It dosnt have its own art style. The characters look too real to be concidered cute but not real enough to have a character.
The game just seems so stripped of everything. The whole dating issue earlier? I thought "ok, Im bored of idle chatter, Ill go to the restaraunt in town". So I went. And my sims went inside but my camera didnt. So instead I was treated to a day/night cycle shadow system as a fast forwarded time.
There are some cool things in the sims 3 which players of 1 and 2 will appreciate. Especially the ability to walk outside of your plot and go to your mates house for shits n giggles. But its not enough, theres not enough game there to make you want to experiance it and not enough charm to make you want to fall in love with it, despite its faults.
Avoid.
