Preview

So we know what’s probably going through your mind before you start reading this; “why preview a game that’s already out?” Well it’s too bad really, as the London event for the Sims 3 (held on the exact same 3-day span that this year’s E3 Expo was in Los Angeles) pretty much coincided with the just-passed release of the game in the States and the game’s European launch on Friday 5th, so it would have been a pretty unenlightening preview by that point (especially in this day and age where games have leaked out on frivolous torrent sites already and quite a few are probably playing it illegally as you read this.) That rampant piracy didn’t stop the game launching to impressive sales though, with 1.4 million people snapping it up within its first week in the US and launching straight to the top of the ELSPA charts at the coveted #1 spot in the UK All-Formats chart for the week.

So what’s the big deal then? As former players of the original Sims game we found it to be rather an addictive title, as per the best of Maxis’ previous Sims outings (which present strategic realtime gameplay management simulation to otherwise mundane environments, from cities to golf courses to hotels.) There are undeniable charms in its relaxing, friendly presentation, and a warm feeling when your Sim and their family are managing to get by and achieve things under your meddling guidance. GameBrit went to visit the aforementioned EA Sims 3 press event last week, this time taking place in something resembling an art house and a much cozier, personal level compared to normal press events. Despite this Gamebrit reporter having played the first game years ago (while not touching any of the expansion packs, sequels, or console ports) we approached the venue as assumed newcomers to the games, so while it was a chance to get re-accustomed to an old friend of ours there was also a chance to go over the many, many changes and improvements made to the game.

As the friendly PR girl presented us with one of the laptops running the game (at a reasonable quality considering the low spec of the machine – the game’s required specs state a 2Gig P4 processor with 1 Gig of RAM and a 128 Meg video card, and similar for Macs, will do for both Windows XP or Vista, although in the latter’s case you need a 2.4Gig P4 processor) she guided us through the familiar steps of getting started on the long road to Simdom, which all begins with the most important step – creating your Sim. Previously your Sim was a combination of different presets supplied by the game through which you made a combination looking like whoever you want it to. Those are gone now, and everything is instead controlled with sliders, dictating height, build, muscle, fat, facial details, et cetera. Presets exist for eye colours, hair colours and facial details, but if you so which you can open up a colour wheel to choose your precise eye colour or hair shade (and you can even have different-coloured tips to your hair). The face is even more customizable, and with a click the PR girl (whose name has been forgotten, unfortunately) now brought up a front and profile view of the face with markers all over it – clicking and dragging these around produced more modifications to the face, finely sculpting our Sims in our likenesses right down to that awkward bump in your nose you inherited from your dad’s side of the family. Once you’ve decided on his or her anatomical appearance you can then delve into their attire. What we found interesting was that you can select a different outfit for different social occasions, formal or casual. There are several different items of clothing (30 different tops alone from my count) and impressively these can be opened up, manipulated and added to on an individual basis – not only colours, but patterns and fabric too. Want all your clothing to have hair and make you look like Chewbacca? It’s doable! Probably.

After all your physical quirks are in place you then get to the really important bit – Traits. In previous games your Sim’s characteristics were determined by 8 or so trait bars which you increased by adding a limited number of points to each one. In this one you have 64 basic traits, such as Brave, Evil, Snobby, Empathetic, Funny, and so on, and you assign 6 of them to a Sim – conflicting ones cannot be applied, so a Sim can’t be both Good and Evil. Once they are applied, they are then calculated into further personalities for your Sim, subsets of those previous ones such as “loves to clean the house”. Not only that, but they also determine that particular Sim’s Wishes: these Wishes are their lifetime ambitions and are crucial to the overarching game progression should you want to fulfil them. They can be as simple as maintaining the greatest aquarium in the neighbourhood, or as daunting as becoming ruler of the entire free world. To add further incentive, achieving these reward you, the player, with Lifetime Happiness Points, which are kind of like Experience Points that you use to buy further enhancements for your Sim, otherwise impossible skills such as double metabolism or much better friend skills, or even the ability to teleport.

There are so many other Sims properties you can delve into that weren’t shown during the event, or you can have the game decide for you to save you getting bogged down with menus. Once you’re done, it’s time to move in to the house of your choice and start the actual Sims part of the game. This is a living, breathing suburb with various public buildings and recreational grounds. Your Sim is now no longer confined to just the turf their house is located on; instead they can happily stroll in real time to anybody else’s house in the suburb, the library to pick up a book, or the police station to do whatever bored citizens do when they’re visiting the police station. On our first visit to the park we saw quite a lot of different Sims walking around. The PR girl explained to us that, thanks to the game’s Story Progression mode, all these Sims now have independent lives too, with their own wishes and families that grow old, move away or die. It was simple enough to strike up a conversation and delight in the catfight which came as a result of our snide comments and bullish attitude (our character was Evil, so go figure.) We also saw various families enjoying picnics, which we could attend if we were outgoing enough, or, like one of us decided to do, allowed their Sim to soil themselves right next to someone’s picnic spread. Naturally all those present left in disgust and much grumbling could be heard (in the typical Sims gibberish language) but between us there was much rejoicing, as well as trying to figure out how to explain to someone who didn’t know we were playing a computer game at the time we spent the day urinating in the park and upsetting the locals.

Walking back to our house (which, due to one of our other personality traits being Bad Luck, was recently hit by a Meteor shower and the entire front room burnt to charcoal) we decided to look at the non-burnt stuff we’ve already got there. Adding to the game’s already impressive repertoire of highly customizable options, the PR girl clicked on the fridge and brought up a menu which allowed you to alter the appearance of any item in the house. Similar to clothing, you can give any object a colour, pattern or fabric, so we decided to have a furry zebra fridge. Also handy is the option to save that style as a template that can be applied to other objects in the house. You can even submit your new objects to SimExchange, an EA-monitored hub for all custom objects that can be used in the Sims 3. Items can be purchased from there with in-game Simoleans or as Downloadable Content transactions later on down the line. Speaking of online functionality, while the game does not allow for true online play with real-time Sims neighbourhood interaction or the like (“Our userbase actually prefers their gaming experience to be isolated”, the PR girl explains to us) there are quite a few admirable internet-ready functions built into the game, one of them being the Movie Maker. Obviously EA has paid attention to a lot of the machinima on Youtube these days (particularly Half-Life GMod-based clips and the popular Red Vs. Blue of Halo fame) as the game allows you to record footage of in-game happenings and bring them into a functional movie editing program, where you can cut, paste, apply effects and captions to your movies, and then upload directly to Youtube. It’s a little like EA/Maxis’ other recent create-everything-athon Spore, which offers the same feature and proved very popular during its creature creation demo release, so hopefully they can recreate the same popularity here.

Along with the more expansive house creation tools and some not-so-subtle gameplay aspects taken from Animal Crossing (collecting fish, bugs, and minerals to donate to the museum), this is certainly looking to be a game that will appeal to previous fans of the series or newcomers – Gamebrit staff that were new to the Sims now appear visibly addicted to the concept, and overall from our short hands-on with the game, this staff member’s memories of being compelled to look after their Sims and their relaxing daytime adventures cleaning rubbish and browsing the jobseekers section in the newspapers came flooding back. Sadly we weren’t able to extract more information about further plans for the series yet (when asked about any planned expansion packs and more detailed explanation on how they would handle user generated, “modded” content, we were responded to with non-committal shrugs), which is slightly disappointing but there will no doubt be information on all those things within the next few months. The Sims 3 in its current state has plenty of content though, as only the major expansion features (such as college) are missing from it. No pets though, sadly.

We would consider this a review instead of a preview had it been given more playtime, but from our experience of the game it’s actually very impressive and entertaining to play. Even with all these new additions and lifetime goals, you’re still able to play it on the same basic level as the original Sims if you so wish, or freely flow into achieving that lifetime ambition of cooking the world’s best wedding cake and earn brownie points before your Sim pops its clogs. If you haven’t already checked the game out and it sounds intriguing to you, we highly recommend it.