There are many different Sims players out there buying this game from years of playing The Sims 2, and I think some of them will be impressed with The Sims 3, while others disappointed.
Note: This review is for the base game only, and does not include any of the expansion packs.

Create-A-Sim Players: 4/5
If you have an juiced up computer, the graphics are amazing. The customization you can give a sim is also very rewarding; you can now color customize the different parts of a sim's outfit with virtually any color, and the pattern system they've created only increases the amount of customization you can give a sim's clothing. A sim's hair coloration is now broken up into four parts, all of which can be set to any color you wish. The only disadvantage I found is that there doesn't seem to be as many ways to customize the face as there had been in Sims 2; there are some new, different ways though.

House Building Players: 5/5
Because of the new pattern system in the game, building houses now has a new level of customization, making it easier to customize a house's color and texture to your liking. Another nice thing is that furniture can now be placed at angles, so you no longer have to worry about awkward placement of objects near angled walls. Just keep in mind that since this is the first game, with no expansions made yet, there is a limited amount of furniture you can use. Also, if you're only interested in building houses, its not as easy as simply clicking on the lot you wish to build, once the game starts; you actually need to be playing your saved household and then exit your household for "Edit Town," where you can then select a lot to build on.

Neighborhood Building Players: 1/5
If you were big on building neighborhoods in Sims 2, you're going to very, very disappointed. You can no longer make your own neighborhoods; you are stuck with customizing Sunset Valley (the only neighborhood that comes with the game) or downloading another neighborhood from The Sims 3 website. There are no pre-made empty neighborhoods you can create and then customize and populate. Needless to say, there is no compatibility with SimCity 4 neighborhoods either. You're stuck with Sunset Valley, and that's that.
Note: There is now a "Create a World Tool" (in beta form and only for PCs) on the official website. I personally haven't tired it, but it looks promising.

Movie/Story Players: 5/5
If you're into making movies or stories there doesn't seem to be big difference between Sims 2. Photo capture now seems to be similar to what the "Print Screen" button does on your keyboard. The quality is exactly what you see on the screen, and the size of the image is as big as your resolution for the game. Video capture options seem almost identical to Sims 2. And like Sims 2, the controls are still difficult to deal with if you're trying to make smooth transitions. Also, there is no in-game Storytelling option anymore, storytelling is mostly focused online at The Sims 3 website, where there are some neat tools you can use for editing.

Single Family Players: 4/5
If you liked only playing one household in Sims 2 (like if you were into the Legacy Challenge) Sims 3 makes it even more interesting and more realistic with the fact that the entire neighborhood ages around your sim; no more childhood friends always being children, even when your sims have become adults; no more grandchildren out-aging their grandparents because they happen to be on different lots. And not only that, but you can now explore the rest of the world, expanding the possibilities for your sims.

Multi-Family/God Players: 2/5
If you liked jumping between many different houses and creating a complex story between many different households, you may be in for a big disappointment with Sims 3. You've ultimately been demoted from being god. You can no longer save individual households for later. Once you leave a household the sims there become NPCs (characters for the computer to control) and continue on their own lives and own story without your help. This may sound odd but Sims 3 is more of a game, and less of a device to tell a huge complex story.

The Sims 2 Console Players: 5/5
For people who loved The Sims 2 for PlayStation 2, X-Box, and GameCube, The Sims 3 plays very similar to those. In fact, The Sims 3 seems like a souped up version of the console Sims 2. For people who hated The Sims 2 console games, well . . . you may not like how The Sims 3 plays.


You're liking of The Sims 3 is really going to depend on what you did and enjoyed in The Sims 2. And sadly, I have to say this game isn't for everyone who loved The Sims 2.


New Players: 3/5 - 5/5
For players who haven't played the Sims games before, from my experience, Sims has either been a hit or miss deal. You either like it or you don't. And it's hard to say whether or not you'll like it until you give it a try. Sims can be a very repetitive game, yet a very addicting game. It all depends on what entertains you. As I've said above, Sims is a very creative game, and that alone can be entertaining for hours. The customization in the game is probably one of the game's greatest assets. As far as game-play is concerned, part of the game is about making your own story, but there are also objectives ("opportunities" and "wishes") that help make the game challenging and entertaining if you're more goal-oriented. But keep in mind, if you're looking for a game with a solid plot and an ending, this isn't the game for you. Sims is a game that never ends. It's a simulation game of life, and The Sims is never short on life; even if you kill off everyone in your neighborhood, you can simply create more.
[This part wasn't originally in the review, but I figured since I was focusing on people who were familiar with The Sims 2, I decided to add this.]

If you are going into Sims 3 thinking of it as an improved Sims 2 you will be disappointed.

The Sims 3 is a "Sims Type Game". It's like the previous Sim games but not quite. Sims 2 was about creating your own storyline. Sims 3 is about rolling with the punches. The game will change things in the neighborhood at random. People will die, move out, have children...the neighborhood is constantly changing. Like someone else said, the game is rather like an RPG. If you liked having complete control like in Sims 2 then you may not like this game.

Also, if you did not know. With Story Progression mode on Sims will leave town. Meaning they will disappear. Not only townies, your custom made Sims can be randomly deleted. It is not a glitch. It is an actual feature of the game. It's difficult to understand why EA thought having Sims randomly deleted was a good idea, but it's there.

There is an option to turn off Story Progression which is supposed to stop life changing events. Unfortunately this button does not work. Story Progression being such an important part of Sims 3, you have to wonder how this got by EA quality control. To me this is unexcusable. Fans have every right to be angry about this. Even before the game released this was a widely known problem. Everybody expects bugs, but for an important feature of the game to outright not work is ridiculous.

Next, the controls. Sims 3 controls: Clumsy. In Sims 2 the controls are simple, friendly, and easy to use. Sims 3 controls are strangely clunky and makes you jump through alot of hoops for something as simple as switching families. Get ready to learn the new and sometimes confusing interface.

Onto the Sims looks. Even after watching all of the promotional videos I did not realize the Sims 3 Sims were quite so chubby. There are ways to slim down the face in CAS but once you actually start playing them they look chubby again. After many hours of playing I have actually grown accustomed to their looks so it doesn't bother me as much now. If looks are very important to you this maybe a dealbreaker.

The Camera. Camera movement is not as smooth as in TS2. It's very touchy and jumpy. After getting used to the controls I'm getting better at using it but at the same time it lacks the smoothness of Sims 2. This is not because of my computer. My computer way exceeds the minimum requirements for Sims 3. The game itself is just plain laggy. Some advice for those frustrated with the right click screen drag, go into options and enable edge scrolling this will alleviate some of your frustration.

Onto the Pros!
The seamless neighborhood is gorgeous. This is one thing EA got right. I almost never left home in TS2. In TS3 going into town is one of my favorite things about the game. The scenery is beautiful. Go to the beach and lookout onto the water, it's moving, glimmering, and looks so alive.
I built my Sim home right next to a waterfall. Beautiful!

Traits system. I really enjoy the traits system. You can now make truly unique personalities. The little personality quirks of my Sims make me smile. Like if you have a neurotic Sim, they will want to check the sink constantly to make sure it's not dirty. A loner Sim will become upset at being around other Sims. An insane Sim will talk to himself.

Color Options. I love being able to give my Sims crazy colored hair and eyes. You can also recolor almost anything.

Improved AI. It's not obvious, but I do think the Sims are more intelligent in Sims 3. They are better at doing things by themselves. Frustratingly they still do the footstomp when their route is blocked.

Overall it's an entertaining game similar to The Sims games. But I am disappointed by the number of technical issues the game has. My advice to Sim fans is DO NOT uninstall Sims 2. I'm very glad I did not uninstall TS2. There are things TS2 still does better. It's much simpler and easier to play. I will be going back and forth between TS2 and TS3, enjoying the similarities and the differences.

EDIT: Hi I just wanted stress one thing. What EA did with The Sims 3 was take away creative control from the player. This is what made so many fans angry. I'm sure the anger will simmer down over time but the overall disappointment and missed potential will remain. The Sims 2 was about playing GOD. It is an integral part of what made The Sims so successful and loved. For EA to have taken that away from the player is a blow to a large group of The Sims fanbase. Now, it's still possible they will add more controls in future expansion packs so I'm not giving up on this game yet. It has a lot of potential and I would like EA to use it to it's fullest.

Like many of the other reviewers here, I have been a HUGE fan of The Sims franchises, losing many pleasant hours to The Sims 1 and its wonderful sequel The Sims 2. Even before The Sims came out I was a Maxis fan, playing games like Sim City and Sim Tower with pleasure.

I can't say that The Sims 3 has "disappointed" me because the more I heard about the new game over its development period the more I thought to myself "why are they including this feature or dropping that feature? It sounds like they are tampering with the heart of the things I enjoy about The Sims". But I bought the game anyway in good faith. Needless to say I am now back to playing The Sims 2. The Sims 3 has no interest for me at all in comparison. Despite all the "improvements" - and I admit there are some surface ones - the heart and soul of what The Sims means to me is absent from this game.

Unlike other reviewers here, my negative review of this game is not due to any technical difficulties. Perhaps I haven't played long enough to experience any, and at any rate - every hard-core Sims fan has learned to live with the bugs shipped with the game and love it anyway. The modding community has always done a sterling job of cleaning up our games and making them more playable and enjoyable. So my negative rating is not due to bugs or crashes - it is purely based on my perception of the game's enjoyment factor, especially when compared to The Sims 2.

To be fair, I will sum up what to me are improvements to the game compared to The Sims 2:

- the "open neighbourhood" - the ability to go from one place to the other without a loading screen is a fine idea and works well in principal. But I found that it really didn't impact my playing habits as much as you might think at first. While playing a large, busy family there would be very little time to go rushing off to the park or elsewhere and I found I was "household" focussed in my game playing just as much as in The Sims 2. I actually prefer in some ways the way community lots worked in The Sims 2. If you could organise your sims enough to go off to a community lot, time would actually stand still in the meantime, taking the pressure off your enjoyment of this change in pace for your sims.

- No doubt about it, the "Create a Style" colour wheel/pattern maker is the one thing that is far superior to recolouring in The Sims 2. It's great fun and so easy to go through and match up clothing, furniture, wallpaper, etc in an obsessive fashion that suits my type of playing down to the ground. But even here is a caveat - there is no Body Shop type program to truly customise textures. You can recolour only which is hardly satisfying in a creative way compared to being able to extract a texture and import it into Photoshop, thereby putting your own personal stamp on the texture. For example, in The Sims 2 you could export a dress texture and by pasting on a texture of your own you could make the outfit appear to be a cardigan and skirt instead.
I am sure custom content creators in time will come up with ways of importing new meshes/textures into The Sims 3, but it is obvious that EA is trying to limit this type of thing to the "regular" user right from the beginning by eliminating a "Bodyshop" program from their development tools.

- The ease of angle rotation is an unmixed blessing in this game - something that I wish had happened in The Sims 2

- The outdoor scenery in The Sims 3 is gorgeous from the beach, the shimmering water, to the parks, rolling hills etc. But the limitations put on being able to make this neighbourhood your own again shows up the inflexibility built into this game. Whereas in The Sims 2 you could completely customise your neighbourhood, building it up from a terrain created in Sim City, to decorating it and laying out your lots etc, in this game, EA gives you this beautiful scenery and then severely limits your ability to customise it. You cannot create your own terrain, the community lot buildings are the same everywhere and are not even properly functional, and there are a limited number of lots for your houses. It feels like a "dumbed down" version of a neighbourhood to me that even the "open plan" of the game cannot make up for.

- There are a lot more surface details to gameplay in The Sims 3 by the way of person and object interactions and the little missions/opportunities that pop up. I do appreciate the amount of thought that has gone into a lot of these things, like adding depth to the career paths and making such things as painting a picture personal to every different type of sim. But again, when playing a busy family (six kids!) I found that I would just click the opportunities away as an annoyance without even reading them. There was no way my busy mother or father could go running off to the town park for a chess tournament when they were caring for screaming toddlers at home!

- The lighting of the new game is a nice update and beautiful. It is also flexible if you have the time or inclination to mess around with the many options provided

So even the improvements included in The Sims 3 are mostly mixed blessings for me!

Here are the things that have decided me against the game:

- The sims themselves. Try as I might, I cannot bond with these weird looking people and that bond between the player and their "Simmies" is the major factor that holds many Sims fans in thrall. For a start, these creations just don't look like sims to me. It is laughable that the creators of this game are claiming that the sculpting tools given to create a sim are more flexible and customisable than in The Sims 2! In fact the sliders are very limited in their scope and have less points of difference than those provided in "Bodyshop". That round-faced, chinless look that we all noticed and wondered at in preview pictures of this game is there for the very specific reason that you can't provide your sim with a proper chin and all of them look blobby and quite fat in the face. The noses look like they are just stuck on anyhow and look very unfortunate in profile. And the empty-looking eyes roll in a very disconcerting and unappealing alien manner.
The sims toddlers and children - one of my prime delights in The Sims 2 - all look very ugly and all look exactly the same. One couple I played had six children, just to check out the genetics and all of them looked like peas in a pod until they got to their adult years, and even then the differences were minimal. It was very unsatisfying spending so much time and energy raising these unappealing little clones!

- Obviously, I have had trouble creating sims I like to look at. That wouldn't matter as much if I could love the way these sims act and interact. If you think back to The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 what charmed fans of these games was how cute, quirky, funny, unexpected and unique all these characters seemed to the player. I don't accept the criticism the developers of this new game kept stating that "all previous sims games had sims who were all the same and all they wanted to do all the time was go to the toilet!" Well really - do they think The Sims 1 and 2 would have been such world-wide successes if this were actually true?? Of course not! Our sims charmed us, made us laugh, surprised us and often took their own little lives in their own hands and pulled the game in a direction all their own.

The two things promised by The Sims 3 creators about how the new sims would behave were 1) There would be a lot more time to attend to the sims' lives and less need to run around after them caring for their basic "needs" - such as sending them to the toilet or to bed; and 2) the new "traits" system would ensure truly unique behaviour from the sims and open up entirely new vistas of personalities and interactions for sims fans to enjoy.

I'm sorry to say, but I have to rebut both of these stated improvements.
1)I think every Sims 3 player, no matter how dedicated a fan they are will admit that you spend more time waiting for your sims to fulfil needs than ever before. You spend ages just watching them sleep every night. They seem to have bladder and hunger needs that are never satiated, and you spend more boring time staring at their work building while they are off at work. So between taking them to work, watching them sleep, fulfilling their needs and trying to skill up, there is actually zero time left in a sims' busy day to take them to the park, the beach or visit a neighbour! How is this the "new balance" of life over needs that the developers were so proudly proclaiming??

2) As for the "traits" system - that has to be the biggest disappointment of all. Sure, picking different traits for your sims will give them some very superficial differences, such as different interaction possibilities with other sims, or different animations. but at a deeper level, each and every sim seems the same over and over again. I think the main reason I say this is if you watch a household full of sims who all supposedly have a unique set of traits, you don't see them acting differently unless you tell them to. In fact they barely interact with one another at all if you don't tell them to. They ignore one another and spend their time being boring - fulfilling the endless needs or perhaps using a skill object. They don't care to interact with one another at all! It is quite possible to have two sims living in the same house forever and they remain total strangers to one another. You have to force them to interact which I find really annoying - I had hoped that they might work out their own relationships as they did in The Sims 2. Another annoying thing is the lack of familial affection between sims. Unlike The Sims 2, you never see a parent hug, kiss or play with a child unless you tell them to. You just don't feel that these sims love/care about one another at all, and I remember that feeling that "love is real" between sims being the primary and most striking point that charmed me when The Sims 2 came out.

I am sorry to say, if I compare the depth of personality of a houseful of Sims 2 and 3 sims, the Sims 2 sims would win hands down. In Sims 2, they would take one another in like or dislike, be attracted to some and repulsed by others. The parents would hug their kids when they got home from work, and kiss them goodnight. Husbands and wives would find a quiet corner and canoodle in a very romantic way. In Sims 3 they all coldly ignore one another and act in boring and one-dimensional ways, totally uninfluenced by their so-called "unique traits".

This lack of true feeling for my sims and between the sims themselves is my primary reason for calling this latest instalment "soulless". How can you feel attached to these ugly, alien-like people who all look and act the same?

- I do not care for one of the key selling points of The Sims 3 - the so-called "story progression". Which sim fan really wants to leave their playable family for a little while only to come back and find they've moved out of the neighbourhood, or had a family while you're not looking with kids you didn't get to name? Where is the appeal in that? Most sims fans love to micro-manage their sim's lives - who they love, marry, have kids with, what they name their kids, where they choose to live, etc. Even more frustrating, the ability to turn story progression off is broken!! Good one, EA!!

Another one of my criticisms is that EA has written out some of the most enjoyable and endearing elements of The Sims 2. Eliminating these things really proves to me how little the developers of the game understood the things that true Sims fans love about their games. Here are some as an example:

- Story mode is gone. Yes I know there is a camera and yes I know they have all this fancy equipment that enables you to easily upload stories and movies onto the web to share. But I bet 90% of Sims players are not all that interested in sharing stories on the world wide web. The Sims has always been a highly personal game - a fantasy world unique to each sims player, and making up and sharing sims stories is not the driving reason to play the game for most. It is to get lost in your own little self-created kingdom and fall in love with the little pixels that people it.
In Sims 1 & 2, using the camera as I played and building up an album for each little family became a mainstay of my playing style over the years. Most of the time I would not even add text to the pictures. They would be safely stored in each family's little album and every once in a while I would choose to browse through this visual record of my sims' little lives and enjoy again the sentimental, surprising, funny little incidents that marked the passage of that family's life. I would record the unexpected or charming little things that made my sims seem unique, like when my prim little sim teenager fell in love with the neighbourhood "bad boy" all on her own and against any of my expectations. Or when my shy, nerdy sim who lived with a party animal room-mate spent all her time in her room reading on the bed or, of all things - washing the windows! whenever her room-mate threw one of her wild parties!
Not having this record at hand of the family's little story in Sims 3 is definitely a contributing factor to the feeling of the game having little forward progression - every day seems like the one before.

- Eliminating memories from the Sims is another way EA has wiped out the sense you might have of the family's story and history. I know memories caused all sorts of trouble in The Sims 2 if you moved sims indiscriminately from one neighbourhood to the next, but I think for many of us, having that sim's little milestones recorded in their memories really gave the sim a feel of individuality and personal growth. After not playing a particular family for a long time the first thing I would do would be to flip through the family's album and check their memories. This would put me back in touch with where the family was in their own particular life story.

- Another charming Sims 2 feature that was wiped out was the attraction system. I know the original Sims 2 game did not ship with this, but it was added early on in one of the expansion packs and I am sure every Sims 2 fan absolutely loved it. It was another way to differentiate sims from one another. You could create down to the finest detail two sims who you thought would be "perfect" for each other, only to find they couldn't stand each other! Then two of the unlikeliest sims would get together all of their own accord, making you feel that these little people had minds and hearts of their own. I loved this feature so much that my playing style was to resolutely let each sim choose his or her own mate with no help from me.

There are other reasons for me not to like this highly polished, highly superficial instalment of The Sims franchise. But in the end, it came down to these basic feelings about the game
- I don't care how gorgeous it is to look at if the gameplay is shallow and boring
- I feel like EA is really dumbing down long-time sims fans by trying to eliminate custom content, charging like a wounded bull for their sub-standard stuff and doing their best to stifle the creativity of the custom content community
- The sims are cookie-cutter clones of one another, and have no charm either of physical appearance or personality. The life and soul has been sucked out of these pixel-people
- There is no sense of story, no unexpected interactions, no story mode or memories to record the sims lives. They no longer care about one another at all - parents, children, lovers, room-mates, friends - it doesn't matter what relationship the sims have to one another, there is no desire for these people to interact or develop their relationships unless you force it.

I am mad at EA for "missing the boat" on this franchise upgrade. In fact, it no longer feels like The Sims at all to me. All the charm and spontaneity has gone out of the game. I suppose it's not surprising I feel this way - Will Wright and his unique Maxis team of developers are long gone and EA has taken over. EA have no idea, and do not care what made The Sims beloved of fans the world over and instead are forcing something on them that has only a surface relationship to previous games. Much in the same way they "improved" Sim City out of all recognition of the original game ("Sim City Societies"), they have done this to The Sims and that, I think is unforgivable.

Fortunately, The Sims 2 will always be here and I am gladly getting back to my cute, funny, irreverent, surprising little sims with the huge added bonus of all the expansion packs and custom content I have built up over the years. I doubt if I will ever come back to The Sims 3 even if they bring out boatloads of expansion packs. If the game has no soul, it cannot be loved.

I have read where others stated they had problems installing, and crashing issues. I do not doubt them at all, however, I myself did not have those issues. I have been customizing on the game for several hours today (and some late last night when the hubby went to sleep :D) and I haven't crashed yet. No problems saving either (knock on wood)
My game hasn't lagged one time, but I do have a beefed up machine. I only say that to state that there are those of us (seems to be few) that have had no installing or playing issues....I am sorry for those that did! That is so frustrating!

Now....character creation! I am a girl that LOVES to create things. I will spend over an hour creating my sim to get them "just right". I have been disappointed with the character creation system. When you make an adult sim, it doesn't matter what you do...they are going to look well over 40! They also have very hard lines in the face and that under chin fat that you cannot get rid of. My cute girl as a young adult went from adorable to atrocious with one click of a mouse! Most people do NOT age that way, why does my sim have to!
Also, be warned....if you make a character look cute in creation....she/he will look like a walking zombie in the actual game. I was SHOCKED at how different character creation and actual game play differ. I have my graphics turned up on very high in all areas, and I guess it could be a "lighting issue" but I doubt it. Maxis....dark circles and hard lines are NOT ATTRACTIVE!!!!!!!
Veterans of Sims 2 that loved to customize every single detail of your sim will be let down with sims 3. I feel the creation system is limited to a certain degree....in other words, no matter what you do, all of them will be similar looking to each other in one way or another. There just isn't enough free room to customize.
I will say this, I do love how easy it is to change the color or pattern of your clothes. One click of your mouse and you can turn a white top black...or pink and purple polkadots....whatever you want it to be...well whatever is available from Maxis..lol
Ok....now that that is off my chest I can move on....lol

Game play is not that different from Sims 1 and 2. Yes, as others have mentioned you can trait up your sims on a larger scale...in other words, way more customizable. That is awesome! Is your sim a good kisser that will leave every sim breathless with memories that will haunt them forever? Are they a family gal/guy that enjoys hanging around the house or outdoors? You decide! I like that. You can pick 5 traits (there are probably 25 to chose from) and one life time goal. You may be able to add more traits by saving points later...I'm still playing to find out!

Visually, the game looks the same as Sims 2 to me (minus the cartoon looking character), the animations are about the same, nothing amazing jumps out at me. The buildings look good and the seamless neighborhood is nice. Guess what....there is always a but. You can only chose one family to play at a time, and while you play that family....your other ones are continuing to age. You can MISS OUT on your other sims just by freakin playing the game on another character. That is just wrong! (ok maybe I feel that way because I take 15 million hours to create my sims lol)...but I want to SEE them grow old. I have even heard of situations of your other sims moving off on you! Maxis did add an option to turn Aging Off though. You can either have your sims age without you seeing it, or not age at all. I wish they would allow you to turn off aging in other homes while you are playing a sim that you chose to age. Oh well, maybe they will add that later.

I must hit on one major problem to me. CONTENT! OH MY GOOD GRIEF! In the game, you get very few basic furniture, clothes, hairstyles ect.... way way less than what you got with sims 2. The thing that freaked me out was their "point" system. In order to get better content, you have to buy points from Maxis web site using REAL MONEY. Let me give an example. I saw a pretty Set of antique looking furniture they made. It probably comes with 10 new items in the set. It would cost me $20.00 in REAL LIFE CASH to buy just that set! One sec...let me go vomit.....
I mean come on! Greedy bastages! In order to get new items for your game, you better get ready to fork out the big bucks. All I can say is, I hope that the amazing Sims community can come up with some way of creating custom FREE content. If not, I will be sticking to Sims 2!

I am continuing to play, as I do I will give more thoughts on things exp game mechanics ect... though so far nothing much has been that different. I will give more thoughts on that soon!

Honestly if I were about to buy this game....I think I would hold off a bit until it drops in price. As is, it is NOT worth 50 bucks with what you get!

I am a huge sims fan, and have been since the first game hit the shelves. Since then, I have bought every new expansion pack, and moved on to the next installment when it came.

I wish I could say I was as impressed by The Sims 3 as I was with its predecessor. However, while there are wonderful new additions, they are slightly hampered down by some poor choices on EA's part.

A few of the pro's in this game are of course the seamless neighborhood, which is more immersive, and makes for a interesting change from the constant loading screens.

The personality traits add a whole new level of richness to sim's personalities.

The improved create a sim make personalization so much easier and intuitive than before.

The doll house aspects of making your sim eat, pee, shower, and sleep has been replaced by more intelligent sims.

However, even with all this improvements, there are flaws.

You are only given four save slots, which means you can only follow a maximum of four families. While this is nice as it allows you to have multiple versions of a nhood, it is extremely limiting, and it doesnt seem like maxis has plans right now to add more.

You no longer get to place lots, for you are stuck with the lots included, which can not be expanded or deleted.

The revamped build/buy mode looks pretty, but its counter intuitive. its pictoral version often clumps catagories closely together, meaning you want to go to windows, but accidently click walls or roofs, and have to navigate back to click on the window again.

The graphics in general are not a major overhaul of the previous installment. though the nhood is more complicated and visual, you are usually more focused on your houses and sims to be bothered with it. sims are more detailed, but they now seem out of place as the objects and houses themselves are not dramatically different looking.

coupled with the massive cpu drain that is the game even on good computers *after promising the game would run well on older computers*, the sims 3 has its faults, but shines in other areas.

EA however has alot they need to rethink in the coming expanison to make the game truly shine.

The angry sims community has been lashing out at this new version rather harshly, and for some rightly so. There are tales of crashes and performance issues and other bugs galore. But overall, if you are able to play it, step back and take a deep breath, you will see that is a nice step up from the second installment.

Many things about Sims 2 really bugged me, and alot of people. Things that really made it more annoying than fun to play. Monitoring the bladder and food intake was your main goal as your peeps couldn't figure out to do this on their own. Then much of the time if your Sim was unhappy about something they would wave their arms at you and babble. Try to figure out what they wanted if you could. The other big problem (for me) was the time issue when your Sim(s) went out of the house. They would leave at, say, 7pm -- head out for a night on the town and do all sorts of stuff, and when they came back -- stupidly nothing had changed from their home. Still 7pm. But all their gauges were down. It really made no sense.

Thankfully, that sort of disconnect is probably the biggest change in this new version. Many people here are screaming that it is a minor change -- but i would have to disagree. This TOTALLY changes how you play. The world is a living breathing place that continues on 24 hrs a day rather than taking some weird time warp machine every so often.

The graphics have also gotten an improvement but it's not something that's going to bring Crysis to mind. They are fairly similar to the last version but noticeably improved details and shading make them better. The biggest thing is that the game renders the entire town at once, your home and the outside world. This is a tradeoff for just making the game prettier.

That being said, the animation is frustrating at times as Sims still have robotic ways of doing things. And they tend to do things in simple step by step manner rather than grouping tasks.

The timespace issue is still going on and it is still one of the more frustrating things. That it takes 4 hours to get up, take a shower, make breakfast and clean the counter is bizarre. Many times you can't really do much but that and go to work. My Sim will take about 1.5 hours to recycle a few newspapers because they are not smart enough to pick them all up and put them away.

That being said -- it is alot easier to enjoy this game. Their are more goals and challenges to each day that are far more interesting than previous ones. When you go to work you can choose what your Sim does at work without actually seeing them do it (hoping for an expansion pack to address that.) Does it matter? YES! Why doesn't time just rush along like before? Because you need to monitor what your sim is doing.

The new Moodlets area is brilliant. It finally gives you a clear insight into what you are doing right and wrong so you can work to modify it or keep it going. This removes so much of the frustration of the previous game.

So that is just a taste of the major good and bad points of the new game. Personally I'm glad I didn't listen to all of the bad ratings here to keep from getting it.

But -- there are some bad catches to beware of:

-- The Mac version is flawed graphically and has some really bad aliasing. They are aware of it and are working on it, but for now play it on a PC or boot up in Boot Camp and play that way.

-- There seems to be a real lack of objects and "stuff" in the game. This is easily remedied by going to the Sims3.com site and buying them. But, as many have pointed out, they are vastly overpriced. If this is the wave of the future then I think most people will take a pass. The prices are exorbitant and the value compared to add-on packs is low. Hopefully they will see the light and make them more in line. (As an example, one set of themed furniture that has 40 pieces or so will set you back $20!) No thanks.

-- Time doesn't speed up as it did previously. Whether this is intended or a bug, not sure. But be prepared to sit around for 2-5 minutes every time your Sim sleeps. Watching them.... sleep.... zzzzzz.

So no, this game is not perfect. But I don't feel it is the colossal disappointment that many would have you think. I'm guessing some of the more obvious things will go away with patches. Some will be taken care of with future expansions. And some may be here to stay.

If you are obsessive about micro-managing each of your Sim's lives- this game is not for you. Turning off story progression doesn't work. Your Sims will marry, adopt, get promoted, etc. without you if you're playing another family. There have also been reports of Sims moving away, never to be seen again; not so great when you spent hours crafting a family.

If, however, you are willing to give up ultimate control, this is a new and different game. Personally, I'm a little relieved not to have to stay with each family just to get them to age up at the right time so certain children can grow up and marry each other, or grandparents not aging past adult while their great great grandchildren are already married with kids. They will grow up, grow old and die without you. I like that. It's not the ultimate expansion pack for Sims 2- it is a new world of Simming. If you love Sims 2, don't uninstall it.

There are trade offs. We now have more leeway with body types, sliders for muscular or skinny, but we have less diversity in facial features. It's still possible to make a good looking Sim, though, despite how they look on the box! There is the great ability to customize the color or patterns of clothing and objects, but the amount of clothing and content is clearly and blatantly lacking in order to persuade people to spend money on EA custom content. No matter- I'm sure the talented Sims creator community will make plenty of free stuff for us to download soon enough.

My personal issue with the game is that the greatest thing, which is the seamless neighborhood- no load screens to go anywhere- just isn't that interesting. Most buildings are rabbit holes, so your Sim goes in and you can't see them or the interior of the building. Creativity has definitely been stifled in most ways compared to Sims 2; I definitely think it's best not to compare this game to its predecessor and imagine it as a separate offshoot of the Sims brand. Anyone looking for a Sims 2 Extreme will be absolutely disappointed. Those who approach it with an open minded curiosity and the understanding that we have to wait for hacks, mods and custom content, not to mention the inevitable patches and expansion packs (after all, what serious Simmer could have real fun playing the Sims 2 BASE game with nothing added??? not me!) will have a good time playing what is right now simply a cute, novel time waster.

Going from Sims 1 to Sims 2 was amazing. The new graphics, the new camera controls, customizing your Sim's facial features, etc, etc, etc. Sadly, there isn't that sense of "wow" in Sims 3.

That's okay, I didn't expect a COMPLETE overhaul of the game like we saw with Sims 2. The Sims 2 is great game, and "if ain't broke, don't fix it" right?

Well, here's what I DID expect the Sims 3 to have:

1. I expected all new animations, interactions, objects, hairstyles, and so on. There is new stuff, but I feel that more than 50% of the content in this game is ported from the Sims 2. To me, this is plain lazy and shouldn't have been accepted. I would understand if a fraction of content was duplicated, but not half. It seems to me that if they wanted to do it that way, then Sims 3 should have been called The Sims 2 Upgrade.

2. I expected there to be a noticeable difference between life stages. Maybe I'm being picky here, but the "young adult" and "adult" life stages look the same to me. And the biggest changes from going from "teen" to "young adult" are new clothing options and no more school. That's it. Yeah. Furthermore, the only way that I've been able to tell the ages of the Sims that I meet, is by going to the "Throw Party" option. The screen that comes up is the only place I can find that tells me whether a Sim is a teen, young adult, or adult. It is not obvious from their picture or appearance. If you click on their picture, it gives you some info on who they are but it does not tell you their age. This is a hassle when I'm trying to find a mate for my Sim and I would like them to be in the same life stage.

3. I expected Sims 3 to give me baby girls!!!! I'll admit that this probably only applies to me. I've had three generations so far, eight sims babies total, and they are all boys. I even tried saving the game right before birth and reloading it to see if the baby would change gender. None of them did. I don't know if other people are having this problem, but it is kind of disappointing how all of the children in my families are the same gender.

4. I expected Sims 3 to utilize genetics in order to produce unique Sims. Once I got two boys born at different times that looked like twins. Not one feature different. The same thing happened a second time except that one boy was slightly skinnier than the other. I don't mind all that much, but in my opinion Sims should not be identical unless they are twins.

5. I expected to follow my Sim to the bookstore and to a restaurant. The movie theater and job buildings I can understand, but when my Sim disappeared into a restaurant, I couldn't believe it. And "it may be included in an expansion pack" is no excuse. Restaurants were a fantastic social gathering place in both Sims 1 and Sims 2. If the option is there, then it should be fleshed out. Once again, EA was being lazy.

6. I expected more new content. Yeah, I already mentioned this, but this is the reason why this game is getting two stars instead of four. Because as annoying as those other disappointments are, this is the one that cripples this game. The entire children's toys section is copied from Sims 2, excluding the blocks table. And that's just one section. Don't get me started on the animations and social interactions. I don't understand how the next version of my favorite game could let me down this much.

7. I expected EA to not charge me twice for the same game. Paying for stuff at the Sims 3 exchange?! Do I have to explain this one? No thank you, EA. I will wait for the community to distribute better quality custom content for free. And when tools are released for creating CC, I will create and post my things for free because the Sims community revolves around free content.

Sims 3 isn't all bad. After all, I am playing it. The best part of Sims 3 for me is that I can kick out my Sim siblings and they can take care of themselves. This is wonderful since I like to play Legacy style. Another good thing is that townies are more attractive. You get a beastly one here and there, but your Sims community no longer looks like a freak show. There's more diversity in skin colors and body shapes. Thanks to the map, you get a sense that your Sims live in a community rather than floating around outer space somewhere.

There are many great things about Sims 3. Unfortunately, the failings outweigh the successes. I don't think EA spent very much time at all thinking about the features and upgrades they could put into Sims 3. I feel like they came up with just enough features to justify it being a "3" instead of an "EP" so that they could make money. It's a fun game, but it doesn't feel like a new game.

First, I was one of those lucky people who went through installation hell. I have two computers that are far above the minimum requirements for the game but I could not make the game work in one of them no matter how hard I tried. From my research online I guess this is a major issue with many people. I even had trouble with the installation itself (the now famous redundancy error). I cannot accept that they released a game that doesn't even install correctly.

Second the game itself. It is an incredible step backwards from Sims 2. We lose the load screens which indeed sucked, but we lose SO much more. The Sims very animation is poor, they always look a bit fat and their heads are too big (actually their faces are too big, their heads are ok). Those faces on the cover were generated on Photoshop, and no way they were a result from the game.

The jobs and needs were actually improved, but they are implemented on a game that lacks all that which made the previous ones great. The Sims seem more stupid and reluctant to follow directions. The number of objects is really small and the expressions and body language are the same from Sims 2 but the difference in color and animation only serves to remind you of what you aren't playing. The greater loses are with the female Sims they never look feminine at all. It is very strange.
That and some crashes made me place the game back on the shelf. In a couple of months I'm sure there will be a patch (or more...) that will reduce the crashes and the number of objects will larger with downloads. As of now we have a bad beta version of a game that is actually inferior to what Sims 2 was when released.

Wow EA really jacked this one up. Sims 2 was probably the single greatest wide interest game ever made. Appealing to everyone from 8 year old kids to baby-boomers, there was so much right about the game (ease of use, the fun of designing and building custom houses, the excellent expansion packs, the fantastic user made content, etc.) that perhaps it would be unfair to expect Sims 3 to be better than Sims 2. However, I AT LEAST expected it to be playable, and reasonably similar to Sims 2 in quality and fun. To sum up the rest of this review: It's nowhere close. It stinks. It's unplayable due to crashes (for me at least). It's a buggy, unfun, massive step backwards from Sims 2.

So what makes it so bad?

First off, the game crashes nearly constantly. It is not my computer. I own and successfully play dozens of computer games including the most graphics intensive on the market. (For the nerds, I have a i7 processor, 6gb ram, and crossfired ATI HD4870s). These problems are due to buggy code and terrible beta testing. This game should never have been released in this state of unfinished unplayability.

They have also removed many of the things I liked best about Sims two like the ability to construct a neighborhood from scratch and then play each family and watch your Sims interact, make friends and enemies, get married to each other, etc... You are now forced to play a single family at a time. Start a new family and your old ones become NPCs (non player controlled) characters. You can never go back once you start a new one. Why EA, why? This singlehandedly ruined the game for me.

Next is the drastic step backwards in ease and fun of playability. Why they decided to jack with the control mechanisms that every Sims 2 player is accustomed to, or slow time down to the point that I started falling asleep watching my Sim sleep with nothing to do in the game to keep me interested, and why EA released the game with a deplorably low number of home furnishings, I don't know. It's like a horrible nightmare where instead of games progressing and improving, they're regressing towards oblivion. The menus are just clumsy, hard to use, and so very much worse than Sims 2. If you loved the Sims 2 menus, you will HATE these.

The camera is also bad, in that sort of early generations Nintendo 64 way where you can never get it to do what you want it to do with regularity. It seems to have a mind of its own, and controlling it is as frustrating as the terrible controls.

Making attractive Sims is about as easy as sculpting the masterpiece David from play dough. All my Sims look fat, ugly, and just not what I had in mind. It is Uber hard to get a face the way you want it to look. It is even harder to make a nice looking Sim than the character creation system in Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls. If you like plump, slightly froggish looking Sims, you'll love it.

For interior design, rather than giving you a solid and complete set of home furnishings, you are instead offered very few selections, but the ability to make them patterned. Oh joy! What I really want is about 6 options of sofas, most of them ugly, but that I can apply plaid or camouflage skins to! That's so much better than having say 12 sofa varieties right? Not so much. This strikes me as either laziness, or that EA released the game intentionally sparse so they can sell even more add on packs later. Except they missed the entire point: the reason they sold so many add on packs for Sims 2 was that the core game was so good!

Overall this might be one of the worst failures in modern PC game history. Destroying a famed (even legendary) series of games like the Sims franchise by changing core elements and just doing a flat out poor job of quality control is abysmal. EA will need to heavily patch this game to make it worth playing, and by the time they do that, it might be too late.

My recommendation: sell your copy on an auction site. At least then you can get back some of your money and buy something else.