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| Source // Steam |
My history with The Sims series has been minimal at best. The Sims has never grabbed my attention. I've never seen the point in playing it, I don't know what the fuss is about, but do enjoy your digital dolls house without me, I'm fine over here, thanks.
It wasn't until playing The Sims 2 for this 1001 list the way it was meant to be played - as a joke - that I started to get an idea of why people spend hours and hours in this absurd life simulation. But even then, I know for sure I didn't pass the hour mark and would bet I barely got to 30 minutes before calling it quits.
So how will The Sims 3 fare? I know how it's meant to be played now: with absolutely no semblance of sense or purpose. The playground is ready and waiting... and so is the rest of the neighbourhood.
Fun Times
I've had to resort to console ports to play previous entries in The Sims, but in The Sims 3, I finally have a PC version that actually wants to run, and shows off the world of The Sims in the kind of detail that I've not seen in it before, with no need for a controller to get myself around.
Frustrations
My mouse sure is getting a workout, though. From declining to register and log in to an account, to increasing some sort of Happiness Points counter in the loading screens, and finally, to the option of whether I want edge scrolling on my camera, The Sims 3 is a little front heavy on the menus and the message alerts.
We need an actual Sim to do that, so we better create another Frank. He won't be a layabout this time around. He'll have drive, and ambitions, and dodgy clothing.
The character creation suite looks a lot nice this time around, and don't worry, these aren't the clothes I'm walking around in all day. You can set up different outfits for different occasions, and the last on the list is the swimming pool. I don't wear shorts, but the reason I do here is that as soon as I found out there were multiple outfits to create, I stuck with the defaults...
What's important to note, however, are the interests and desires that you set for yourself. Your Sims are smarter this time out and will take care of the tedious stuff themselves. Where you step in is in nudging them forward in search of their dreams - how does published author sound?
There are houses for most budgets, but 'The Monotone' stood out, and so did Frank, standing outside the front door, waiting for the camera control tutorial to finish. I could skip the tutorial, I suppose, but if I'm going to give The Sims 3 a chance, I better learn how to make my life easier.
As it turns out, zooming in and out is fine, rotating the camera takes an absolute age, if it works at all, and while I'm fairly sure I turned edge scrolling on, it's not edge scrolling. Good start.
I buy the cheapest I could find, and that's both in terms of in-game currency and whatever real-world currency conversion in fancy Sim dollars there is for premium items or something along those lines. There's no way I'd pay actual money for a digital sofa, by the way. That's just utterly ridiculous.
Sitting down for a minute, Frank has fulfilled his first wish: to literally sit down on his new sofa. "Oh boy. This is going to be fun..." I find myself thinking.
The next wish of his makes more sense. If he wants to write, he needs to learn how to read at least, and to do that we can either go and buy some cheap books or go and read some free books at the library. Click on your Sim to bring up a contextual menu of things to do, and click whatever seems appropriate.
Before the Library has even had a chance to load in, Frank's already taken a taxi there (I'd have walked). What shall we read? I don't care. I tell him to read a book, so he picks out a book and finds a chair.
Just as I'm about to sit down, River takes our seat, and we awkwardly shuffle over to the other seat. That'll make for a great conversation starter, surely? I better put down this thrilling book about Llamas and get chatting to someone who wants to learn about Plate Spinning.
I don't joke, those were the books these Sims chose.
At the top left of the screen is a chain of activities your Sim will do. You can cancel an action to get moving on another, which is what I do to speed up the conversation. And by speed up, I mean actually start it.
Frank gets up, walks over to the bookshelf, puts the book away, and walks back to River, who is just standing up herself. Great timing, Frank...
Again, clicking on Sims brings up contextual menus, and the conversation options are an awful lot broader than you might think. If memory serves, I open with book talk before moving on to asking about her interests, because that's what humans ought to do - anyone who asks you what your name is and what you do for a job knows literally nothing about human conversation, and you can safely ignore them.
Because Simlish is gobbledegook, pictures and icons will do much of the talking, and so I hope you're paying attention to what your Sims are both thinking and saying because it'll probably be important in this whole social interaction aspect that The Sims 3 is going for.
And it really is going for it. You've been freed from the hassle of day to day activities to focus on the bigger picture, whatever that picture may be. Given the introduction and vibe of The Sims, it's going to need to involve people outside of your household. Friends, new family, colleagues... What will you get up to in this social sandbox?
I crack a joke.
I don't know what was said, but the laughter ended with a sigh, and that's when I knew what I had to do next.
Final Word
I spent more time in the character creation and camera tutorial than I did playing The Sims 3. Knowing that going through the screenshots would be easy, I put them off to quickly create a new Rallyman track for a community that I do actually care about, and would rather put my time towards than faffing about in The Sims.
The reason is simple: I don't hate The Sims. I just know it isn't for me.
I know for sure that those who played The Sims 3 in its prime have a great many stories to tell, but they are not the kinds of stories that I want to tell myself, or arguably want to hear. What I think I mean by that is that The Sims 3 does soap operas and gossip and socializing, but I want to get back into the next series of The Wire.
I don't watch soaps. Hell, I don't socialise. The Sims 3 and I just aren't made for each other, and I don't think we ever will be.
The Sims 2 showed me that if you just embrace the stupidity of it all, you might leave with a smile on your face. The Sims 3 showed me that I want my smiles to come from elsewhere.
Fun Facts
Who spent $10m a month on billboard posters for The Sims 3? EA, supposedly. Big business, these video games.
The Sims 3, developed by Maxis Redwood Shores, first released in 2009.
Version played: PC, 2009.