Product Description

The game that first opened up the world of video games to a wider audience is back, going beyond being just a virtual dollhouse to a complete interactive neighbourhood. The basic concept is still the same though, as you create your own computerised family and help (or hinder) them in achieving their lifetime dreams.

Instead of just dealing with one house at a time though, your whole sims town is part of one continuous map, with neighbours going about their business independently. Likewise your own family can explore at will and interact with any and all buildings and people.

Once fully grown a sim can have up to 60 personality traits - from loner to flirt - all of which you can influence via their environment and the people they interact with. However you want to play and whatever you want to do it's easier than ever to create your own virtual soap opera.

• New Seamless, Open Neighbourhood - Explore the Neighbourhood Freely: See the sights with your Sims! The new seamless neighbourhood architecture allows your Sims to roam freely around the neighbourhood and visit their loved one and friends or foes. Discovering other Sims homes and families, traveling around to new locations like City Hall or the local park will create a whole new way of life for your Sims.
• New Create A Sim - Create Any Sim You Can Imagine: In addition to the open, living neighbourhood, the all-new Create-a-Sim interface will feature easy-to-use design tools that allow you to make truly detailed Sims that are more realistic than ever. Create-a-Sim gives you the incredible freedom to customise just about any Sim you can imagine.
• New Realistic Personalities - Every Sim Is A Unique Person, With A Distinct Personality: With the innovative and proprietary Realistic Personality System in The Sims 3, you can attribute each character with five distinct personality traits, helping shape yo

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2009-06-05
• Platforms: Windows XP, Mac OS X
• Dimensions: .26 pounds

System Requirements
FOR WINDOWS XP

*Windows XP (Service Pack 2 *2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
*1 GB RAM
*At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
*128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0

FOR WINDOWS VISTA

*Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
*2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
*1.5 GB RAM
*At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
*128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least: Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above. 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent 0.5 GB additional RAM.

FOR MAC

*Mac OS X 10.5.7 Leopard or higher
*Intel Core Duo Processor
*2 GB RAM
*6.1 GB free hard drive space, with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content and saved games
*ATI X1600 or Nvidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100

Supported Video Cards:

NVIDIA GeForce series FX 5900, FX 5950, 6200, 6500, 6600, 6800, 7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950, 8400, 8500, 8600, 8800, 9300, 9400, 9500, 9600, 9800, G100, GT 120, GT 130, GTS 150, GTS 250, GTX 260, GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 295.

ATI Radeon series 9500, 9600, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800, X850, X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950, 2400, 2600, 2900, 3450, 3650, 3850, 3870, 4850, 4870.

Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) GMA 3-Series, GMA 4-Series.

This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems, or the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards.

Manufacturer's Description
Amazon.co.uk

The game that first opened up the world of video games to a wider audience is back, going beyond being just a virtual dollhouse to a complete interactive neighbourhood. The basic concept is still the same though, as you create your own computerised family and help (or hinder) them in achieving their lifetime dreams.

This sim's charisma rating isn't quite as high as he thinks

The rest of town is now just as interactive as your sims' home

As ever, different sims have very different desires

Manage your sims' lives from baby to old age pensioner

Instead of just dealing with one house at a time though, your whole sims town is part of one continuous map, with neighbours going about their business independently. Likewise your own family can explore at will and interact with any and all buildings and people.

Once fully grown a sim can have up to 60 personality traits - from loner to flirt - all of which you can influence via their environment and the people they interact with. However you want to play and whatever you want to do it's easier than ever to create your own virtual soap opera.

Key Features

• Instant expansion: The game includes many feature from the The Sims 2 expansions from the off, including personal inventories, pets, private cars, restaurants and gardening.
• Sims in the mood: Monitor your sim's six moodlets - hunger, bladder, energy, social, hygiene and fun - to see how they're feeling and what they want to do.
• Life goals: Every sim has their own wishes and opportunities, including a main lifetime wish - it's up to you whether you help them towards it or purposefully confound them.
• Wide world: The giant game world not only looks better than ever but means that your sim is no longer just tied to their house, but is able to interact with the whole town.
• Virtual makeover: The Create-A-Sims tool is more flexible than ever, with the ability to alter weight, fitness, hair and clothing down to the tiniest detail - including freckles and birthmarks!

About the Developer: EA Redwood Shores
Situated in the same San Francisco bay area as EA's main headquarters, the Redwood Shores studio has created many licensed games including The Godfather and The Simpsons Game - as well as original titles such as Dead Space. In 2004 it was merged with The Sims creator Maxis.

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Customer Reviews

The Sims 3 is a huge step up from The Sims 2
I have played on the Sims 2 for many years and own all the expansion packs and most of the stuff packs. However, a few months before The Sims 3 came out, I began to feel bored of the Sims 2 as I eagerly awaited the Sims 3. I constantly read information about the upcoming game, so much that my expectations were extremely high! I was concerned as my computer did not meet the minimum requirements, but there was no need for me to worry.
The game works perfectly and is giving me hours of enjoyment. The game automatically chose low graphics settings, although if I had not checked the options tab, I would have assumed they were on high. The graphics are incredible and 100 times better than they were on The Sims 2.
The features are also amazing. The create-a-style tool means that you can literally create any colour on any design for any object. If you wanted, you could have a pink heart bath tub and matching toilet. You can literally make any object look exactly how you want it and make any other object match it percectly.
Create-a-sim has also been improved. You can use create-a-style on clothes which means you could make your sims slippers match their pyjamas! You now choose the shoes separately for each outfit and you can easily adjust each body feature to create a really lifelike self sim.
You can also now select traits for your sim. These have replaced personality points and have a big effect on the life on your sim. If you choose to make your sim a 'kleptomaniac' for example, your sim would 'accidently' take another sims objects.
Another great improvement is the fact that your sim can now have their baby at the hospital. This is a great addition to the game and makes pregnancy much more exciting.
Overall, this is an amazing game and I would recommend it to anyone, even if you haven't enjoyed the sims in the past.

Sims 3 - Great Improvement
I've read all the mixed reviews about this game and I am happy I pre-ordered it before I read the negative reviews. This game is brilliant. My husband bought the sims 2 when it first came out but I never got round to playing it till 2008 when my sister mentioned the design & modding capabilities of the sims. Since then I got hooked to designing my own items. I actually never really enjoyed playing the game because of the loading times etc but I must say that I am getting addicted to the Sims 3. I love creating new sims just because i can make them look alien or look like a celebrity or better still, look like me (almost). I love the design capabilities of the game. I love the fact that your sims actually run out of their houses and you can follow them as they progress to wherever they are going to. I love that your sims can go off & do their own thing instead of you pushing them to. In short, I LOVE THIS GAME!!!. Even my little daughter loves it and has been creating many "lucys". I've had to install in another laptop so she can create as many sims as she wants and not crowd my game.

Having said this, it does have a down side and that's why I gave it one star short of 5. I'm still looking for a way to load designs that I've created in photoshop into the game. I created a bit for the sims 2 & would love to be able to design something different from what came with the game. I miss that and I hope the capability is there or if not there, EA will do something about it.

For me, this game deserves 5 star and you need to check you computer capabilities before buying this game. I've got it on 2 laptops with different system setup and it plays fine on both of them. One of the laptops could not play Fallout 3 but Sims 3 plays very fine. So check/tune you computer. If you are a sims 2 fan, you will love this game and remember that even sims 2 that was really great did not come with everything we got from all the expansion packs. Thanks for reading. :)

Outstanding Upgrade from The Sims 2
It was years in the making, and finally, here it is. Some fans may be disappointed by the lack of objects, the lack of clothing, hairstyles, and limitations of career paths, but they are those who are finding themselves jumping into the new version of The Sims after having been exposed to the previous version and it's immense amount of Expansion Packs.

CREATE-A-SIM

Creating a sim gives you the option to not only tweak skintones (from six different samples, you can use a slider to select from different tones rather than the four tones from the previous game) and facial features far more advanced than the previous version (adding in beauty marks, or freckles), but body type, skinny, fat, lean or muscular (unfortunately though you can't tweak the hip, thigh, waist and bust size of your sims though I would have liked to have seen that implemented).

Hairstyles are limited, however, you have an advanced system that lets you alter the colours of hair from root to tip, so your sim can have hair colour as crazy as vivid postbox red with electric blue tips, lime green highlights, and white roots (I wouldn't recommend it, but you catch my drift). You can even save your own hair colour creations for future use so you don't have to re-pick each colour for another sim.

The Sims clothing, again is limited, but you can mix and match outfits, and add your own patterns and colour the patterns much like with the hair - you can make a colour darker, or lighter, you can change the texture of the fabrics. More importantly, much to fans delight, the Sims have SHOES! No longer do Sims have to wear flipflops with every decent pair of jeans, or have to wear ugly pumps with dresses. You get to choose the shoes, and get to alter the colour and pattern of those too! And incredibly, with the accessory system, you can even impliment socks, stockings and tights to the overall look!

Your sim can be more unique looking than ever with several make-up styles which just like hair and clothing, you can change the colours of by sliders, and palettes rather than just being able to choose from a few set styles.

BUILD MODE:


Build mode is just as advanced as Create-A-Sim. The interface is far more user-friendly than the previous versions, making it easier to find exactly what you're looking for. There aren't very many window/door styles to choose from, however they are ALL recolourable, making it very easy to mix and match them in a pinch with a little work. You can even save the colours and textures for future use. Wallpapers and floors are JUST as designable as almost everything else in the game, you can change the textures of paint, wallpapers, siding, and bricks, carpets, tiles; this tool is even so powerful it will let you change the colours of each individual board in your hardwood floor!


The stairs we were limited to (modular and base) are now an intertwined setting that come with the option of no railing and a deletable/recolourable wall. You can actually have floating stairs now on every stair type regardless, you can also add on any of the available rails to any stairtype regardless if they match or not. My only gripe is that the stairs and the rails themselves are not designable like most of the other features.

Roofs, foundations, stairs, and fences, are NON-designable and therefore, the only things you can't use the re-colour tool on. Quite sad really as many of the rails don't match anything in particular and the same goes for the stairs and fences. A slight draw back though. Also, the pool has no diving board anymore (hopefully will come with a future expansion).


BUY MODE:


Buy mode comes with a very limited amount of items to choose from, with there being something like perhaps only five types of kitchen counter to choose from, six different sofa/chair types, and a few dining tables, etc. However, the fact that you can actually change all of these items with the re-colouring tool, and change the patterns, colours, textures, fabrics, gives you a large canvis to play with in terms of interior design. One thing that used to bug the hell out of me about both previous games (Sims and Sims 2) was being limited to furniture that just did SIMPLY not match anything - this is no longer the case, as you can force nearly every object (except the paintings, the plants and a few decoration items), into matching anything you want it to match.

GAMEPLAY:


EA have worked ridiculously long and hard hours and taken into account every fans individual opinion into what would make the game more enjoyable and playable. They've tweaked the game so precisely that Sims are much more independent to the point where regardless of how much of a bad mood your sims are in, they will still go to work and not miss their carpool, and that Teenage sims will come home and eventually during the point of the day, take out their homework (kept in their inventory at all times), and begin to work on it at the nearest surface they can find - kitchen table, bedroom desk; they will even do it on community lots.

The game is so seamless now that your sim can go wandering across the town without waiting on ridiculous loading times. The game only loads the objects, textures and colours of whatever the game screen is focusing on so it allows for fast loading times and gives you the freedom to take your sims to a community lot whenever the mood takes you. You can let your sim go jogging and watch them pass by beautifully lit scenery - they can go visit their friends on different lots, and interact with their furniture (don't go into your neighbours fridges though, it's inappropriate and they don't like it!).

Rather than having the old skills to work on, your sims have a few new ones to work on, painting, guitar, writing, handiness, athleticism, gardening, and a few more I don't think I've even stumbled on yet!

Your sims don't have a choice of five personality types to choose from anymore. No longer are you stuck with a wealth obsessed sim, or a sim who is ultimately aspiring to woohoo with 25 different sims. Now your sims have traits, and they can have five of them. They range from anything such as naturally artistic, to slobby, to neat and green-thumbed (yes, you can grow veggies in TS3, but you need to find the seeds first!) and with sixty different traits to choose from, you can really make a unique sim with a very special personality.

CAREERS:


Careers are much easier and yet more challenging to cope with in this game. While sims are at work, a small panel will appear in the top let hand side of the screen showing a list of activities they can participate in at work, working hard, business as usual? Suck up to the boss? If your sim is starting to stress out at work, you can select "take it easy" so that their fun motive begins to slowly refill and they begin to de-stress again. Or you can select them to talk with their colleagues, increasing relationships with them will help promotions. Opportunities arise every now and then which also give them a chance to progress up the career ladder a little by performing tasks.

OVERALL:

Some people expected a brand new game, but what we have here is a re-imagining of the old game, and it's much more complex and well thought out, and alot of those niggling stupid problems that got on your nerves in the previous one is no longer the case. £30 for this right now is WELL worth the money, you will definately get more gameplay out of this than you ever did with the old one; and to make it even better you can extend the life of your sims to short to ridiculously epic so you can finally get everything done and have your sim be the millionaires in their lifetime that you always aspired they would be.

Don't believe this will never live up to the Sims 2, it already has far surpassed it.