There is this bit in Misery, where Stephen King talks about the “gotta” factor in storytelling. It’s the art of telling a story in a way that makes your audience invest more time in it because they “gotta” know what happens next. It’s the reason you stick around commercial breaks to watch TV, it’s the reason you forget about food to finish a book, and it’s the reason why I am awake at 4 am and playing The Sims 3 instead of being fast asleep. Its strange that for a game that has no story (except what you make, I guess) The Sims 3 has the “gotta” factor nailed down better than any video game since Diablo. You know you have been playing way too long, but you just gotta develop that one more skill, fulfill one more need, get one more promotion etc. It’s the gaming equivalent of crack cocaine.
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Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family
The concept of the game is simple enough. You create a Sim (or more than one if you are so inclined), give them personality traits that you like, drop them in a house in the town of your choosing, and act out their lives as you see fit. The term ‘life simulator’ is thrown about quite a lot when people talk about the Sims series and The Sims 3 takes that to a whole new level. It hits particularly close to home when the computer loving, absent-minded Sim I create with the loner trait seems completely content working a crap job and staying at home playing video games all day in his free time. And it becomes uncomfortably realistic when the only girl he can get is of particularly loose morals when it comes to monogamy.
The core gameplay in The Sims 3 (or any other Sims game to date) revolves around taking care of your Sims’ basic needs (like hunger, hygiene, energy, bladder, etc) and balancing them with their job, family and friends. You need a job to pay the bills and the whole idea is that whatever time you have left to yourself in a day is a limited resource and you have to utilise it correctly to keep your Sim happy and functioning at maximum efficiency. There is no final goal or a victory condition and if your Sims keep reproducing, you could play the game infinitely.
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Choose a big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers
So while at heart the gameplay still remains quite similar to the first two Sims game, The Sims 3 brings quite a lot that’s new to the table. The character creation has been revamped to give you more control over your Sims’ appearance. The number of options you have to customise your Sims in areas like weight, skin tone, facial appearance etc. has been increased substantially from The Sims 2. This isn’t as big a positive as you would imagine though. The number of options still feel rather limited when you compare them to other games (like Smackdown! vs RAW) that let you customise your appearance. And overall, there is a distinct feel that some things (like hairstyles) have been limited to a small number so they can be sold as downloadable content later on, a feeling further strengthened by the fact that there are more hairstyles to purchase now than there were initially shipped in the game.
Also new to the Sims series are personality traits. So when you are creating your Sims, you can decide the kind of personality they will have. If you create a Sim with the artistic trait, they will tend to excel in music and writing. This not only changes your Sims’ behavior from when they are left alone to how they interact with other Sims, but it also changes the career options you have available. Certain careers are only available if you have the requisite traits and a lot of career options are locked away if you have traits that conflict with them. For example, the loner trait means your character cannot be a politician and the kleptomaniac trait means you can be an excellent thief. And since two different Sims with different traits will have completely different lives, it adds an immense amount of depth to the game and gives you a lot of replay options. Your traits also dictate what your lifetime wishes and lifetime goal will be. Neither of them makes a huge impact to the game though; they will just increase the overall happiness of your Sim and let you unlock some minor rewards
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Choose your friends
Next page: The verdict
