For most of the past decade, The Sims franchise has maintained a permanent presence on the Top 10 sales charts of PC games. Often, it occupied multiple slots on those charts. That's because for every hardcore gamer who scoffs at The Sims, there are many more non-traditional gamers who love the series. Yes, many of those people are female. That makes it easy for some to simply describe The Sims as the equivalent of a virtual dollhouse, but that oversimplifies things. The Sims, like almost any game, is about living a different life than your own. Some people escape reality by diving into MMOs. Others jump straight into shooters. It turns out that whole bunches of people turn to The Sims. And in this regard, The Sims 3 won't disappoint. With the third chapter in the series, EA has introduced some overdue growth and made some bold changes, yet much of this brave new world's potential remains relatively untapped.
I've been a fan of The Sims since the very beginning; Will Wright's idea of letting you control virtual people in their everyday lives taps that desire that we all have to be ruler of the world and tell everyone else where to stuff it. The Sims is the closest that many of us will ever get to Ed Harris' character in The Truman Show; that's the movie where he plays the director who gets to "cue the sun" and manipulate events around the unsuspecting Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey. The thing is, Truman doesn't realize that the quaint, coastal town that he lives in is in fact a carefully staged set and that his every move is caught on camera and beamed to the outside world. The Truman Show is an apt description for The Sims 3, because it too takes place in a quaint, coastal town that your sims can go out and explore. Yet wherever they go, you'll be carefully watching.
As you've probably heard, the big change in The Sims 3 is the fact that it no longer revolves around a single household lot at a time. Your sims can go anywhere in town at any time without pause. This is a very welcome change, because the gameplay doesn't feel claustrophobic anymore; you're no longer spending 95-percent of your time looking at the same house and then having to sit through lengthy loading screens for those moments when you send your sims out into the world. This freedom is pretty liberating; I spent quite a bit of time at first just switching between my characters just to watch the camera pull back on the town and then zoom in on the location of the next character. It doesn't take too long before you get used to the change, and it's hard to imagine how we played The Sims before. Now it seems totally natural to send one sim to the park, while another goes shopping downtown, while another stays at home; you can switch between all three effortlessly and almost instantly. Lives feel more naturally lived this way. You don't even need to worry much if you neglect your sims because they default with a high level of free will; leave them alone and they'll take care of themselves and keep themselves amused. It can be fun just to let go of the mouse, sit back, and watch what they do on their own.
The Sims 3 Screenshot/Photos
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