My friend got a copy two days earlier so I asked if I can play it and decide if I am buying on myself or am I not. I only played for about 5 hours( he needed a turn too ) so my experience is based on those 5 hours of game play.
Every sim Starts in CAS, so I will start with that.
Good Stuffz:
You can tweak almost anything. and I mean anything. Nose can be however big you want it to be, ears, eyes and yadda yadda.
Color Customazition: No need for gothic custom hair! want lime green high lights on your emo boy? Or add light brown streaks to you high school diva? YES! Fell free to do so! Same applies to clothes. You can make patterns and patterns of any color imaginable, quiet literally. A lot of fun. I spend few hours doing this. :D
Shoes! teh ossumness! The choices! you can even have socks and stoking!
They made absolutely hilarious expressions when you were picking their traits. I liked it.
Clothes: Mix and match! You like this top of a swim suit with these shorts? Like to wear you boyfriend's/husband's boxers with his t-shirt to bed? Possible! I really loved this tool it was awesome.
Bad Stuffz:
THEY LOOK THE SAME! no matter how much I tweaked them or anything, they look like twins. Sure, this sims had wider eyes than that sim, and this sim had wider lips than that one but they looked very very very similar to each other. In sims2, both sims with 1st face template looked different.
I don't know if it is bad stuffz, but there are no face templates. There are face part templates, but not actual already-made-face-that-you-can-tweak-however-you-like.
Voices: They sound very similar. Or maybe I am deaf. Yes you can tweak them to a very squeaky to very manly, but they kind of sounded the same.
beards: There is no separate stubs and beard. they are together and choices aren'tt hat great.
Eventually I made one sim( i could not stand family of twins) and moved her into a trailer house.
Game play, Good Stuffz:
very interesting. You see what your neighbors are doing next door. Sadly you do not see furniture until you visit. So if they sit on the bench to you they float in the air. Or maybe my friend didn't quiet play with his setting yet :/
You can buy a bike and go around the neighborhood.You can get a car too. You can also walk or run to a certain point in town.
While this sim in your family is at home, you can go to the sim on the other side of town and control his action. F.U.N you can carry stuff in your inventory. I defiantly know with guitar you can take it out and play in the park.
You can only fulfill 4 wishes and you can chose(or as game referred to them as promise) which ones you want to. Like for example sims want to go to the park. You can confirm, and it will go into the wish bar or you can cancel it and it will disappear.
There was no fears D: Or my sim simply didn't roll any for me to full fill.
Lights: Adorable. from sunrise to sunset. I am speechless.
bad stuffz: A lot of rabbit holes. the only 2 places that I know of that you could go to were park and beach. Park is decent but beach is boring all you do is sit there you can't swim in the ocean(lake, sea, pond, call it whatever you want) SO you can only go and do nothing there. There are probably plenty more, but those, I am sure you can visit.
Kind of blunt. yes you can visit friends and others, you go to work, you improve skill...Speaking of that. it took forever to just improve one skill point. in sims 2 first five points are fast to improve(usually) then it gets slower. There was nothing much to do...
I did not build, so I don't know how that works.

Any questions: ask ahead I will try to answer. Over all, the game was good, many deferent aspects that made it better from Sims2 but there were many that didn't. For now I am sticking to Sims2 and I shall perhaps get sims3 when first EP comes out. I also want to add: plain base game of Sims2 was much more fun, even though it maybe didn't have half of the features. I gues my score would be 6/10.

bP said it is fine, since it is official copy I am talking about that came earlier in the mail for my friend.

Thanks for the info I found it very interesting to read. I was worrying that they would all look the same - but having said that I thought all the sims in TS2 looked the same until custom content started coming out. A quick question, do you know it you can turn off having a whole neighborhood view when in gameplay? I'm not sure my computer would like a dozen sims on the screen at the same time so I'm looking to play one house at a time.

When you have time to really sit down and play and try to play multiple households at the same time, or decide you want your own neighbourhood, and try to delete NPC families, or you marry or move in NPCs etc., prepare for things to go wrong... I think the initial assessment of 6/10 would have to be reevaluated to say 4/10...

Did it take forever for sims to sleep? Did it seem like the time speeds were all the same?

Lou: I don't think so. I was more into a game play then into settings. You can set their life span to 1000 days and you can turn the story progression on/off that's for sure.
mishibob:I didn't pick heavy or light sleeper trait for her so she slept just about the average. there is an ultra speed button, but you need to keep an eye on the bar so your sims doesn't go wild if you know what I mean.

When Yu Leave Your Lot & Go Somewhere , When Yu Return To Your Lot Is The Time The Same Time Yu Left Your Lot?

I haven't even played it and I can answer that. Time progresses at the same rate neighborhood wide.

P.S. Could you please type your sentence without capitalizing every word in it? That's very difficult to read.


Are you sure it actually worked? Everyone so far has been reporting the same results, that even with it turned off, things are happening in their neighborhoods that shouldn't be happening with Story Progression off.

The reason why I'm asking is because I played for a while and it didn't seem to make a difference what speed button I was using,even at ultra speed the sims moved just as slowly and the seconds moved just like the first speed button. (I wasn't lagging either) I wonder if it was just in my game or if it'll be the same for everyone else. I guess only time will tell (:P) once more people get it. Thanks for replying to my question by the way.

Hi Kyle!

I was wonderiiing out of ten what would you rate this game?

Guardianpegasus, I am worried about you. Your sadness is apparent in every post you make.

Would you like a very special cookie that has rainbow sprinkles on the top?

That happened to me too. It takes extremely slow to sleep or do anything when you go to ultra speed or any other faster speed.

Oh, I see what you mean now. Yeah it wasn't very fast and i didn't see much deference as well. Sorry, it took me a while to understand your question.



Hello Pyba! It is a last sentence of my first post in this thread. I guess my score would be 6/10.


Mine was off, but I only was concentrating on one sim, so I can not say if Goths had another baby or if Bella found another boyfriend.

I think that's where the problem is coming in. People have been turning it off, playing a single Sim for a few days then checking through the neighborhood and finding out all kinds of things that shouldn't have been happening with it off have been happening. For example, if SP is off, then neighbor Sims shouldn't be committing themselves in relationships nor should other Sims be having children and no one should be moving out of the neighborhood.

Has that been a confirmed bug in the official version, Misty? I heard about it from people playing the leaked version, but I assumed it'd be a bug with the crack. (EA's known for putting in things that will fail in cracked games. Like the galaxy map in Mass Effect, that bug kept the game from being successfully cracked until a couple weeks after release.)

Oops LOL! I wasn't paying attention. :D

If that what you think...I was disappointed in game myself, but tried to give it a decent score...


I added, one thing that I forgot to mention about CAS.

You know, I really would. The Sims is my second love, and I feel like we've had a nasty fight and major disagreements with the release of Sims 3. The game is so fun for a couple of hours, and then a total dissappointment when you realize your sims and neighbourhood are screwed and that you're doomed to relive that cycle again and again... it's really quite heartbreaking.



No, I understand, I mean, if you play the game on it's premise, which is that it is not The Sims, but rather should have been called The Simsville Legacy Challenge, it's very decent. But the second you try to make any kind of modification beyond the original premise, you are totally screwed.

So yeah, it's a good "game", but it's not really The Sims as we know it. I guess my disappointment is obvious...

That's what I'm trying to find out, if someone who actually has played the store-bought game is having the same problem, or if per chance it actually has been fixed for the final version. I know we'll know sure enough tomorrow but by the time I would probably find out I will be in town, 25 miles away from home, where the game will be without having more info. :P

I played at friends house yesterday too and i hace some opinions about the game..

The grafics are great.. could play in all your neighbourhood is a great idea!! but... you have to play all the time with the same family till the rest of your sims grow up, getting married... We dont want to play all the time with the same family.. and see that one of our sims is maried or having a different life... thas one of the wrong things.. and no weather.. no usable restaurants or shops.. u just know that your sim is at a restaurant but u could not see him eating!!

For grafic designers like me there are great things to do... the textures , could coustoumice everything... awsome!! create a sims is nice too, the shoes! the clothes!! but... all the sims are like balls!! big faces, u can change a lot of things in your faces but they are not really beautifull.. and the worst thing is hair.. is absolutely static, any move in sims2 hair have a lot of move but in sims3 I hope we would can create great hairs with move becaus the game defaults really are shit! tho coloreate haur is nice and thanks god is the end of the tipical colours.. u can coustomice the hair colour too and i really apreciate this..
So.. great thing.. and others not really good but im gonna buy it, i can't wait!hehe

(english is not my maternal lenguage)

Have you tried throwing a party at the beach? Or any other venue other than your house? I've had some great sunset clambakes with plenty of bikini clad romance at my beach parties! Try throwing a party at one of these venues and sending over a sim with high guitar skill to work the crowd for tips. You'll make some good simoleon and if you do it at 10 different parties/venues you'll complete a worthwhile skill challenge.

Also, I'm able to go to all locations on the map. Ie. both beaches, central park, smaller parks, graveyard, museum, community pools, etc.

I received my copy in the post this morning. I've been playing non stop for about 3 hours.

Overall, I'm happy with the game. I was worried about content, but the amount that is available to furnish your house seems to be on par with Sims 2 base game, though it's been ages since I actually played Sims 2 without any EP's or CC so I'm not entirely sure. Maybe the people who pirated it ended up with a screwy version with less items. I AM irritated that so many items have ended up in the official store at ridiculous prices, but the ability to paint almost any object or piece of clothing in any color or material definitely makes up for it. There's a large amount of materials as well, which is nice. I flat out refuse to spend any of my money on the store, but I'll be using the free 1000 points.
Also, unfortunately the majority of the default furnished lots are mostly fugly, just like in previous Sims games. The huge mansions look as if they were decorated by the color blind, with total disregard to Feng Shui!

The open neighborhood is... awesome. Pure win. This is what I've always wanted the Sims to be like. I almost never went out in the Sims 2 because the transitions were painful and removed any sense of immersion. Not so any more. More locations are desperately needed though. As it stands, although you can go anywhere, you can only go inside a few buildings like the library and gym. The rest have interactions (like "Go on a tour" or skill-building classes), but they have no interiors. Same goes with your job. It would have been sweet to actually see your Sim working the day away in his or her place of employment, but alas, you can't. I'm hoping that EP's will change that.

I won't go over all the new additions to the general gameplay, there's plenty of reviews out there with such info. In short, I'm really enjoying it thus far. Moodlets are an excellent addition, rewards are decent (though rather sparse IMO), interaction with other Sims based on your traits is sweet. What IS rather annoying is the ease in which you can advance your career. It took me a little over an hour and a half of playing to reach the top of the Business career (though I was obsessively building skill and working hard at the job). It was rather satisfying to buy out the company, rename it to Wolfram & Hart (keeping in line with my eviiil character) and fire my former boss, though!
It does annoy me that not a single feature from the various Sims 2 EP's made it over to the Sims 3, but the new features of the game itself are enough to quell my grumblings.... for now.

The graphics, in general, look VERY similar to the Sims 2 though. I'm running with everything maxed out, high res, AA & AF maxed. It almost looks like the same game, though I should note that the lighting is greatly improved. Not really an issue as the game IS still very pretty, but a little more progress would have been nice.

The Sims do look better, but there's room for improvement. They are too shiny and plastic looking and they all seem to have these bleak, dead looking eyes. Custom skins and textures for the eyes would fix that up though. Also, townie-type Sims tend to have a cloned, round faced look, especially the females.

I'd give it an 9. Far superior to the Sims 2 in almost every way. Now back to the game! :D

Mike, I don't see how you cant notice the graphics improvement, there is a lot of difference, although I think the sims looked more realistic on TS2 (they just needed CC eyes). I have to agree with Guardian Pegasus that it is a huge nightmare playing more than one family, and trying to customize the neighborhood, although playing one family I have found the new gameplay enhancements to be fantastic, eg moodlets, and the career system, and open town.

I've always had a theory when it came to most of the houses that shipped with the game. Whoever decorated them went strictly by color wheel rules and nothing else. Oooh! Green and purple go together! Never mind it's avocado green and pale lilac. Or, "Hey, I'll do this room in green all over!" and never mind that they mix in avocado green with pale green, which looks absolutely atrocious. What always gets me is these people went to college to learn this stuff and still failed.


Not a single feature? What about cars, gardening and fishing? And there's something else, although I can't think what it is right now. :P

Young Adulthood!

And don't forget all the career tracks are the same as TS2!