My review of TS3. What I liked, don't like.

[Madame Mim]

They always look a bit like they have Downs Syndrome to me. The subtle 'wrongness' of the eyes and the, well, pudding face.

[SlickCee]

I'm pretty sure you don't HAVE to do the whole color wheel thing if you design new clothing, hair, or objects.

Even if you choose the blank pattern and pick white on the color wheel, all of the objects in the game still have their own texture.  Furthermore, there are areas on some objects where you CAN'T apply patterns or colors.  It's not unreasonable to assume that you could design entire objects, hairs, or clothes that use texture areas that can't be patterned or colored.  What you would have is something exactly like in TS2 where the player had no control over the color scheme in the game.  Granted, the color wheel interface would still be there, it just wouldn't DO anything.

  Maybe so...but the game only came out a few days ago, well, a few weeks if you want to count the leaked copies, and we already have custom skins, hacks, and textures. Are they perfect, no, but they are there. As much as I hate to sound like EA, I am sure if we give it some we will be able to have the wheel usable with custom objects. There has to be a way because Maxis can do it with their own. Just have to figure out their secret. Or the miracles of miracles will happen and they tell us .

  In the very early days of the Sims 2 if you told someone we were going to have custom meshes and animations you will most likely get laughed out of the forum. There were a lot of near impossibles that we overcame in the Sims 2 and coming from my usual pessimistic self, I have hope that we can overcome the same quagmires(SAT word, go me!) in this game as well.

  Otherwise, you are allowed to throw pies at my face.
 
 

[Morlock]

This is something I've been enjoying greatly myself.  Now if time would pass slower at spd 1 and faster at spd 3/4 I think my sims would get the most out of their days and I would get the most out of their nights/down time.

I have found the slow passing of time the single most annoying thing in the game.

Go to work, put game on full speed, wait five minutes for Sim to finish work, Sim is tired out, go to bed [Sim will not be fully rested by 10am, extend sleep icon to 'fully rested'], put game on full speed, wait five minutes.

After staring at the screen for ten minutes watching time pass slowly, exit Sims, go online to play GTR Evolution.

Riverview must have the only juicebar in the world with no bar staff, Sims can walk in and help themselves. No barstaff? Come on EA, this is Beta standard programming.
A completely unstaffed, FREE gym in the neighbourhood, why would I bother buying gym equipment?

There are some great new features, but somehow it all seems a bit unfinished, like a demo version, I can see a lot of potential in the game, but the only salvation is to spend another $30 on the first expansion, then another $30 and another $30 etc etc etc.

Or, as I have seen in much of the feedback so far, rely on modders to rectify the flaws and improve content and gameplay.
So, here we are again, waiting for, not EA who are trousering the cash, to fix the flaws, but for Sim enthusiasts to provide all of the innovation and creation that Sims3 requires to make it a great game.

[MasterDinadan]

I'm pretty sure you don't HAVE to do the whole color wheel thing if you design new clothing, hair, or objects.

Even if you choose the blank pattern and pick white on the color wheel, all of the objects in the game still have their own texture.  Furthermore, there are areas on some objects where you CAN'T apply patterns or colors.  It's not unreasonable to assume that you could design entire objects, hairs, or clothes that use texture areas that can't be patterned or colored.  What you would have is something exactly like in TS2 where the player had no control over the color scheme in the game.  Granted, the color wheel interface would still be there, it just wouldn't DO anything.

  Maybe so...but the game only came out a few days ago, well, a few weeks if you want to count the leaked copies, and we already have custom skins, hacks, and textures. Are they perfect, no, but they are there. As much as I hate to sound like EA, I am sure if we give it some we will be able to have the wheel usable with custom objects. There has to be a way because Maxis can do it with their own. Just have to figure out their secret. Or the miracles of miracles will happen and they tell us .

  In the very early days of the Sims 2 if you told someone we were going to have custom meshes and animations you will most likely get laughed out of the forum. There were a lot of near impossibles that we overcame in the Sims 2 and coming from my usual pessimistic self, I have hope that we can overcome the same quagmires(SAT word, go me!) in this game as well.

  Otherwise, you are allowed to throw pies at my face.
 

The OP's complaint about the color wheel was that it restricted object and clothing design to use of only 4 colors.  I'm pointing out that, even if you do use the color wheel, it is not restrictive.  You don't have to apply ANY areas to the texture that can be patterned/colored IF you don't want to.  Allowing the player to customize patterns and colors does not automatically limit what the creators are able to make with it.  I'm just saying that if the whole pattern/color thing turns out to be too restrictive, it should be entirely possible to design textures that don't use it at all.

[Mootilda]

Agreed.  Some of the in-game t-shirts have complex patterns with lots of colors, but the only thing that you can change is the color of the t-shirt underneath the pattern.  So, if you really want a pattern with more than 4 colors, you can do it; it just won't be as modifiable in-game.

[GnatGoSplat]

As for fugly sim chicks...  It occured to me, they all look like Thora Birch.  

They remind me more of Kelly Osbourne. Or perhaps an unholy lovechild of the two.

I wish my fugly sim chicks looked like Thora Birch, she's not bad!
A lot of the female sims do look a lot like Kelly Osbourne.

I saw this awful lady on the news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_us/us_pregnant_woman_killed
I thought, "hey, some of my female sims look kind of like her".  I have some with fat faces and skinny bodies, it looks so disproportionate.

[OpiumGirl]

They remind me more of Kelly Osbourne. Or perhaps an unholy lovechild of the two.

It's scary how many sims I've seen that look just like that! Good call on that.

[J. M. Pescado]

I saw this awful lady on the news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_us/us_pregnant_woman_killed
I thought, "hey, some of my female sims look kind of like her".  I have some with fat faces and skinny bodies, it looks so disproportionate.

Oh, look. What a surprise. She was killed by some LUNATIC she met from the INTERNET. Didn't I tell you that NO TWO PEOPLE ONLINE ARE NOT AXE MURDERERS?!?

[Marhis]

Oh, look. What a surprise. She was killed by some LUNATIC she met from the INTERNET. Didn't I tell you that NO TWO PEOPLE ONLINE ARE NOT AXE MURDERERS?!?

Mom? Is that you?

[GnatGoSplat]

I saw this awful lady on the news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_us/us_pregnant_woman_killed
I thought, "hey, some of my female sims look kind of like her".  I have some with fat faces and skinny bodies, it looks so disproportionate.

Oh, look. What a surprise. She was killed by some LUNATIC she met from the INTERNET. Didn't I tell you that NO TWO PEOPLE ONLINE ARE NOT AXE MURDERERS?!?

Ah, they changed the pic to the victim.  It's the lunatic's mugshot that made me think of Sims 3 sims.

[witch]

They remind me more of Kelly Osbourne.

Hmm, I thought I posted on MATY but apparently not as search turns up no posts. I picked Kelly Osbourne from the beginning, my very first TS3 sim was named Kelly Osbourne, the likeness was remarkable.

That's really weird, I was SURE I posted. Cue spooky music.

[eevilcat]

I finished doing degree type things yesterday so finally got round to installing TS3 today and managed to get in a few hours playing.

Likes:
Build mode interface.
Having to work at relationships and get a sim's partner in the mood to woohoo.
The option to do different things at work/school which seem to generate different opportunities.
CAS - separate shoes.
The Sim/Map switch.
Food doesn't last forever in the fridge.

Dislikes:
It feels very slow, not that there's anything wrong with slow I just like to speed up gameplay to suit my taste.
The pudding factor.
Maggot babies.
Baby and toddler care is a bit too easy - fetid nappies added to gameplay in TS2 so why take them away?
Lack of transition animations - not cut scenes - the sudden jumps from one action to another jar.
The way EA appear to have made a concerted effort to remove the need for CC beyond their patterns.
The game doesn't stay paused when you save.


@Witch: I didn't think of Kelly Osbourne and instead opted for a morbidly obese Paris Hilton.

[Doc Doofus]

I bow to Kelly Osborne.  She's definitely more the TS3 puddin'-face than Thora Birch, although they look related.  I pray I don't hurt anybody's feelings, but they both have that bovine baby-fat faced look that some adolescents grow out of very slowly.  (Admittedly, I did, too.  They used to call me Poppin' Fresh)

Speaking of which, Poppin' Fresh could be the mascot of TS3.


And, of course, there's his evil big brother, the Stay Puft man.

[MaryH]

Actually, I've been thinking that there is a hell of a resemblance between the Sims 3 and those characters..now I know I wasn't going mad.
Or else the Michelin Man-close enough to have a three way tie!

[AllenABQ]

I finally got TS3 and have logged a few hours playing it with a couple I created, along with playing with some of the tools.

My initial impressions...

LIKES:
Rendering of the game. It helps running an Intel Quad Core, 4 GB, and a nvidia 9800 GTX+. Everything is smooth with settings maxed out. I wonder how badly it'll degrade when/if we can start loading a lot of real CC.
The color wheel. (Thank god I can do my own quick recolors instead of hunting for them for hours online.)
The town is pretty cool although I haven't interacted much yet with the townies.
CAS shoes and accessories for every clothing type.


MIDDLE OF THE ROAD:
Hair. Four layers of color is great, but I seriously hope we'll get real CC for this category. I'm already bored with the style choices.
Eyes. They're OK but too doll-like just like TS2 default eyes were.
CAS facial controls. Good, but they feel a lot more limited than TS2 controls.

DISLIKES:
Pudding face. (At least EA marketing was smart enough to outright LIE about that with the box art. Out of all the faces, I only see two definitive puddings. If they'd used only faces truly rendered in the game, probably would have scared most buyers off.)
The facial hair styles for men are shit -- AGAIN. The full beard is the best this time around and some of the stubble is OK, but whatever artist designed the styles obviously has no fracking clue about male facial hair grooming. (The hispanic chinstrap beard looks like someone drew it on with magic marker. The chinstrap + stubble is just laughably hideous.)
The tilt control near ground level is whacked. It also doesn't work with the wheel button on my standard mouse as described in the instructions.


The biggest thing that hasn't changed between TS2 and TS3?

Pescado and MATY delivering us from EAxis evil.

[AllenABQ]

I think this player review is a good read. I get the impression he's very well acquainted with TS1 and TS2. I also get the impression he really likes pudding, but the rest of the review makes up for that.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/thesims3/player_review.html?id=662835&tag=player-reviews%3Bcontinue&page=11

[MaryH]

That review is the best I've seen so far-very thorough and even handed. It gets right to the core of the major problems this game has, and pulls no punches.

[Doc Doofus]

I thought this was perhaps one of the most important critique points of Allen's link, one I couldn't have voiced as well until I played the game longer.  There is no sense of humor, artistry, and life breathed into mere clay in TS3 as there was in TS1 and TS2.

* Animations. They used to be thought out; clever, different, more numerous, and provoke uproarious laughter from the user. In the Sims 1, a character would carefully sniff one arm--then the other--and then an offended "eww!" would emerge from him. There is no such love this time around, as nothing is as funny, smart, or cute. Genius sims DO ponder. But it's the same animation each time, yields nothing except an easily implementable moodlet, (your sims never invent anything), and gets old fast. There are plenty of opportunities for different complaint animations too; but it's typically the same animation each time. The same whining-and-stamping process occurs whenever a mood gets too low, or when someone's in a wanted chair. Mods already exist to remove this. That's how annoying it is. This is an important section because it marks the end of the joy there once was in watching them go about their little lives. Who even wants to set their sims on fire anymore--considering the scream and freak out process cycles into a repeat after five seconds?

EA made a big mistake here.  I know that I, for one, was sick to death of the old animations of TS2 and didn't want to watch them anymore, but they helped establish the tone of tongue-in-cheek humor that suffused the game. 

We are also kept very distant from our Sims faces.  That may be a blessing because they all look like Poppin' Fresh, I suppose.  But in TS2, the thumbnails were larger, the pie menu faces were larger, the opening load scene for the family showed a large picture of the family, the special cut scenes (like first woohoo and childbirth) were all close-up with well-choreographed expressions...  Those things made us feel that we were on the same flat playing field as the sims, themselves.  With TS3, however, we have these new, very distant Godly cam angles.  The playing field itself is so much larger that we may spend little or no time looking at the Sims themselves, except as little ants moving through a large hive colony.  They become less personal to us, as a result.  EA should put more thought into this and give us moments of up-closeness with the Sims so we can appreciate them visually and emotionally, not just as little specks moving around with an action queue.

[Zazazu]

What resolution did you have your TS2 set to? Mine was set to 1024x768, same as I have TS3. Sim facial icons are almost exactly the same size. The side ones were smaller, as eight sims just fit on the side there, whereas 12 would fit on TS2. Family picture is the same on game load, though not on that household summary interface when you are switching households.

[Drakron]

I get the impression he's very well acquainted with TS1 and TS2 I also get the impression he really likes pudding, but the rest of the review makes up for that.

And there is this pearl ...

There is no way for a roleplayer to rationalize this, it is just further incompleteness and more design. Guess the extra 4 months wasn't enough. Solution: Design the interiors and lay out tasks and time limits per day. Performance can vary finely with player cleverness and activity.The tasks required would be very specific to the job.A "Journalism Track" employee might race to town square, chasing down a story about a protest rally. A "chef" could have a very zoomed up view of the kitchen's surfaces, with all the ingredients and utensils laid out for the player. Mouse strokes could cut veggies and meats and then careful attention to cooking temperature would be necessary.

First, he does not get this is a God Game.

Second, he does not get what is a "roleplayer" (lets ignore the fact you are not making a ingame avatar but creating a Sim) and just in case anyone is stupid enough to try to argue with me ... roleplay is exactly that, play a role but if I am playing the role of William Tell it does not mean MY (the actor) skills are the same of William Tell (the character) ... some dumbfucks think "roleplay" is using their (player) skills in some mini game and this lead me to ...

Three, Mini games are not replacement for skill system ... if there is a skill system then DITCH then, I tolerate mini games when they are used for breaking pacing and entirely optional but at least he did not directly mention what is the bane of current video games ... Simon-says mini games.

A lot of the issues with TS3 is because EA tried to appeal to people like him (the so called "gamers", I call then "proof we need eugenics") , its more of a "game" and that is why it fails.

[Rockermonkey]

Guys, there's a new slider for almost all facial slides, as well as body, available at modthesims. And there's also skintones there. I'm not too sure on the skins yet, but I'm not using the slider, it seems to extreme for me .

[Captain Swooptie]

A lot of the issues with TS3 is because EA tried to appeal to people like him (the so called "gamers", I call then "proof we need eugenics") , its more of a "game" and that is why it fails.

It's true. It's like they took a look at all the shitty console ports of the series they've done and said, "Hey, wait a minute. It wasn't that they didn't like the gameplay. It must've been the controller!"

It always seemed to me that the real strength of the Sims games was the creative aspect. You could build the terrain and roadways, fill it in with houses, parks, and facilities that you built, and populate it with people you created, and when that's done, you direct those people through life in what way you see fit. Most of that is still there (give us the fucking neighborhood tool), but it hasn't really been expanded upon all that much. Look at Build Mode: I can count five things that are actually new and were never part of The Sims 2. So now we have stairs that build their own little designable (or destroyable) underwalls, and we can put any railing on any type of stair, yet we still can't use the design tool on the stairs themselves or the damn rails. We can't even change the color! Same with roofs: you get x shingle designs in y colors, but that's it. We still can't redesign fences. Ground-level walls can't be built against foundations without geometry-warping workarounds. Same thing for stairs with landings. Windows and doors can't be placed on the half tile. Half-length walls could be useful, but it's still one wall per tile, just like in The Sims 1. Some things you can look at (the lack of hair, clothes, objects in general) and say, "Well, that'll get filled in with expansions and store items," but the aforementioned build mode things are core and won't be changing.

[originalhalf]

The key word in that article is "laziness".  After playing this entire weekend I have to agree. 

I feel like I've been forced to dumb down and fit into my spawn's console world or play one of the RPGs I have.  The sims move like little robot people (what is WITH that stance they have when standing still?), have little to no personality and building stuff is painful.  I think I hate the speed problem more than anything in this POS.

I do like being able to follow them as they move from one lot to the other, color customization and the interactions with the ghosts.  I'm determined to get a ghost baby for which the Son of Perdition's self-sim has graciously agreed to take one for the team to provide.  After that I see myself going back to TS2 to fulfill my goddess complex.

As a Sims player since day 1 I feel like I've been bent over and fucked in the ass with no reach around.

[hidethe_cutlery]

I like that Sims can do things that make sense, whereas before they couldn't.
Adult Sims can now sit down in chairs while holding babies and even watch TV with them. I don't know about anyone else but I squee'd when I saw that.

[Marhis]

Fuck yeah, laziness. The game gives the feeling of incompleteness a lot.
More than pure laziness, though, I blame marketing/corporate strategy: just do the bare minimum so the player has the feel of the thing and conceal the leaks and cracks with some paint on: when the players will realize the con it will be too late. EA will already got the money AND spout out another tease in form of EP, refreshing players' hopes. Repeat ad libitum.

See the story progression, which is 90% a fake feature, not mentioning the fact it's also BROKEN.