THE HORROR: The REAL TS3 Scoop As It Unfolds

[J. M. Pescado]

Okay, here's the crap they DON'T tell you in the shitty reviews written by tards and shills.

First Impressions:
1. LACK OF SECUROM IS TOTAL LIECAKE: Game attempted to phone home and whined about activation when DENIED. YOU CAN HAZ SECUROM!
2. Selection of available CAS things VERY limited compared to TS2. For instance, you CANNOT EVEN BE PROPERLY BALD ANYMORE. See if you can guess how I noticed THAT so fast.
3. Enforced Legacy-playstyle: Switching to a different household forfeits current status. At minimum, all wants and progress towards wants will be lost.
4. Shiftclick very limited compared to TS2.
5. Navigation is an extremely ARGH-inducing experience, reverts back to pre-Manual Navigation annoyance where you have to babysit a sim to its destination before you can tell it what to do there.

If you are a Legacy-style player, TS3 MIGHT be better for you. If you are more into having an entire neighborhood of sims to play with...TS3 is categorically insuperior in every way found so far.

Continuing Impressions:
1. Sims in TS3 are just not as good-looking at their TS2 equivalents. Yes, they are more detailed. Yes, you can trick them out in ways that you can't really do with TS2 sims. But they're still ugly. And this is coming from someone who *ISN'T* a heavy CC user: I basically use EAxis default skins, EAxis default eyes. But the fact of the matter is, TS3 sims are just ugly. Why? I am not qualified to say. They just ARE. It took very little effort, even for someone with my complete lack of artistic skills, to throw together a sim that looked passably like someone familiar, or at least, wasn't ugly. I have spent an hour fiddling with the damn thing, but nothing I do produces something other than a pudgy, doughy-faced, slopey-foreheaded ape.
2. The neighborhood map has an overwhelming sense of simultaneous clutteredness and claustrophobia. There is an overwhelming number of floating icons, each barely distinguishable from the other. And I like buttons. Is this bad? Well, hard to say. Buttons are good. But they float chaotically without the sense of order that was present in TS2.
3. Build mode: TECHNICALLY, build mode is superior to its predecessors. However, it suffers from this same sense of poor screen utilization, combined with a sense of flightyness. In TS1, everything seemed to fit together well. This sense continued in TS2. In TS3, I have this sense that the thing is simply too fidgety, and the glitz and sparkles obscures the actual FUNCTIONALITY. When you draw out a room, the entire thing appears in a sparkly shower. The effects overwhelm the functionality. As a veteran sims player dating back to TS1, I find the build mode to be confusing and awkward. That should tell you something.

Gameplay:
Well, I can't say much about it at this point. The overwhelming sense of STUFF I HAVE TO CONFIGURE has kept me from seriously playing the game so far. I've dabbled slightly in the premades, but honestly, the CONTROLS ARE JUST TERRIBLE. I realize they're similar to TS2's in many ways, but let's face it, the controls in unmodified TS2 are ALSO awful. Sims refuse to obey my commands to GO HERE and then DO THAT. At least having to tell them to run there in order to get anywhere isn't quite as critical, but that's again only because everything now moves so SLOWLY. Except the CLOCK. The CLOCK seems to still be moving at the same 60x speed that previous incarnations of the game ran at. In any event, I just find it so overwhelmingly awful that within 30 seconds I'm seized with the urge to go back to TS2.

[LFox]

Okay i just gotta ask this since i've been dying to know since it was announced.  I have never seen any kind of answer to this.

How does the kleptomaniac trait work?  I mean if you steal everything not nailed down in a sims house do they just walk around peeing themselves and crying about lack of food until they die or do they get new furniture?  Naturally since it's Eaxis that made it i'm skeptical about it.

[ShortyBoo]

Someone who was at one of the events in the UK that got to play said a sim stole a trash can from a park. I can imagine if they're allowed to steal anything and everything, soon the neighborhood will be empty. I'm going to make a klepto sim anyway to test it out as soon as I get it installed.

[Tyyppi]

Hmm, sounds worse than I thought although SecuROM didn't come as a surprise. Still I'm downloading it because I'm probably crazy or a masochist or both.

[LFox]

That's exactly why i've wondered about the kleptomaniac trait.  If you really can steal anything and it doesn't get replaced the neighbourhood is going to end up very very empty.

Damn the files i was downloading are deleted.  Anyone know some files that'll work with those from post #75?  I'm missing 10 files.

[Tigerlilley]

THIS IS SO EXCITING

[Inge]

Watching other people perpetrate a bit of mischief brings a grin to my face 

[Kyna]

First Impressions:
1. LACK OF SECUROM IS TOTAL LIECAKE: Game attempted to phone home and whined about activation when DENIED. YOU CAN HAZ SECUROM!

Is anyone here at MATY surprised?  Nope, didn't think so.

2. Selection of available CAS things VERY limited compared to TS2. For instance, you CANNOT EVEN BE PROPERLY BALD ANYMORE. See if you can guess how I noticed THAT so fast.

Probably so they can sell us these things in EPs or via the online store.  Either that or to support some crappy deal EA made with T$R.

3. Enforced Legacy-playstyle: Switching to a different household forfeits current status. At minimum, all wants and progress towards wants will be lost.

This has been the big DO NOT WANT from the community for months, years even, ever since news of this first leaked/was released in early interviews and articles.  Every sims site I've visited has raised this point as a major DO NOT WANT.  Why did EA not listen?

4. Shiftclick very limited compared to TS2.

Yeah, we might start breaking out of the limited parameters they've set for us.  This is EA's game dammit, not a sandbox / doll house / story teller / movie maker for the players.  EA shall maintain complete control of what players can and cannot do in the game.  Even if that means sales suck.  EA will just blame the sales suckage on the early release of the pirated copy.  Time to put on your tinfoil hats, because I'm wondering if someone in EA's corporate structure didn't authorise the leak to pirates, just to cover their asses if/when the sales suck.

5. Navigation is an extremely ARGH-inducing experience, reverts back to pre-Manual Navigation annoyance where you have to babysit a sim to its destination before you can tell it what to do there.

Well, obviously it's gonna suck with pre-awesome suckage.  You haven't had time to begin to awesomize it yet.  It sounds like it may not be worth the effort.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have updated my continuing impressions in first post.

[Emma]

I am really enjoying the fact that Pescado is playing an unmodded game. LULZ!

Seriously though, I am because by the time I get it, hopefully there will be some 'fixes' available.

Yeah, I know...'Death To EMMA'.

[Kyna]

I want to get it, just to watch the train-wreckiness of it.  But to play it srsly?  No way.

From the way it sounds, it might be a good thing to stick to TS2.  Besides, weren't various modders planning to write their "amazingly complex and awesome™ mod I wanted to write all along, but couldn't because there was always another EP around the corner".  I'm still hoping to see some really cool mods come out in that vein.

[Skadi]

I'm not impressed at all. The clothes, make-up and hair make me want to gouge out my eyes, the furnishings are in weird places (at least to me); bookcases are in the storage tab. Yes it was easier to move to community lots. But somehow in all of this I am left frantically searching to find the place to take art lessons, and trying to make it to the stadium to watch some sport.
One cute thing: Sims get a happy moodlet from buying new stuff.

[Aner-Dyfan]

A happy moodlet? Heck does that mean we are going to spam buy things just before a sim goes to work in order to get them premoted? DNW!

[Skadi]

There was a 5 hour happy moodlet from fulfilling a wish, and a 30 minute moodlet for buying new stuff. I am finding skilling excruciatingly slow, and that's with both the genius and bookworm traits.

[X-Phile]

Securom on Sims 3 what a suprise.

EA will see shit soon. Or is it tomatoes?
This will be very good PR.

Hopefully I soon will experience the Sims 3 gameplay.

[Nightmare]

All I have seen on underdark sites is a goddamn promo disk. which is miles away from the real game.

Pes, if you are the one who pirated this. You are doing Securom and his cronies a big favour.

[Skadi]

I believe this is a scene release from RELOADED. I can confirm that the torrents out there are a full working version, not a promo.

[Zazazu]

No worries, Skadi. Nightmare is a complete douche who frequents PMBD and never reads.

[SimKat]

Heres a good laugh
http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=78b2635e90504268d119761e7f35ee3f&directoryID=225&startRow=1&openItemID=item.225,item.43,item.61,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23

[Jelenedra]

I know what I'll be doing when I get home tonight. If I don't like it, I can cancel my preorder and keep the cheap as free version. =p

[Nightmare]

No worries, Skadi. Nightmare is a complete douche who frequents PMBD and never reads.

Congrats to the moron pirate that has released this so early.

[SimKat]

Yep I already canceled my pre-order,screw them they ain't getting my cash.My CAT! has other ways of dealing with this.

[Marhis]

You are doing Securom and his cronies a big favour.

I don't support piracy (*cough* sorry, but I can't lie), but still I fail to see how the actual demonstration that DRMs can do NOTHING to stop piracy to any extent might support Securom cronies.

[Kyna]

No worries, Skadi. Nightmare is a complete douche who frequents PMBD and never reads.

I think it's obvious that Nightmare is a moron, as Nightmoron apparently thinks that SecuROM is a "he".  Nightmoron also believes that software can have cronies.  Quoting the proof, in case it's deleted:

You are doing Securom and his cronies a big favour.

BTW, wb Skadi.

[Jelenedra]

Yes, welcome back. (I kept it from earlier post, because knowing my luck, you already had a welcome back thread already and I'd be raking in face by saying something here)