#16

This game is part of a series that I have been addicted to since its very beginnings in the early 2000s. I may have exaggerated the fact that many people scoff at it, because it’s really incredibly popular, and yet I know many gamers who accuse it of being boring and barely a game. I couldn’t disagree more. I give you one of my favorite games…

THE SIMS 3




Meet Nestor Trimboli. He’s a bit lazy, but is very dedicated to his hobbies, including fishing.



Here he is with his wife, Bianca. She works a lot so that she can support the both of them. Unlike Nestor, she’s very grounded in reality and always gets the job done. Still, she accepts her husband’s laziness and loves him despite of it.




They live in the picturesque town of Monte Vista, which is based on Italy.





Their family steadily grew. These are their children, Alba and Luca, who later grew up to be happy adults (I don't have their adult pictures though, sadly ).





What I just showed you are bits and pieces from the life of my favorite Sims 3 family. They live in my favorite world and are among the sims I think turned out best visually. I also made them right around the Seasons expansion pack came out, so that’s another nice association. In general, this set of photos kind of embodies what I love about the Sims. This is a game where you can tell your own story, and your tools are nearly unlimited.


I wanna say it's not what it looks like, but I'm really not sure at this point.

Basically, the Sims 3 is a life sim. That’s basically the gist of it. You create little virtual people, you build them houses, make them work, fulfill their needs and dreams, and so on. What makes it the best installment in the series so far (4 sadly took away too many features that made 3 amazing) can be boiled down to two major additions: traits and the open world. Traits help create quite realistic personalities for your imaginary people, really helping make the sims feel alive. There’s quite a bit of traits to choose from, ranging from things like artistic, frugal, evil, night owl, and kleptomaniac. You can mix and match almost at will, with obviously contradictory traits not being acceptable, combining up to five traits in a single sim (though you gain ways to further extend that limit in later expansions). The open world speaks for itself – in the Sims 1 and 2 you were confined to your house and could only go downtown after a loading screen showed up and then your sim got transported to a pocket dimension and upon his or her return, it would be exactly the same time of day as it was. Not to mention your neighbors didn’t age, which was pretty creepy. Not the case anymore, since everything progresses at all times, and you have free roam of the town you choose at the beginning of a new game. And, depending on your expansions, DLC and custom content, you may get a huge amount of beautiful worlds to choose from.


You may, however, find yourself perfectly satisfied sipping tea on your porch like the proper Victorian gentlemen that you are. Quite.

Another aspect of the Sims that I love is that they’re really wacky. Expansions usually add some crazy supernatural elements, which usually are completely optional, but I love them. It adds a bit more randomness and unpredictability to the game. For example, before Supernatural (the expansion, not the TV show) came out, you had no option to disable vampires from spawning in the town. So I often invited vampires to parties. Vampires basically are pretty broken – they’re nearly immortal, compared to regular sims, and gain skills incredibly fast, not to mention they can manipulate other sims, but they can’t eat, instead needing “plasma” (which can be harvested both from other sims and from a special kind of fruit), and having to stay away from the sun. If they went out during the day, their hunger need would plummet. Because of that, most of my parties consisted of at least one vampire turning to dust. Fun times.


At other times the weirdness factor is just your maid coming up wearing this.

The music is pretty awesome. Steve Jablonsky really does a great job with capturing that suburban vibe (it actually sounds really similar to his work on Desperate Housewives, wchich I find amazing). I still think it can't hold a candle to the soundtrack to the first game, but it's much, much better than what we had in the Sims 2.


The game has its problems, unfortunately. if it weren’t for the numerous frustrating bugs the Sims 3 has plaguing it, it would have ranked much higher on the list, it probably would have even made my top 10. Also, the base game is pretty barebones, so you kinda need expansion packs and DLC to make things really interesting. I have no doubts that this is currently the most expensive game I own – adding up all the expansion packs, stuff packs and DLC, I guess I could have bought a PS4 with a solid game library for that amount right now


Horses sinking into asphalt are apparently a thing.
Overall, I’m still really happy I forked over all that money. This truly is a fantastic game if you really have a drive to play it. You can spend hours simply creating your own stories or watching stories unfold before your very eyes if you decide to pose some limitations on yourself. I can honestly recommend this game to anyone, regardless of gaming preference, since there’s something in it for everyone, you just have to see it So don’t use cheat codes and don’t just make making more money your only priority – make some stories and enjoy. The Sims 3 is fun in its purest form.